Fantastic Minecraft Structural Designs, Farms, and Furnishings

FANTASTIC

MINECRAFT

STRUCTURAL DESIGNS, FARMS,

AND FURNISHINGS

Dig into Minecraft with this (parent-approved) guide

JAMES H. CLARK

Fantastic Minecraft Structural Designs, Farms, and Furnishings

James H. Clark

Peachpit Press Find us on the web at:

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Copyright ? 2015 Peachpit Press

This material excerpted from The Visual Guide to Minecraft, published by Peachpit Press, 2015

Editors: Clifford Colby and Robyn Thomas Production Editor: Dennis Fitzgerald Interior Design and Compositor: Maureen Forys Copyeditor: Scout Festa Cover design: Mimi Heft

Notice of Rights

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact permissions@ .

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The information in this book is distributed on an "As Is" basis without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.

Trademarks

Minecraft is a trademark of Notch Development AB. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book.

ISBN 13: 978-0-134-09679-7 ISBN 10: 0-134-09679-7

Supporting Your Lifestyle

As time passes in your world, you will reach a point when you need more of, well, everything, but especially food and wood. You need a farm for each of the different types of food, a mine for pulling materials out of the ground, and of course, you're going to need a place to store all your items.

Storage Room

Your personal inventory and your first few chests will likely be unorganized as you get settled in the world. But if you build a storage room or facility that is easy to expand, you'll be able to keep everything organized and reduce the amount of time you spend grabbing materials from your stores, giving you more time to build.

Chests

When you place a chest on the ground, it will be a single chest. Place another chest adjacent to it to turn it into a double chest (Figure 3.1). A double chest gives you twice the inventory of a single chest.

Figure 3.1 On the left is a single chest. On the right is a double chest.

Once you've created a double chest, you cannot place another chest adjacent to it. The area immediately above a chest must be free of obstruction for the chest to open. There is, however, an exception to this rule: Place another chest above or below it and it will still function (Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2 Chests will still function with other chests on top of them.

While the amount of materials you're storing will ultimately dictate the size of your storage area, you can use this feature to construct a fairly compact storage room.

42 More Than Just Building--Creating

Labels

There are a couple of ways to label your chests. Signs, when placed on the ground or on a wall, allow you to write up to four lines of text. Each line has a maximum of 15 characters, including spaces and punctuation. You could, for example, place a sign on a column next to a chest and write what's in the chest. For more compact signage, place a sign on a column between two chests. On the first line, write what's in the chest to the left. On the second, "write" an arrow pointing to the chest on the left. On the third line, write what's in the chest on the right. On the fourth line, write an arrow pointing to the chest on the right (Figure 3.3).

Figure 3.3 Signs can be used to provide a textual guide to your storage room.

You can use item frames to give you a visual guide to your storage room (Figure 3.4). Place an item frame on the wall next to a chest, and place an item (representative of what's in the chest next to it) in the frame.

Figure 3.4 Using item frames isn't as compact as signs, but it can look nicer. The oak sapling in the item frame could be a signal to you that the chest contains oak saplings or other organic material.

Supporting Your Lifestyle 43

Design Example

In Figure 3.5, the chests on the right use item frames as labels. The chests on the left use signs. The columns are made from spruce wood. Glowstone blocks are used for lighting to keep the room compact and uncluttered. Jungle wood planks are used as the primary material for the floor.

Signs as labels

Jungle wood planks

Item frames as labels

Glowstone Figure 3.5 A completed storage room.

Farming

The goal of any farm is to mass produce materials easily and efficiently. An efficient farm will keep your supplies well stocked with little effort.

Plants for Food

Wheat is grown from seeds, carrots are grown from other carrots, and potatoes grow from other potatoes. You can acquire wheat seeds by breaking tall grass.

44 More Than Just Building--Creating

Carrots and potatoes can be found in world-generated villages. Rarely, they will drop when you kill a zombie. In order to grow plants, each type of crop needs to be planted on dirt that has been tilled with a hoe (Figure 3.6) and is within 4 blocks of water. The water can be still or flowing.

Figure 3.6 From left to right: a dirt block, a tilled dirt block, and planted wheat.

When each crop is fully grown (Figure 3.7), aim at the crop and left-click to harvest the crop. Wheat will drop one wheat and up to three seeds. Carrots and potatoes will drop up to four of each. Be careful: Potatoes have a chance of dropping a poisonous potato.

Figure 3.7 From left to right: fully grown wheat, carrots, and potatoes. Supporting Your Lifestyle 45

Plant Farm

Typically, the first farm you set up will be a wheat farm, because these seeds are the easiest to come by in the world. This basic farm (Figure 3.8) is a 9-block-by-9-block square of dirt, with a bucket of water poured into a hole in the center. It is surrounded by stone bricks with fences on top. You don't have to enclose it, but doing so makes the design of the farm look intentional and will also keep the mobs out.

Figure 3.8 A basic farm pod.

To light the area, you could just place torches on top of the fence posts, but adding a little design will make your farm look better. You'll notice that the corners of the fence incorporate a version of the lampposts you saw in the previous chapter. Glowstone blocks are placed in the ground in the center of the sides. A farm as small as this is pretty easy to harvest, but as you expand, harvesting quickly becomes tedious. Water, when allowed to flow over farmland, will wash crops away, harvesting them as if you had left-clicked each plant. This feature can be used to automate harvesting wheat, carrots, and potatoes. And if you build it correctly, the water will push your harvest to one area for easy collection.

46 More Than Just Building--Creating

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