Tutorials Shelters

Info

Some Types of Shelters to Consider

An example of a large shelter.

• A mountain hideout
• A small dirt shack (Good for the first night)
• Small one or two story house
• Large 2 or 3 story house
• A hill fort
• A treehouse
• An underground shelter
• A small fort
• A larger fort or castle
• A walled off area (Even if there is no ceiling, it will still let you sleep if it`s closed off)
• A very large castle (about 40⃗40⃗23)
• A mansion (Bigger than 30⃗30⃗10)
• A cabin
• A dugout (When making it, you will gain and not use blocks, unless you run into an opening that you want to block off.)
• An underwater base (not a good first shelter.)

Generally you want to start basic, don`t over-exert yourself on the first day!

Videos

Shelters for the first night

Here are some options for a shelter on your first night that can be built with limited resources.

Hole in the wall

While you were gathering cobblestone on your first day, you most likely dug a small hole in the side of a surface cave, or staircased down through the dirt. In either case, you can use that hole as a shelter. Dig a few more blocks into the hill or cave wall, then you can dig a small room (5ℂₗ5 is the most recommended. It`s not too small, but not too big.) Relocate your crafting table and furnace in here, and make sure to light it up!

You can place a door across the entrance to your shelter to protect you from mobs, while still giving you access. It is generally recommended to place it from the outside (go outside your shelter and place it while looking inside.)

If you don`t have wood to spare for a door, simply cover your entrance with dirt or cobblestone when night falls, periodically breaking it to check for day (watch out for mobs though!)

Atop a pillar

Build a tall 1⃗1 column under you, by pillar jumping Pillar jumping (also known as pillaring, chimneying, towering, jump stacking, nerd-poleing, or constructing a block elevator) is a method of reaching a higher altitude that can t otherwise easily be reached in a map. The pillars : look straight down, jump up, and place one of your blocks in the space you`ve jumped up from. By doing this repeatedly, you can get high enough above the ground that the mobs are unable to detect you. You can make the pillar out of dirt, wood planks (remember, 4 planks to a log), or even cobblestone, but avoid using sand or gravel to make your tower (see below).

Going 10 or 12 blocks up will usually be enough, 16 is safer (skeleton range), and 20 or 30 is more certain. (Zombies can still track you 30 blocks up, but they can`t hurt you while you are on the pillar). You then need to wait until morning. You can also use “crouching” (holding ⇧ Shift) to put an extra block or two as a ledge. Crouching lets you “lean” over the edge of your pillar so that you can see the side of the top block, which then lets you place a block there (without releaseAnnounce the shift key!). Then you can put your crafting table (and soon, your furnace) on the ledge and work overnight. (Alternatively, you can just stick them to the side of the pillar.) Remember to retrieve them before you come down! You can look around and see what`s happening overnight, but try to avoid putting your crosshairs on an enderman.

Watch out for climbing spiders Spider Health points 16 () Attack strength Easy: 2 () Normal: 2 () Hard: 3 () Size Height: 0.9 Blocks Width: 1.4 Blocks Spawn Light level of 7 or less, 3×3×2 space on solid blocks or even (unlikely) a spider jockey Spider Jockey Health points Skeleton: 20 () Spider: 16 () Cave Spider: 12 () Attack strength Skeleton: Easy: 4 () Normal: 4 () Hard: 5 () Wither Skeleton: Easy: 4 () Normal: 7 () Hard: . To fend off spiders, you can break one of the blocks below your top block, or build a lip around the block you`re standing on. You do either of these by crouching as above, and placing or breaking blocks. You will not fall unless you let go of the shift key while leaning over the edge… or unless you are attacked, so don`t do this if a spider is actually getting close to you (or if your tower is under 20 blocks and a skeleton is at the base). If a spider does climb the pillar, they`re fairly unlikely to actually reach you, but, just in case, keep your stone sword in hand and whack them as soon as they come into reach, before they get up to you. (Attacking them will knock them down, causing them to take damage from the fall.)

Once it is light enough, and the undead have burned, simply dig out the blocks you`re perched upon, until you`re back on the ground. (Check for nearby creepers and other monsters first!) Don`t just jump off your tower – if you`re high enough to avoid mob detection then you`re high enough to take damage if you jump, or even die if you`re 22 blocks or more up. Also keep an eye out for spiders, which can meet you halfway and knock you off the tower. If a creeper is hanging out at the base of your pillar, and you have more blocks, try going even higher—30, 40 blocks, or even up to cloud level. This makes monsters on the ground despawn far more quickly (because they are now farther away from you).

