150 Minecraft Secrets You've Never Seen Before: The Secrets Handbook (3 page)

Soul sand is well-known for slowing you down when walking, but did you know that you actually sink a little when you walk on soul sand?

This means that if you place a block three blocks off the ground in front of the soul sand, you can walk into the soul sand but you won't be able to get out!

This is perfect for making traps, and is definitely one of the lesser known traps that players use in Minecraft. Use to your advantage! This trap would definitely make a neat addition to a Minecraft server, you'd definitely annoy the players on it!

This trick isn't as well known as it should be. To place any item in your inventory whilst playing in creative, all you have to do is press the scroll wheel of your mouse on the item you want to place into your inventory. This works for items that can't be picked up such as leaves, grass, snow and ice. It works for everything. It only works on PC though, but there might be a way to do it on other consoles that we just don't know of yet.

This is lava and water, like you've never seen them before! For a little decoration in your home or garden, or just add a little pizazz to your latest building – just place four pressure plates surrounding one square. Then, with a lava filled bucket, pour it into the empty square! If you step on the pressure plates, the lava doesn't flow out so it's pretty safe!

You could use this idea for traps too. Maybe a trap door opens from the floor and you fall into a lava square? Who knows!

It sure does get tiring whenever you're running a farm and you have to keep opening and closing gates. Sometimes you might forget to close the gate and run out with food in your hand, only to result in disaster. The animals will run out, and you unfortunately, have to spend another twenty minutes getting them back in.

Instead, use a nether fence instead! Nether brick fence is made from nether bricks so sadly, you won't be able to use this trick until you go to the Nether. However, once you use this, you'll be able to walk in and out of the pen (without opening or closing gates!), but the animals can't get out.

If you're playing on a server that has enabled "fire spread", well then, you could be in trouble! Actually, your wooden house would be in severe trouble. If you still want a wooden house (for that rustic atmosphere) but don't want to sacrifice it for a little fire, just build with wooden slabs!

Wooden slabs have the same texture as normal wood blocks, but strangely enough, they don't catch fire! So, you can still have your wood house but it doesn't catch fire. Neat!

You're drowning..fast and you need to take drastic action. You realize that you don't have a wall nearby to place a torch, sign or ladder (as mentioned in our other tip). So, what do you do now?

Easy! Simply get a bucket from your inventor or hot bar and scoop out some water. This will give you enough to regain a full tank of oxygen to get back to the surface. You should try not to get into this situation if you can, but if worse comes to worst, this trick will definitely save your life.

If you're working on some lava traps or for one reason or another, lava starts to flow down into your cave from above, use a ladder or sign to stop the flow! Ladders and signs also stop water from flowing too. It still doesn’t really make sense

This can be applied to everything lava related from building a trap, adding some decoration (a lethal decoration at
that) or just going mining. This could save your life, so make sure to keep this tip to mind!

A common yet overlooked strategy for finding mines, is by
listening.
Yep, that's right!

Make sure that your sound effects volume is up to the max, and start walking around the world. When you listen, you could find clues for a ravine or a cave system which are very nearby. You need to listen for sounds like:

• Flowing lava
  
• Trickling Water
  
• Mobs
  
• Footsteps of Mobs
  

You'll be surprised by how effective this technique is, and once you practice it a few times – you'll be able to find mines a lot easier.

When you die, quickly press F5 to see the coordinates of where you will die (on PC). Then, when you respawn again, you can go back to the place where you died, thanks to the co-ordinates. On other consoles, you can quickly check your map for the co-ordinates.

You can only do this if you can predict if you're going to die, like if you're falling from a very tall height and you know you're going to die in the next few seconds. Or, if you're drowning in water, you can quickly press F5 or check your map to get the co-ordinates where your stuff will be left,

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for lava, the most lethal killer of all. Since your stuff will be burned up by the lava, you can't go back to reclaim it.

Yep, that's right!

Thought soul sand was slow enough? Think again!

By placing ice underneath soul sand, the soul sand will make you walk even more slowly. This is great for traps or just fooling around with your friends. They obviously know that walking through soul sand will make them slow down, but wait till they realize that they are going even slower than usual!

Of course, when they walk into the ice-soul sand combo, it'll take them a while before they can get back out again.

Infuriation and confusion guaranteed!

If you want to hold up sand or gravel without placing a non-movable block (like dirt) underneath it, you should use torches. This is great if you want to hold up sand or gravel for various constructions, contraptions and the like.

This isn't really a tip as such, but it
is
an interesting tidbit of information we found out.

Go ahead and listen to the Ghasts in the Nether. Would you have seriously thought that was a cat?

It doesn't sound like a cat to me, but I learned a few things from this:

1. Ghasts have become even creepier.
   
2. Cats can make some very strange sounds.
   
3. Sometimes, you don't need expensive or fancy sound effects. A cat will do.
   
4. C418 are very creative, and we applaud them for that.
   

I'll never be able to look at Ghasts in the same way again.