New Player Tips

I thought I'd start a thread with some helpful tips.

• The resource worlds (Overworld, Nether, and the End) all reset daily. Which means valuable resources restock. So make a note of all your nice finds (diamonds, emeralds, villages, rare biomes, etc) so that you can go after them again. After the seed changes, you should make a new note.
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• The new plots come with trees, stone, water, some ores, sugarcane and pumpkins. Take advantage of that to start farming quickly.
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• Light helps plants grow, so try putting a torch next to a sapling. For your farms, dig a three-block deep trench. Place torches along the bottom, then put fence posts over them, leaving no holes. You can then pour water on top of the fence posts to water the plants while giving them additional light. Redo these later with jack o'lanterns or glowstone, and you'd only need a two block deep trench, one for the light source, one for the water. Keep in mind that if you are using Jacks or glowstone, you don't need as much so space it out.
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• Light is essential when caving. If you don't have coal, make charcoal at your plot (don't forge to replant your trees!) Try to bring a stack of wood and charcoal with you.

Try to remember to share resources. If you raid a village, try restocking the farming plots for the next guy.

So, what are your tips?

 

Chest Shops are easy to do, check out /warp tutorial for details. All you need is a chest and a sign.

For the impatient, this is what you put on the sign.​

1. <Your Minecraft Name>
2. Quantity offered (1-64)
3. B (Buy Price):S (Sell Price)
4. Block ID code (hold it in your hand and type in /iteminfo to get the code, or look online for the Minecraft Block ID lists)

Left click on the chest to link the sign.​

• The Buy Price (B) is what the person who is buying pays.
• The Sell Price (S) is what you're willing to pay for that item.
• To have them both on the same sign, separate the two prices with a colon. (e.g. B100:S50)

If you are having a problem placing your sign as it keeps trying to lock your chest, hold down the shift key then click on the chest with your sign.

 

Pumpkins

One of the things I was very glad to see when this season started was they had included a couple of pumpkins on the plot. For survival, the pumpkin is very important - and not just for pumpkin pie. By putting it into a crafting grid with a torch, you create the Jack o'lantern, the survivalist's glowstone.

Both Glowstone and Jack o'lanterns emit light level 15 - the torch is only 14. It's usable underwater. And unlike glowstone, it doesn't need a silk touch tool to move it.

When it comes to underground farming, it's great for lighting up water troughs, set in the ceiling as a light source, and for defining plots for your trees by lighting the saplings and repelling dark-spawning mobs if you set them out spaced apart right. (Not that we have to worry about mobs spawning on our plots.)

Other uses for the pumpkin include creating snowmen and iron golems.

Snowmen just require two snow blocks and a pumpkin for a head.

Iron golems require four iron blocks (36 ingots) shaped like plus sign with a pumpkin set as the top arm. With clearlag not removing mobs anymore, expect to see a lot of these on plots. (Keep them fenced off if you don't want them to wander off!)