Do not to use sand or gravel, because unlike most blocks, they are affected by gravity. You can`t place a ledge with them, as they fall to the ground. (Be that as it may, you can put a dirt block on the side of a sand pillar, and that will stay up even if the pillar doesn`t. In particular, if a creeper does notice you, and blows up at the bottom of your pillar, the rest of sand you`re standing on will fall closer to the ground, taking you with it… and apparently, you were already low enough for monsters to notice you. (Also, a passing enderman might pull a block out of your pillar.) If you`re really stuck and only have sand or gravel, make the pillar extra-tall, at least 20 blocks.

If you are in a desert with only sand and cacti all around, and have no other blocks available, don`t use cacti (they`ll kill you). If you have time, try to gather a lot of sand to make sandstone. If you got at least 40 or 50 sand (a full stack of 64 is better) by nightfall, you can make enough sandstone for a pillar, even without your crafting table: Press E for your inventory and crafting window, divide the sand among all four boxes of your crafting grid, and take the sandstone. (Use your pickaxe to take down the tower in the morning.) Unfortunately, you need 4 sand to get each block of sandstone.

Up a tree

Find a single large tree and use dirt (or another non-valuable resource) to pillar up to top and stay up there until day arrives. Jungle, tall spruce, and large oak trees are recommended. Mobs will not spot you if it is a large enough tree, and if they do, just take evasive action and move to the other side of the tree. Spiders could give you a problem, but hopefully, they won`t see you. If the leaf canopy is big enough, you can actually dig up into the leaves, where monsters can`t reach you. If all else fails, jump between treetops. When night`s over, you can chop down the tree. Take care not to chop it down before you are done using it as a shelter, or the leaves may start to disappear, leaving you with nowhere to stand.

Three block high hut

By making four three block high walls around you, you can simply hide from most mobs. Adding a roof (at the third block, that is 2 blocks high inside) protects against endermen (which can`t fit) and spiders, which can otherwise climb the walls. You can make this out of almost anything—cobblestone is more secure, you can use wood planks if you have enough, but even dirt will do in a pinch. You need 13 blocks as a bare minimum (four 3-block high pillars around a 1⃗1 refuge), but two or three times that, or even a whole stack of 64, lets you build something you can actually move around in, and do some crafting and smelting overnight. (Note that you can use the crafting table and/or furnace as part of the walls.) Keep a block or few in your inventory as spares, in case of enderman theft (see below). You have two main risks: One is spiders Spider Health points 16 () Attack strength Easy: 2 () Normal: 2 () Hard: 3 () Size Height: 0.9 Blocks Width: 1.4 Blocks Spawn Light level of 7 or less, 3×3×2 space on solid blocks , which can both sense you through the walls, and climb the walls. Be that as it may, they can`t fit through small holes, and if you make a roof with only a one-block hole, spiders can`t get through (but you can still tell when day returns). The other hazard is if an enderman Enderman Health points 40 ( × 20) Attack strength Easy: 4 () Normal: 7 () Hard: 10 () Size Height: 2.9 Blocks Width: 0.6 Blocks Spawn In the Overworld, the Nether or the End in wanders by and takes a block out of your shelter. Wait for the enderman to wander away a bit, then replace the block, with one of your spares, if possible without letting your cursor cross the enderman (“looking at them”). When full daylight comes, mine a door in your wall, and exit. Keep a wary eye out for monsters, and in particular be prepared to run very fast away from creepers.

In a cave

A cave used as a base.

If you found a cave system you can fix it up into a lair⃢₀ₔa good one can make a base for the rest of your game. If it ends quickly, then cap off your entrance. If it does not end, then build a little shelter around you by capping off any extra exits or openings into the depths. Don`t worry too much about the natural walls of the cave; monsters can still be heard through the walls pretty loudly, but they can`t come through unless you leave an opening.

To block the cave off, for your first night you can use walls of dirt or cobblestone similarly to the "hole in the wall". If you have enough wood, you may be able to craft fences Fence Transparency Yes Luminance No Blast resistance 15 (Wood) 30 (Nether Brick) Tools Renewable Wood: Yes Nether Brick: No Stackable Yes (64) Flammable Wood: Yes Nether Brick: No Drops Itself Data values See Data values and a fence gate Fence Gate Transparency Yes Luminance No Blast resistance 15 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable Yes Drops Itself Data values See data values Name See data values A fence gate is a block that and place them across the entrance and any openings in back. Make sure you place the walls or fences behind the upper lip of the cave (or extend the ceiling over the barrier), or monsters are liable to "drop in" inside your barrier. Also, remember to light the area before you settle down. Likewise, remove any stray blocks, within two spaces outside the fence, from which monster could jump onto the fence (try the jump yourself). If using fences, also make sure you can retreat into the cave and away from the entrance (out of sight or 16 blocks away), or a creeper may drop by and just wait for you to come out. Later, you can be more sophisticated about sealing off and fortifying your lair.

