Day: January 9, 2015

Minecraft Beacons

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

beacon

One of my Minecraft Essential Handbooks came today. It’s the one with the pickaxe icon on the front. I read it cover to cover in less than 20 minutes. It was only 79 pages, but it was mostly pictures with words, so it’s far from a novel. But it’s fully color and hardcover and was only $5, so I think it was well worth the price considering it’s normally $8.

Near the end it has a tip for finding your way back to your home when you get lost, and that is to build some beacons. They said to just build up 2 columns of dirt blocks, then place your torch on one column, then dig your way down with the 2nd column of dirt blocks. That makes sense, but you know, I didn’t think 1 torch was going to help me find my way at night, or even during the day. I wanted to build up a huge tower of blocks with 4 torches and 4 pumpkins, since pumpkins are supposed to give off better light than a torch. I spaced them far enough that I could still see other beacons, but just in case I couldn’t see the other beacons, at the bottom of the beacon I created an arrow with cobblestone so I would know which direction I had to go in to find the next beacon or the home beacon.

imageAs you can see in the image above, it’s very difficult to see. All you can really see are the arrows, which is why I zoomed them in for you. This particular beacon is the home beacon which stands just behind my cobblestone house. I made the beacon with cobblestone so that it would match my house, but all the other beacons are made with oak wood planks because I have an abundance of wood thanks to fact that every time I chop down a tree, it drops several oak tree saplings which I plant for more trees so I don’t have to keep chopping down all the trees in the land. I just plant around 50 to 100 near my house, then spend whatever amount of time I need chopping them down whenever I need more wood.

Another tip is to create a road using cobblestone, which basically means I have to mine the dirt as I’m travelling and fill in that space with cobblestone, which as you know can take a long time, especially if you just want to go explore. You can’t really explore if all you are doing is laying road, so the other alternative is just dropping torches every minute so you can find your way back using the torches. Later, once you’ve found the new mine or whatever it is you found, you can just create your new road along the torches, then add the cobblestone.

A cobblestone road, torches to light the patch, beacons and signs are a few of the ways I have gotten myself back to my house when I start getting lost, or think I am getting lost. Today for example I had built the first beacon, but then I found a horse and tamed it and put a saddle on it, then brought it back to my house, but I forgot to make the lead, so when I went into the house to make the lead, the horse was gone. Is it a lead? It’s basically a rope that you can put on your horse to tie it to a fence so they don’t wander off. It works with a dog as a leash. Anyway, I went searching for the horse, and next thing I knew I was lost and couldn’t find my beacon. I eventually did, but one beacon isn’t going to help me, which is why I build 3 more in many different directions from my house. I will have to keep adding more later just in case I get lost again and can’t find my roads or my beacons. I still never found that stupid horse, but I have 2 more saddles and I plan on taming another horse. Maybe some day my tame horse with the saddle will return to me.

The first book that I received today was full of useful information, I can’t wait to get the other 3 tomorrow.

Minecraft CE-34878-0 Error

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, PS41 Comment

Well, call me disappointed tonight. I have spent a lot of time digging tunnels, and making and placing glass around my tunnels under water and mining and this and that and the other, and now all of that is gone because of an error on my brand new PlayStation 4.

I was so proud of myself for making all this progress and it is all gone, well, mostly anyway because thankfully I had made a back up on my 4GB USB memory stick on January 29. Unfortunately that was 10 days ago, and a lot happened in 10 days. So all of that work is gone and I am back to where I used to be. My other file is still there, I just cannot access it because it crashes as soon as it loads.

This sucks, but on the other hand all of my trophies are still there, so at least I don’t have to go through all that work just to get the trophies again. This does give me the opportunity to do things again, but since I know where everything is, I can get what I had a lot faster.

When I make my railroad going back to the mines I went to before, I can now make them go up or down, I can make them any way I want. The tunnels in my first mine had wood platforms with tracks laid out, but they were scattered and it didn’t seem like they had a plan for them, but now I can probably connect them since I know how to lay the tracks up and down. I think it will make things a lot easier to avoid getting lost in the mines… hopefully.

One other thing I would like to do is to find some good plans for cool Minecraft houses so I can make a better looking house. Mine is okay, but I know it could be a lot better if I tried. I would also love to move it over the water so I can make a glass house on the bottom floor with a bottomless floor for fishing lol. I think that would be really neat. I could also have a dock for my boat and of course I would have my railroad tunnel going from land to the house so I don’t have to worry about how I’m getting back to land. I think that would be cool.

So I don’t see this as a bad thing necessarily, I see it as a way of doing things differently and more efficiently.

By the way, here is that video that I made of my tunnels. I was so proud of all the work I had accomplished, and I have the pain in my right arm and shoulder to prove it.