Building in Minecraft

Hi everyone! This is a five-paragraph essay I wrote awhile ago for school, and I thought I'd put it on my blog to let you see it (and to give any Minecrafters out there some building tips!).

Building in Minecraft

 

Minecraft, one of the most popular video games in the world, is a very building-focused game. It has a large selection of blocks with a variety of textures and color palettes, which allows the player to be creative in the way that they build. Players take inspiration from the real world, movies, and other video games for the structures they build. There are three phases to the process: planning, resource-gathering, and construction.

 

The first phase of the building process is planning. The player must first choose a theme for their build. For example, will it be a Wild West tavern or an alien settlement? They must then choose a suitable biome for their build, which is partly decided by their theme. A Wild West build would look best in a mesa, for example. Finally, every build needs to have some kind of purpose. Are you building a smithy to house a super-smelter? Are you building a home for yourself, or do you just want to build something cool-looking? Planning is not necessary, as it is relatively easy to freestyle simple builds, but if you are building something large and complicated, planning it out first is much easier than building it from scratch.

 

Next, if you are building in Survival Mode, resources need to be gathered for the construction phase. The player needs to know where to look for certain resources, as many are found in large quantities in certain biomes. For example, mesas generate large amounts of gold and terracotta, and old growth taigas generate spruce trees, podzol, and mossy cobblestone. Players also need to make sure they have space in their inventory to carry all these resources, a task which is made much easier if they have access to ender chests and shulker boxes. Not all resources need to be gathered in the wild, however, because a great many of them are renewable. Trees can be regrown from saplings, and if lava flows over water, the water will be turned into stone. While amassing large amounts of resources can be time-consuming, and in some cases dangerous, it is a necessary part of the building process.

 

Finally, once the player is finished planning and gathering resources, it’s time to start the construction phase. The foundation of a build is important, and it can help to trace out the shape of the walls on the ground first, so it is easy to see where certain parts of the structure go. Most players flatten the landscape to make the building process easier, but using the landscape to your advantage can make the build look much more interesting. For example, instead of covering over that massive ravine, an imposing bridge could be built over it instead. Finally, unless you are building a mob farm, no build is complete without spawn-proofing. The easiest way of doing this is to light up the build using torches or other light sources, such as lanterns or shroomlights, but if non-solid blocks (which mobs cannot spawn on) are used in the floor or to cover over other spawnable spaces, the player can explore more atmospheric ways of lighting. The construction phase is the climax of all the player’s hard work, and will result in an impressive build to admire.

 

Through planning, resource-gathering, and construction, the player will be able to construct a beautiful building. Once it is finished, they will experience an incredible feeling of satisfaction and pride. Minecraft is a game that allows players to express themselves in a unique way, and since its full release in 2011, it has continued to inspire millions of people around the globe.