As with "Hole in the wall", you can dig into the cave`s wall while waiting for dawn, but keep some blocks handy to patch up any openings you might make into another cave while digging, which might have a hostile mob in it. If you place your pickaxe in the quickslot bar (used to navigate quickly between items you are carrying in your inventory) and e.g. dirt is placed right next to it, you can quickly switch between your tool and that block type in order to close the hole you just made. This can be extremely handy when you stumble upon an opening which contains mobs.

Out to sea

If you are near an ocean, you can make a boat Boat Type Vehicles Durability N/A Renewable Yes Stackable No Flammable No, but drops except in lava Internal ID PC: 41 PE: 90 Network ID PC: 1 Entity ID boat Drops See Drops Health points 4 (see that page for the recipe) and sail out to where you can barely see land (in any direction). If you can`t make a boat, you can just swim out, holding the space bar all night to keep yourself afloat. Either way, you won`t be getting any crafting or smelting done.

Break the golden rule

When you`re desperate, you can break the golden rule of minecraft (Don`t dig straight down). Dig three blocks down, and put a block above you that is not sand/gravel. Congrats, you just made the fastest shelter in Minecraft possible. Since you probably don`t have an in-game clock Clock Type Tools Durability N/A Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) First appearances See History Data value dec: 347 hex: 15B bin: 101011011 Name clock See the in-game item. For the redstone circuit, see clock circuit. yet, you may want to use a real-world clock to time the night (7 minutes, with up to 3 more to allow for dawn/dusk). If you have dirt or stone next to you, you can dig out a couple of blocks there, and place your crafting table and furnace. Sometimes keep the hole in the ground as a base. A torch makes your little hideyhole feel a little less like a tomb.

Vertical hidy hole

This design allows you to see what is going on every time you come out, but it does require a bit of extra wood.

Once you reach stone, you can mine some of the stone, craft a furnace Furnace Type Solid Block Requirements None Physics No Transparency Partial (when active) Luminance Yes, 13 (when active) Blast resistance 17.5 Hardness 3.5 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No First appearances See History Drops , make charcoal Coal Type Raw materials Durability N/A Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) First appearances See History Data value dec: 263 hex: 107 bin: 100000111 Name coal See the coal lump and charcoal item. For other uses, , and craft torches Torch Transparency Yes Luminance 14 Blast resistance 0 Tool Any tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data value dec: 50 hex: 32 bin: 110010 Name torch See the common light-emitting torch. .

The next morning, check for mobs, particularly creepers Creeper Health points 20 () Attack strength Varies by proximity and difficulty. Maximum damage: Normal: 49 ( × 24.5) Charged: 97 ( × 48.5) Size Height: 1.7 Blocks Width: 0.6 Blocks Spawn Light level of , as you climb out.

