150 Minecraft Secrets You've Never Seen Before: The Secrets Handbook (8 page)

Water is pretty annoying, right? Especially in caves when you're trying to find ores to mine and when water gets in the way, nothing but annoyance flares within you. Water beside lava is also a lethal combination because if you fall into a flowing water stream, it will bring you into a lava pool and you die.

That's why you should use torches to block off water sources in caves. Just go to the source block and place a torch in it. The torch is temporary, it will be destroyed by the water but the source block and belonging water will still disappear. Handy!

If you are being chased by a creeper, go to a sea, lake or river and it won't cause any damage since it is in water.

If you see a creeper coming towards you and it looks like it's going to blow, and cause irreparable damage, run to the nearest water source! It could be the sea, a river, a lake, a desert oasis, a pond, a manmade pond, whatever. Just run!

The creeper will follow you to the water source and may even join you by going into the water source. Then, it will probably blow up in the water source and will leave no damage whatsoever!

If you want to make a clock or compass, chances are – you probably just want to tell the time or find out where North is. Right? There's not much else you can do with these items.

Don't go wasting your precious materials if you want to make a clock or compass. So, why not do this instead.

All you have to do is assemble the materials you need for a clock or compass (shown below) and view the time or direction of North, straight from the crafting table! You don't need to make the compass or clock, all you have to do is look at it from the crafting table.

As you can see in the image below, you can tell the time just by assembling four gold ingots and one redstone dust in the crafting table and looking at the time WITHOUT crafting it and wasting your materials.

The same goes for a compass. All you have to do is assemble four iron ingots and one redstone dust in the crafting table and you know exactly where North is!

With a little bit of practice, it's actually possible to hit fireballs back at Ghasts.

It's very difficult and a little bit risky but it works. This means you won't need anymore bows and arrows since all you'll be using is your hand (and a burned hand at that)!

Try and aim for the Ghasts tentacles and your fireball should do enough damage to kill it (provide you hit them about two times with fireballs).

You probably already know that mobs don't spawn in the mushroom biome. If you don't, well, that's a new bit of info for you there.

However, did you ever think about going mining in the mushroom biome? As in, going to the biome, digging down and starting to mine. You won't find any mobs whatsoever. This is great if you're a newbie and want to avoid as many mobs as possible.

Or, if you hate mobs in general (we all do) and could do without them whilst mining. After all, there's nothing more annoying than a creeper hiding behind you when you're mining out some coal and then exploding when you turn around.

So, to take a break from mobs whilst mining, why not just do a little mining in the mushroom biome? It'll be a whole lot more fun than having a ton of mobs attacking you in a regular mine!

The best width for placing saplings is every two blocks. This applies to birch trees, jungle trees and spruce trees.

This ensures that there is a little bit of space for the trees and will also make sure that you can fit as many trees as possible in the area you have.

A lot of Minecraft players, (in fact all of them) say that it's not possible to place a torch on a crafting table. But, it actually is. With a bit of work, and some puzzle solving, the code has been cracked. You can use this as a bet with your friends. They'll obviously say it's not possible to put a torch on a crafting table, but wait till they see you do it!

All you have to do is place a transparent block behind the crafting table such as a glass block. Then, try to place the torch on the glass block, but the torch will latch itself onto the glass block.

You can also do this for furnaces too.

For PC, you can also use CTRL as you're placing down the torch. This will work for anything like dispensers, anvils, any block that has a GUI (menu) that opens when you click on it.

You can make an enormous jungle tree by placing four jungle tree saplings on dirt and then placing bonemeal on those four saplings. The result is a huge jungle tree complete with vines so you can climb up it. It’s probably the biggest tree you'll find in the jungle, or at least one of them anyway!

You can then harvest the tree for jungle wood which can be used to grow cocoa beans. Or, you can build a house on the top of the tree so you can wake up to insane views every morning!