It had been several years since I last played Minecraft. I loaded 1.12 on my new PC and was pleased to find a number of updates. There are new mobs, seems like a lot more villages nearby and some other interesting changes in gameplay. I have not yet ventured into the Nether but will probably have enough diamonds soon to make that happen.
What do you think of the changes the game has undergone? Has anyone been to the Netherworld in 1.12?
I tend to find the most enjoyment dealing with the management aspects of games. I recognize I’m probably unusual in this respect (e.g. even with 1st person shooters I’m always thinking about ammo supplies and making sure I don’t need to reload at inconvenient times). And games like Civ with management front and center are balm to my soul. So for me in Minecraft doing things like setting up the growing areas, ensuring diverse food supplies and securing adequate resources for construction are the high points.
I started a new world a month or so ago, and am pretty happy with the changes. The netherworld so far looks pretty similar to me from previous visits; the one change I noticed, which may be coincidental, is that I encountered a fortress there sooner than in previous games. The addition of shields since I last played is pretty fun.
What’s changed in the Netherworld? My kids only play on the Ipad(or other mobile devices) and we had to stop them from going there because they couldn’t find their way back once they returned to the real world.
Mahaloth, you can make a compass with four iron ingots and a redstone dust that will point toward world spawn in the Overworld. If their base is near world spawn, just following the compass should get them back to their house.
If your kids are too young for that, you can teleport them. I don't think you can change an existing map but on any new maps, create them with Cheats Enabled and wherever their base is, open the chat and type:
/tp ~ ~ ~
This command tells the game to teleport the player to their current position. Not very useful by itself but the chat informs you that the player has been teleported to X, Y, Z. Take a screenshot or write those numbers down somewhere and if you ever need to get unlost, open the chat and type:
/tp X Y Z
and it will teleport you to that first location.
This will work in the nether, as well. Make a point of noting the coordinates for the portal and then you can tp back there as necessary.
I find
/gamerule KeepInventory true
is helpful when little kids are playing minecraft. It makes dying not quite as traumatic.
My understanding is that they became available with one of the more recent builds. There should be some sort of speech or text bubble that will open a chat screen to allow the command input.
If you don’t want to go into creative mode, just go to your base and hit F3 and write down the coordinates of your base. Now you can’t get lost, all you ever have to do is go back to those coordinates. You may die a couple times, but you’ll find it eventually. Your very first spawn point was 0,Z,0, but most people wander away from there before starting their base.
I don’t know if this still works, but in older versions, if you got lost, build a bed. Sleep in it, then destroy it. When you next die, since the last bed you slept in doesn’t exist anymore, you respawn back at your original spawn point from when you first started the game.
I’ve played for a couple of years now and have been pleased with all of the changes over that time. My particular favorite was when boats stopped breaking every five minutes. I used to carry a few spares when I crossed an ocean. Now I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I also like all of the new mobs they have introduced, although the parrots and their ability to mimic can freak you out a little - like when they sound like a really close witch.
I haven’t spent much time in the nether with the latest version of the game. At some point, I decided to start playing in hardcore mode, just to give the game a bit more edge (which it does). As a result, the nether is a little more dangerous than it was on happy-go-lucky easy mode that I was used to.
Bumping because I just picked up the Win10 version today, having last played the Java Edition.
Found two interesting seeds, which I entered myself because they popped into my head: 02134 & Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. The former spawns atop a tree right outside a village and there’s another village visible in the distance; the latter spawns with the masts of a beached shipwreck visible in the distance and a village visible from the shipwreck.
I played for awhile a few months ago. Modding is still really frustrating for me, and I really don’t know why they can’t make this more intuitive: I spent more than an hour trying to get a simple map program to work before giving up. The result was that I died and respawned with nothing back at my original point and had no idea how to get to my main base, and ragequit.
Until modding becomes more intuitive–which may never happen–I’m not sure I’m gonna return to Minecraft.
I haven’t played in forever, until my kids dragged me back in a few weeks ago. If you’re using the Java version, the latest development snapshot is worth playing. The next big update is a revamping of the Nether, which now has biomes and new mobs. The Nether is a lot more dangerous now, I mostly get around by tunneling everywhere.
I added Journeymap to my game a few weeks ago and it went pretty swell. I used forge and the process was dl and install the forge for my version of minecraft, dl the journeymap files, put them in the mods folder and then start the forge profile in minecraft. Using a launcher like MMC or Curse makes it even easier but I think those are geared more toward modpacks, not one off mods.
I found out the quickest way to the nether was to get the materials (and safe room for nights), to dig down, down, down to bedrock making a stairway, avoiding (resealing) caves and mines, and do hard rock mining to get what you need to get diamonds and make the pick to mine obsidium. One’s biggest troubles in life is silverfish. This method is very quick to get there however sort of makes the early ‘survivorman’ part of the game not as much fun.
You don’t even need a diamond pickaxe to build a nether portal. With buckets of lava and water, you can build a mold out of blocks of dirt and cast a portal in place.
I’ve been playing Minecraft on & off for the last few years at World of Apollo. If anyone is interested in trying a multiplayer server for grownups, please check it out. It’s not an “adult server” <wink wink>, it’s a server where you don’t have underage players breeding a jillion sheep and driving you nuts. It is a semi-vanilla survival server, meaning there are very few modifications to the game other than grief protection. (You can mark an area around your builds that prevents others from messing with your stuff.) Login - Minecraft Forum
The 1.18 update for Minecraft was released on November 30, 2021.
The biggest change is that world height was raised and the bedrock “floor” beneath the world is also 64 blocks further down. Mountains are taller, and you can build higher and dig deeper, with new biomes for the mountaintops and the stygian depths. Hostile mobs now spawn only at a light level of zero, so you don’t have to do nearly as much work lighting up your areas to keep the boogeymen away.
If you want to try Minecraft again, there is new stuff to explore.