Blocks to use

• Cobblestone Cobblestone Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 30 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Experience Smelted: 0.1 Drops Itself Data value dec: 4 hex: 4 bin: 100 Name cobblestone Cobblestone is a common block, obtained from
• Wool Wool Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 4 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64), same color only Flammable Yes Drops Itself Data value dec: 35 hex: 23 bin: 100011 Name wool Wool is a block derived from sheep
• Stained clay Terracotta Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 21 Tool Renewable No Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Experience Smelted: 0.1 Drops Itself Data values Terracotta dec: 172 hex: AC bin: 10101100 Stained Terracotta dec: 159 hex: 9F bin: 10011111 Name Terracotta hardened_clay
• Nether quartz Nether Quartz Type Raw materials Durability N/A Renewable No Stackable Yes (64) First appearances See History Data value dec: 406 hex: 196 bin: 110010110 Name quartz See the mineral. For the ore, see Nether Quartz
• Hardened clay Terracotta Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 21 Tool Renewable No Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Experience Smelted: 0.1 Drops Itself Data values Terracotta dec: 172 hex: AC bin: 10101100 Stained Terracotta dec: 159 hex: 9F bin: 10011111 Name Terracotta hardened_clay
• Obsidian Obsidian Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 6,000 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data value dec: 49 hex: 31 bin: 110001 Name obsidian “ Strong almost beyond compare and able to stand huge
• Bricks Bricks Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 30 Tool Renewable No Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data value dec: 45 hex: 2D bin: 101101 Name brick_block See the crafted block. For the item,
• Stone Stone Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 30 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Cobblestone (1) Data value dec: 01 hex: 1 bin: 1 Name stone See the block called stone. For and stone bricks Stone Bricks Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 30 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Experience Smelting Stone Bricks: 0.1 Drops Itself Data value dec: 98 hex: 62 bin: 1100010 Name stonebrick Stone bricks are one
• Sandstone Sandstone Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 4 Tool Renewable No Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data values Sandstone dec: 24 hex: 18 bin: 11000 Red Sandstone dec: 179 hex: B3 bin: 10110011 Name Sandstone  sandstone Red Sandstone  red_sandstone
• Nether brick Nether Brick Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 30 Tool Renewable No Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data values Nether Brick dec: 112 hex: 70 bin: 1110000 Red Nether Brick dec: 215 hex: D7 bin: 11010111 Name Nether Brick
• Wood planks Wood Planks Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 15 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable Yes Drops Itself Data value dec: 05 hex: 5 bin: 101 Name planks Wood planks are common blocks used in many crafting
• Wood logs Wood Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 10 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64), same species only Flammable Yes Experience Smelted: 0.15 Drops Itself Data values See Data values Name See Data values This article
• Wooden door Door Transparency Yes Luminance No Blast resistance 15 (Wood) 25 (Iron) Tools Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable Iron: No Wooden: No, but catches fire from lava Drops Itself Data values See Data values Name
• Decoration blocks:
  • Stairs Stairs Transparency Partial (blocks light) Luminance No Blast resistance Wood: 15 Stone: 30 Sandstone, Quartz, Red Sandstone: 4 Tools Renewable Cobblestone, Stone Brick, Wood, Purpur: Yes All others: No Stackable Yes (64) Flammable Wood: Yes and slabs for a sloping roof and for tables or chairs
  • Wool Wool Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 4 Tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64), same color only Flammable Yes Drops Itself Data value dec: 35 hex: 23 bin: 100011 Name wool Wool is a block derived from sheep or carpets for the floor
  • Glass and glass panes for windows
  • Wooden fences or cobblestone walls for pillars, fences and other decorations
  • Torches for lighting to stop mobs spawning
  • Extra hardened clay is nice too
  • Stained glass is decorative

These materials are good because they are:

• More or less easily obtained
• Fairly nice-looking (if used correctly)

If you want a certain theme, such as the Nether or the End, certain materials such as Nether brick Nether Brick Transparency No Luminance No Blast resistance 30 Tool Renewable No Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data values Nether Brick dec: 112 hex: 70 bin: 1110000 Red Nether Brick dec: 215 hex: D7 bin: 11010111 Name Nether Brick or End stone from those dimensions can be used. If you`re in Creative or have easy access to sand, glass often looks nice, and you do not need torches. Use it for a greenhouse look, or just if you like the sunshine.

Core Rooms

There are several things that are very useful to include in your house in Minecraft.

Foyer

Every house should have a main room with an entrance from the outside. You may wish to include a bed, a furnace, and a crafting table in this room. It would be convenient to connect all hallways or separate rooms to this room.

Crafting Room

This room is helpful to the player when crafting items. A crafting room may include a crafting table, at least one furnace, and a sufficient number of chests containing common crafting materials found while mining or exploring, such as wood, cobblestone, and iron, as well as any other materials that may be useful while crafting, such as sticks or wood planks.

Smelting Room

This room is important if you are a big miner and/or adventurer as you can smelt large numbers of ores quickly. Make a large room and line the walls with furnaces, possibly keeping a chest of fuel such as coal or wood planks inside as well (A bucket of lava is very good too. It can smelt 100 items and also is a good source of light.). The benefit of having multiple furnaces is a faster overall smelting time, since each furnace is able to run independently. Having each furnace full of said fuel is also helpful. This room could easily be merged with the Crafting Room, and it may be most convenient to do so. Also, bear in mind that you can use hoppers if you wish to automate your smelting operations.

Storage Room

A room full of chests for storing all of the dirt, cobblestone and other less-valuable materials that accumulates in your inventory while mining. You can also make a lava `bin` to dispose of your unwanted items; this can be done by simply digging a hole (don`t use wood etc. near it - the lava will ignite flammable blocks) and filling it with lava. You may also build another store room, with a guarded and hidden entrance though this store room is usually filled with more valuable and rare materials, i.e. gold, iron, diamonds, etc.

Note that chests are considered transparent, and can therefore be stacked on top of each other, saving space. Trapped chests can also be placed next to regular chests, saving even more space. It is very convenient to put your storage near a crafting room, for obvious reasons.

