Busy Scissors, thanks for replying to this ‘old’ thread! I saw the header about “Minecraft questions for the newbie” and was all excited. I then had to LOL because I was the one who started the thread, and evidently completely forgot all about it. There’s some good advice in here. 
Making sure cheats is on when you create a world is good advice… Allows you to freely switch between Survival and Creative in the same world (you can also allow cheats by opening a game to LAN). I do this sometimes when I want to build something big because it is so much faster.
I’ve also had fun with fooling around with the parameters when creating a world, you can tweak almost anything in 1.9 and completely mess with the landscape.
How do you switch between Survival and Creative? I can’t find where that’s done…
If cheats are on, open the chat and type /gamemode c to switch to Creative and /gamemode s to switch to survival.
And to enable cheats you have to open to LAN. That won’t matter, because no one else is on your LAN.
If you just want to give yourself a couple stacks of diamonds it makes things easier.
Oh, and for the newbies, here’s a list of things not to do:
Put a good stint into 1.10 recently and it’s a fine update IMO - adds a lot to the game.
Had to re-spawn the ender-dragon to get the new portal thing - yet again this beast proves it is an enormous fanny, even with the updates. All the effort goes into destroying the healing beacons, once that’s done it’s trivial to just beat on the thing with a sword.
Tackling the end-city is a lot of fun - feather falling on the boots made this a lot easier, as the levitation effect the shulker’s deal out is aggravating. I managed to drop the dragon’s head off the boat :smack:, despite putting a block under it. Finding another end city seems like it would be a bit of a chore, as many of the islands are too far away to ender pearl between, unless I’m missing some technique? Wasn’t clear to me how you would get around easily.
Just need to give the wither a shoe-ing now. It’s been running amok since I spawned it and couldn’t kill it a while back.
I don’t believe you have to open to LAN to enable cheats. I have used some of the codes with my survival world when playing solo, as well as when I had opened the game to LAN to play with my son…
I recently finally ventured into the Nether and have done ok moving around in there, but I’m not sure what my objectives should be… I’ve collected a lot of netherrack blocks, glowstone dust, and even some of the little gold slivers you use for potions (I think). I have looked quite a bit around the area where my portal dropped me and can’t find a Nether Fortress. Any good methods to find those? Any other tips?
Thanks!
Unfortunately, the only in-game way is to keep looking.
There are websites that you can enter your world seed and it will return the locations of things like nether fortresses and villages.
http://mineatlas.com/ is a good site for the surface world. This will generate a map showing the biomes and landmarks like villages, temples, and monuments.
Minecraft Apps - Overview has different apps that will return the X/Z coordinates of different structures.
When you generate a world the first time you also have the option of turning cheats on or off. If you generated it with cheats off, you’ll need to open to lan even in solo play to use commands. If you generated it with cheats on, you won’t.
If you want a previously created world to be a cheats world, you can use a free tool like NBTExplorer to edit the AllowCommands value. I do this a lot when my friends and I play challenge or puzzle maps because the only thing more fun than solving a series of puzzle rooms is blowing everything up with TNT when you’re done.
I basically built a stone castle in the Nether around my portal, with covered stone passageways as I explored for a Nether Fortress. Lucky for me I found one right away.
Make sure not to build walls out of Netherrack. It’s basically styrofoam. Oh, and mobs can’t spawn on half-blocks or stairs, so I paved the interior of my fort and causeways with cobblestone slabs. You could bring in a ton of stone from the Overworld, or smelt netherrack into bricks and make nether brick blocks. The passageways make it easy to kill as many zombie pigmen as you like, since they have to bunch up at doors. Just make sure to have a sword with knockback.
The gold nuggets can be used to craft ingredients for potions, or you can just combine 9 of them into gold ingots. But you really need blaze rods for potions, and netherwart. And that means you need to find a Nether fortress. Once you’ve got some soul sand you can mine it and bring it back and set up a netherwart farm in the Overworld.
Point of clarification, mobs won’t spawn on half-slabs that are placed on the bottom half of the block. If you can place a torch on a half-slab, a mob can spawn there.
If you have the mod NEI (Not Enough Items) added to your vanilla game, F7 will display a yellow X on any block a mob can spawn on at night and a red X on any block a mob can spawn on at any time.
Question: does The End regenerate in a world from an earlier game version? In my main world, somehow I managed to kill the dragon and create the exit teleporter directly in front of the stairway leading to my entry pad, which was very lucky and way cool. I’d hate to lose it (even though there’s literally nothing to do in The End in 1.8)
Frankly, I’m annoyed at a lot of the changes in 1.9/1.10, which is why I’m sticking with 1.8.9 for now. Most of all, I hate hate HATE how villagers don’t sell Eyes of Ender anymore, and Notch Apples aren’t craftable anymore!!! Also, shields are dumb.
I’m not really appreciating shields myself, but the addition of a second hand is an advance, I feel. Torches for mining, bows for fighting etc, I think that’s sensible. Basically the combat system pre 1.9 was very rudimentary, so adding some more structure is a step in the right direction IMHO. It’s still probably extremely basic compared to most games.
If I understand your question about the End correctly, then you have killed the Ender dragon and have generated an exit portal to return you to the overworld, but there is no end gateway to the other islands of the End in 1.8. So in 1.9 if you re-spawn the Ender dragon by crafting the End crystals, then kill it, your exit portal remains where it is IME, and you will have a new End gateway generated somewhere (about 20 blocks up in the sky) that you can use to go to the new End landscape.
Still struggling to find a Nether Fortress. I keep traveling east/west and no luck. I’ll bet I’ve traveled 1000 coordinates without finding anything. Would we be better off to keep going west, or create a new portal and try around there? If the latter, how far away on the “overworld” do we need to create the portal to make sure it goes to a different location in the nether?
The trouble is that the Nether is 1/8th scale compared to the Overworld. So if you travel 1000 blocks in the Nether, you’d have to travel 8000 in the Overworld to portal to the same spot in the Nether. You won’t portal to a random spot in the Nether, the two maps are in sync.
This article explains it:
If you’re worried about getting lost, you can hit F3 and write down the XYZ coordinates of your portal, and then even if you get lost you just have to return to those coordinates to get home.
Oh–if you find the fortress, don’t destroy the Blaze spawners. Just build a stone/netherbrick room around them, and you’ll have an easy way to farm Blazes that’s a lot safer than trying to shoot them in the open while dodging fireballs and pigmen.
What’s your seed and which version are you playing?
Just persevere with it, although it feels like a grind it will be worth it for the joy of discovery. They’re very big structures, so if you do wander into the vicinity of one you can’t miss it.
Not to be all snarky, but…have you tried searching north/south instead?
Sometimes the terrain-generating RNG can be sadistic. In my current world I’ve traveled 2500 blocks in each direction and can’t find a DESERT. (So much for making green wool…)
The reason we were searching E/W is because everything I’ve read suggests that’s the way to travel to find them, something with the way they’re generated.
Last night my son and I tried going east instead of west and we finally found one. Got a good supply of nether wart to grow in soul sand, and some blaze rods too. Now we can start experimenting with potions…