Triumph Books (Firm) - Minecrafter: The Unofficial Guide to Minecraft & Other Building Games

contents

introduction

Heres Your Pickaxe & HelmetIf youve got this book in your hands, youve probably heard a bit about Minecraft. From its origins as a cult game with a small but dedicated following to a game played worldwide, Minecraft is pretty hard to miss these days. And theres a good reason for that.

Put simply, Minecraft is one of the most inventive, creative and unique games ever created. Posing as a simple survival and world-building game, Minecraft fans have taken its unique system and caused it to blossom into something much more: a global cultural phenomenon.

In fact, Minecrafts genius has earned it so many fans all over the world, its now considered one of the most successful games ever released for not one, but three major gaming systems (PC, Xbox 360 and smartphones). To put it in numerical terms: as of summer 2013, the game has sold over 28 million copies. That means that more people have purchased Minecraft than currently live in Australia.

With so many people taking the plunge into the crazy, block-filled world of Minecraft, its no wonder you might be curious about the game. But like many before you, you might be asking yourself, What is it about this low-resolution existence that people like so much?

Towers, castles and underground kingdomstheyre all possible in Minecraft

What is Minecraft?

Lets get this out of the way right off the bat: Minecraft is not like other games.

The basic premise of Minecraft is that you are a character who has spawned into a world thats entirely made up of materials, which you can harvest, and populated by creatures called mobs, which you can kill. Your immediate goal is this: survive.

There are animals and plants for food, and materials to build a shelter, but the world of Minecraft is not all out to help you. At night, hostile, dangerous mobs come out to try their best to kill you and maybe even wreck your home a bit.

Once youve secured your defenses against the dark, dark night, however, the resemblance to a typical video game ends.

Minecraft has little plot, the graphics are basic (though we think theyre cool looking) and it rarely tells you what to do next. So why is Minecraft so popular?

Note: this guide is written to be useful to all Minecrafters regardless of platform, but we have chosen the Xbox 360 version as our standard.

More than Surviving

Its simple: Minecraft is whatever you want it to be. That might sound like exaggeration, but it really isnt. Everything you see in the world of Minecraft can be changed, from knocking down a tall mountain, to drying up a lake to building enormous structures that tower into the sky anywhere you like.

This is possible because everything in the environment of Minecraft is created by blocks, each of which is made up of a resource such as Stone or Wood. These blocks can be removed by breaking them, and you can then either use them to build the world the way youd like, or you can turn them into even more materials and items. All it takes is a little exploring, and you can find the resources to create just about anything.

Explore, Explore and Explore Further

And Minecraft does not shirk or mess about when it comes to giving you plenty to explore. One of the master strokes of this modern classic game is that it uses complex algorithms to create massively diverse and unique worlds to explore every time you load it.

There are endless deserts populated by thriving villages and cut through with winding rivers. There are towering snowy mountains that cast shadows over sweeping plains dotted with flowers, lava fields and cave entrances. There are even multiple dimensions and an underground filled with ruins and adventures that will take you dozens of hours to fully explore, if you can survive the creatures that dwell there.

The Real Reason Minecraft is Great

In the end though, theres one reason Minecraft has cemented its status as a truly great game, and thats this: Minecraft is only limited by your imagination.

If you can think of it, you can build it or make it happen. That is, if you know how the game works.

What Youll Find in this Guide

Weve put this guide together to help you with that knowledge of the game part of things. We want you to be the best Minecrafter you can be, and its a time-honored Minecraft tradition for veteran players to pass down their knowledge to newcomers. Here youll find everything you need to get started and begin your first monumental creation, but dont get us wrong, this guide isnt just for the noobs.

Minecrafter is also full of advanced info, exclusive strategies and tips and tricks that even the best pros will find useful. Within youll come across detailed breakdowns of all the mobs, materials and menus, not to mention some of the most useful Minecraft inventions and farming/mining techniques.

Lets Build

Now, with the goal of surviving the dark night in order to bring staggering creations of beauty and wonder into the digital world, pick up your phone, mouse or Xbox controller, crack open this book and start up a fresh world of Minecraft.

Its time to build.

the phenomenon

Now wait a second, you say, I thought we were gonna build. Well, we are, and you can get to it right now by skipping ahead a bit if youre impatient! But, if youre interested in the background of this mind-bending game of imagination and blocks and Zombie Pigmen youre about to undertake, heres a bit of the story of how Minecraft came to be the gaming behemoth that it is. And oddly enough, it actually starts with three entirely different games.

Rising From the Sandbox

Minecraft is what is known as a sandbox game. Sandbox means that the world of the game is entirely open and can be manipulated by the player. Instead of having a plot and gameplay that everyone experiences in basically the same way, sandbox games give the player some tools to change the world they see, and then they let that player decide what to do for him or herself.

Want to build a castle?

Notch and His Three Inspirations

Minecraft might well be the best received and most well-known sandbox game made yet, but it was far from the first. In fact, the story of Minecrafts creation is the story of Swedish video game designer named Markus Alexej Persson and his love for three influential sandbox video games: 1997s Dungeon Keeper, a cult indie game called Infiniminer and a title with almost no graphics to speak of but an incredibly complex world, Dwarf Fortress.