Entrance to Your Mine

It`s generally a good idea to put the entrance to your mine inside your shelter, simply so that if you return at night you won`t encounter mobs. It`s probably a good idea to make sure your mine is well lit by torches Torch Transparency Yes Luminance 14 Blast resistance 0 Tool Any tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data value dec: 50 hex: 32 bin: 110010 Name torch See the common light-emitting torch. or glowstone. If playing in a mode besides peaceful, you should put a door so mobs do not get in (use iron doors when on hard - zombies on that difficulty can damage wooden doors to the point of breaking). Buttons are useful for any barrier only opened by Redstone.

Bedroom

Sleeping in a bed resets your spawn point to that bed. It`s a pretty good idea to have this in a secure bunker. It`s also a good idea to keep this room far from the outdoors, so a mob cannot prevent you from sleeping or blow up your bed. Do NOT decorate around your bed! The bed is used to change spawnpoint (your respawn location if you die) and if there are blocks around the bed the game will result "your bed was missing or obstructed" and respawn you on default world spawn location if you die. Note that slabs are detected as full block in this case.

Brewery

Once you`ve been to the Nether and gathered some blaze rods, you can create a Brewery, which is simply a room with a brewing stand and a cauldron (however a water source works just the same and doesn`t run out). It is great to be able to brew some potions to prepare yourself for leaving your base. Include a chest with some potion ingredients such as sugar, redstone, blaze powder, nether wart, glowstone dust, spider eyes, magma cream, fermented spider eyes, glass bottles and a well as it is an unlimited water supply.

Positive Effect Potions and an example of a brewery can be found, at the brewing page.

Enchanting Room

After gathering some diamonds, obsidian, sugar cane, and leather (to make a book),you can build an Enchantment Table. This lets you enchant your items (See Enchanting for help on design), and since bookshelves give you higher level enchantments, this room could also be a good use for your sugar cane. It`s also a good idea to keep this room close to your mob grinder for easily regaining your xp and to keep a chest with books in this room to enchant them and, of course, store enchanted books.

Farm

You need a source of food readily accessible from your shelter. Wheat seeds are the easiest food to get, so start with them. Later, you can plant other crops, like potatoes and carrots. The aforementioned crops can also be used to breed certain passive mobs for more effective food. You can also grow pumpkins, which are obtained from dungeon chests and/or found in the wilderness (Usually taigas, extreme hills, and forests). Melons seeds found in dungeon chests aren`t a good source of food, but can be good for potions, via glistering melons. Beetroot seeds are also a choice, although you need to find a village or visit the End or get beetroot seeds which are obtained from dungeon chests first.

Nursery (Tree Farm)

Eventually, you will use up all the trees in your immediate surroundings, so you will want to replant them. Keep it well lit, both to keep away mobs and speed up the growth of trees. Birch is recommended, because it grows fastest, but oak and jungle trees are also a good choice, due to their apples and immense size respectively. It is difficult to build an indoors or underground tree farm that will supply your wood needs, unless you use bone meal or keep it well lit. Create room that is bigger than trees.

Armory

An armory is a room near the front door with chests containing food, armor; and weapons, this is for easy access when you are going outside, and so you can quickly prepare yourself to retrieve your lost items. For an even faster alternative, this room consists of a number of dispensers, activated by a single button or pressure plate, providing the adventurous player a way to get started immediately. This is very useful for exploring dangerous caves and going on night expeditions to get your dropped diamonds before they despawn.

Smithy

After building an anvil, you might want to make a room with a crafting table, a chest, easy access to an enchanting room, and of course the anvil. Handy if you fight monsters or other players a lot.

Portal Room

Once you have at least 10 obsidian, either from mining it in a cavern or obtaining it through obsidian farming you can build a portal. Once built, activate it with a flint and steel, and you can travel to the the Nether. This can be used for fast travel and for getting lava, netherrack, Soul Sand, Nether quartz ore and glowstone. Beware of ghasts, zombie pigmen and blazes as well as magma cubes. Building a another portal room in the nether for protection is a recommended idea. Please note cobblestone is a good block to build with in the Nether since ghasts can`t destroy it with their fireballs.

Note: the player can potentially create a cabin with all of these.

Expansions

These projects, while not entirely mandatory, make your base more useful and interesting.

Kitchen

This is basically a crafting room, but you only craft food. The chest(s) should contain most basic foods, including wheat, milk, eggs, etc. Many people, instead of having a kitchen, just craft food in the crafting room, but a kitchen is a nice expansion, because it separates crafting materials so that you don`t fill your crafting room`s chests with wheat instead of wood.

Pantry

This is also an expansion of a kitchen. Make sure that they are categorized so you don`t get mixed up. You can use a chest or dispenser to use everything in them. Put some cooked meat, bread, cookies, cakes and melons in them.

Note: If you are using a dispenser, you need to activate it with a redstone signal

Control Room

This is a common room to find in most advanced player`s houses, but only if said advanced player uses a lot of redstone in their builds. It controls all of the redstone devices a player has and usually consists of:

• Levers/Buttons/Other Input Methods- These are used to activate/deactivate redstone signals.
• Redstone torches/Redstone lamps- These are mainly used to determine whether the signals are on or off.
• Signs- These are probably the most important thing you can have in your control room. These help you determine what each lever/button does.

Bakery

This is basically an expansion of a kitchen. You could build this and a kitchen, and just connect them. You would use this to make cakes and bread. Place a crafting table, chest, and, if you want, a display table for cakes. If you want to make a large amount of cakes, make a cake farm under or near the bakery.

Maze

This is mainly for if you get bored. It`s quite simple and obvious how to build and use.

Mob XP Farm/Drop Collector

An XP farm uses water currents to push most mobs into a central area. With mobs in the nether, pistons are used. Use a piston crusher or a long drop to get the mobs to a ₽ heart. Mobs can be killed by hand or with a splash potion of harming (Healing for skeletons and zombies) to get XP. Note: This is more efficient with multiple spawners, as more spawners mean more spawning opportunities. You also obtain drops from each mob killed. This can also be done with large dark rooms with platforms. The mobs spawn and fall into water currents, where you can choose what happens to them once they are out of the spawning chamber

Rebuilding Wall

If for some reason you want to have a wall that you can get rid of, you can make a cobblestone generator, and make pistons push the cobblestone (which reforms) up into the wall, unless there are no missing blocks in it. Look at Sethbling`s channel for more information.

Redstone Lab

A laboratory is a large, clear, secure area where you can safely test designs without distractions. When building large redstone projects with complicated parts, it can save you time and effort if you test the ideas first.

Cake Factory

A cake factory simply provides the avenue to quickly produce cake by having the necessary ingredients nearby and produced in a close area, most commonly in one large factory type building. To make a cake factory, make a Wheat Farm, a Sugar Cane Farm, an Egg Farm, and a cow in a cage (make the cage so you can milk the cow.). Place a crafting table and a chest. Once you have enough materials from the farms, start making cakes. This is a good thing to put under/next to a dining hall in SMP.

Path/Road

Consider building a road or a path between your buildings or to the nearest village. Remember to keep it well lit so no mobs spawn! A good material is a Grass Path.

Cobblestone Generator

A cobblestone generator provides a safe and convenient way to gather cobblestone. They typically involve mixing water and lava.

Bunker

Sometimes called a panic room, a Bunker is a small room made of strong materials (obsidian for example) with an iron door with the open/close system inside the room. This room must have a bed, a crafting table, a furnace and also a chest with the basic materials (food, tools, and weapons are a must). It also has to have a high interior luminosity to avoid monsters spawning inside. It should also be only two blocks tall so Endermen can`t teleport inside.

Panic Room

A panic room is a place meant just for fun, where you put the entrance somewhere where you wouldn`t go looking for another room, e.g. The drain in a shower because if using a trapdoor for the drain you can open it.

Scout Tower

A cheap and safe way to survey the land. Note that these are mostly obsoleted by maps, should you have the resources to make them, although a map doesn`t tell you if there are any aggressive mobs outside.

Seed and Flower Farm

You can have a fully-automatic flower and seed farm with just a bit of Redstone and tons of bone meal! Have an 8⃗8 area of grass with some hoppers at the end. Then, place a row dispensers at the back, facing the grass, and put buckets of water in them. Hook up some Redstone from a BUD switch at the end and delay with Repeaters. Attach another line of Redstone and hook it up to Dispensers, under the Grass and filled with bone meal while facing the Grass on top. If you do it right, automatic block updates should cause grass and flowers to grow and immediately be destroyed by the water flow and be carried along the stream and have the water automatically get sucked in. XisumaVoid made a good tutorial.

Beacon/Lighthouse

A tall tower with some sort of light source on the top means that you can see your base from a long distance away. Handy if you go exploring a lot, your spawn point is a long way from your base, or you have not made a bed yet.

Kennel

If you have tamed a lot of wolves, a kennel is a good place to keep them. A simple shed-like structure will suffice, but be sure to keep it well lit for the dogs` safety.

Pet area

Similar to a kennel, but keep dogs and cats. For a more realistic feel, separate them.

Well

A renewable water source is useful for a variety of projects. Put water in a 1⃗3 ditch and you can take water repeatedly from the center! For a more aesthetically pleasing pool, a 2⃗2 well works as well, and you can take water from any of the squares.

Melon Farm

A melon farm produces the obvious, melon slices. Which can be used as a valuable food source that keeps your hunger bar up.

Pumpkin Farm

A pumpkin farm obviously provides pumpkins. These pumpkins can be used for heads for snow & iron golems, pumpkin pie, Enderman protection as well as jack o`lanterns and, of course, simply for decoration.

Mushroom Farm

A big room with flat floor. You can light your farm by torches Torch Transparency Yes Luminance 14 Blast resistance 0 Tool Any tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data value dec: 50 hex: 32 bin: 110010 Name torch See the common light-emitting torch. or glowstone, placed on ceiling, to prevent mobs from appearing. Just make sure that there are no places on the floor where the light level is greater than 12. If you have the material, Redstone torches are good for this. More about this can be found on the Mushroom Farming page. Alternatively, find a small cave or make one, put some mushrooms inside and completely seal it off without torches Torch Transparency Yes Luminance 14 Blast resistance 0 Tool Any tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data value dec: 50 hex: 32 bin: 110010 Name torch See the common light-emitting torch. and check on it/clean it out. Also provides the drops from hostile mobs.

Carrot or Potato Farm

Basically the same thing as wheat farm (see above), but using the new crops from 1.4.2, carrots and potatoes. Seeds can be obtained from zombies as a rare drop, and these crops provide a very good food source.

Sugar Cane and Cactus Farms

Easier to manage but somewhat less useful than the above two projects, farming sugar cane and cactus underground requires little effort. A cactus farm requires sand to grow, and sugar cane needs to be properly irrigated with water within one block of it. If you don`t want to spend lots of time harvesting your cactus, place a three-block-tall pillar next to where you want your cactus (See Farming for more info).

Indoor animal farm

Light up a large area with a grass floor. Then put two of the same kind of passive mobs (i.e., two pigs or two cows) inside. You can then breed them together and you can gather wool, leather, pork, beef and raw chicken safely. You might want to put trees inside so the animals feel more comfortable, or, if you`re really ambitious, build a man-made forest.

Minecart Hub

If you have active mines scattered over the map and use minecarts to haul your stuff back to your base, dig out a universal stopping point under your base. Or, you could actually make a rail road hub outside or connected to your base.

Pond

This is very easy to make, and can be very useful, especially if you don`t have a wheat farm yet. Just make a hole long enough to cast your fishing rod, around 8 blocks long and at least 2 blocks deep, and fill it with water.

Music Room

A room filled with note blocks to enjoy melodies. This can be made with or without redstone repeaters.

Library

Not only is it a great use for any excess sugar cane, a library can also add a bit of class to your home. Can double as an enchantment room.

Minecart Chest System

After a lot of days in Minecraft, you will soon have the ability to automate everything (farms, doors, etc). The most useful automation you can make is a minecart chest system. You can simply craft minecarts with chests, powered rails, and some rails, and you can make a system to send your ores from your mine to your base, and have a minecart with more tools come back to you.

Gravel-to-Flint room

Once you have many stacks of gravel, it can be useful to convert most (leave some for mining) of your gravel into flint. This is just a big empty room (a 4⃗4⃗4 space holds a stack of blocks), which you fill with gravel, before destroying the gravel, getting some flint in the process. It is most efficient to do this 10 - 15 times for every 20 stacks, though about 5 for 10 stacks, and 30 for 50 or so stacks. This room may include a chest with shovels, as well as ingredients and a crafting table for quick production of arrows, and flint and steel.

Target Practice Rooms

Make this room dimly lit, so hostile mobs can spawn, when you enter this room, always close the doors when entering and exiting, arm yourself and kill the mobs in there. Light the entrance area with torches Torch Transparency Yes Luminance 14 Blast resistance 0 Tool Any tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data value dec: 50 hex: 32 bin: 110010 Name torch See the common light-emitting torch. . This helps you gain XP and loot.

Target Practice Room (non-hostile)

Make this room with a supply of bows, arrows, and several colorful blocks, such as dyed wool, (to determine distance rank) at different distances with buttons on each one facing you with each one hooked up to a redstone lamp.

Beacon Room

Make this room by digging a 6⃗6⃗6 hole and building the base pyramid out of your selected material (Iron, Diamonds, Emeralds, Gold). Also, you could put in a few chests with diamonds, iron, emeralds and gold and/or make it look like an altar.

Bridge

If your base is near a lake, a bridge can help you cross to get resources and give you a safe spot to fish. Just create a 3-block wide path (using cobblestone would be a good idea) through the water, and you have a basic bridge! When you have time, you may want to add a ceiling+walls (for safety at night from mobs and during storms) and slits in the side (as either a dock or a place to fish.)

Bathroom

If one wants to fish indoors or drown themselves, a bathroom is perfect for them! Make a bath, a toilet and if the player is good with redstone, a shower with pistons is always a good idea for those who want to show their home to others. When the walls are made of cobblestone, make a hopper attached to a dropper or a dispenser to make a sink (just add a lever pointing downwards above) or a trash can. If the items cannot reach the outside for other players, add a "remove items" button to empty the items out to a chain of hoppers that lead to a public chest/thrift shop, or empties the items to something which destroys them(such as cacti, fire on netherack, lava, etc.). Attach a hopper to dispenser by sneaking, then place the hopper. This will not work without sneaking. One wise idea is to have entrances to secret rooms in this room.

Dye Room

A nice room where you can store dyes and clay. Typically only has to have one chest, but looks nice with hardened-clay walls.

Waste Room

A room to get rid of things if you have too many

Balcony

A nice place to enjoy the view and the nice open air. Also a nice place to pick off those pesky creepers Creeper Health points 20 () Attack strength Varies by proximity and difficulty. Maximum damage: Normal: 49 ( × 24.5) Charged: 97 ( × 48.5) Size Height: 1.7 Blocks Width: 0.6 Blocks Spawn Light level of hanging by your front door.

Retractable Blast Shields

These are an easy way to keep mobs at a distance, and are especially effective against mobs which use sight as a weapon, such as creepers Creeper Health points 20 () Attack strength Varies by proximity and difficulty. Maximum damage: Normal: 49 ( × 24.5) Charged: 97 ( × 48.5) Size Height: 1.7 Blocks Width: 0.6 Blocks Spawn Light level of and endermen, however it can be tough to collect the necessary resources for this mechanism. Say we`re going to protect a window which is two blocks from the ground and four blocks wide. To start, count three blocks out from the window, and then dig a 6-block-wide, 3-block-deep, 3-block-thick (6⃗3⃗3) trench, and then line the far edge of the trench with pistons pointing upwards. Next, place three blocks of gravel on each piston so that there is one block of gravel sticking up above the ground. Behind each piston, place a solid block that accepts redstone, and then place a bit of redstone on each of these blocks, as well as the blocks behind them. From there, run a redstone line to the lever which we`ll use to work the blast shields, keeping in mind that redstone can accept a signal from the block above it (making it feasible to have the lever inside your house, preferably near the window you wish to protect).

The final product should look like this (P=piston, B=any block which you can place redstone on, I or -=redstone, and L=lever):

 PPPPPP BBBBBB ------   I   I   L 

After that, cover the redstone circuitry with whatever you wish to protect it against damage, and you`re good to go!

Note: If you`re good enough with redstone, you can also have all blast shields around your house hooked up to a single lever, which you can flip whenever you need to. This is a nice featureSpecial attraction to add to the windows of your Nether bases.

Cobblestone Generator

A cobblestone generator provides a safe and convenient way to gather cobblestone. They typically involve mixing water and lava.

Melon Farm

A melon farm produces the obvious, melon slices. Which can be used as a valuable food source that keeps your hunger bar up.

Mushroom Farm

A big room with flat floor. You can light your farm by torches Torch Transparency Yes Luminance 14 Blast resistance 0 Tool Any tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data value dec: 50 hex: 32 bin: 110010 Name torch See the common light-emitting torch. or glowstone, placed on ceiling, to prevent mobs from appearing. Just make sure that there are no places on the floor where the light level is greater than 12. More about this can be found on the Mushroom Farming page. Alternatively, find a small cave or make one, put some mushrooms inside and completely seal it off without torches Torch Transparency Yes Luminance 14 Blast resistance 0 Tool Any tool Renewable Yes Stackable Yes (64) Flammable No Drops Itself Data value dec: 50 hex: 32 bin: 110010 Name torch See the common light-emitting torch. and check on it/clean it out. Also provides the drops from hostile mobs.

Incinerator

A room with lava, for disposing of unwanted materials. A good way to do this is to create a two block high corridor with lava at the end, and a slab block just before the lava. This results in you being able to walk up to your incinerator but not into it, eliminating fear of death. Be careful with lava around flammable materials. You may replace the lava with a cactus block, or burning netherrack. Hoppers can be used for a "hopper chain," which could lead to a thrift shop, where players can be charged for taking items. Adding this to the incinerator will attach a money source. If the hopper chain is full, items will be destroyed.