Hell Portal is Done

My hell portal is complete! Now once the update comes through, I can explore hell. Making one is pretty simple, just make a ring of obsidian that is 4 wide and 5 tall. This leaves a hole in the center for the portal, which is 2x3. To ignite the portal, just use flint and steel to light the bottom of the ring, and you'll get a portal to the hell dimension!

It's probably a good idea to make your hell portal rooms small, so Ghasts won't spawn in them. Ghasts reportedly need a room of 5x5x5 to spawn near portals, so just keep this in mind when building your portal room. A big extravagant portal room may come back to 'haunt' you!

See you all in hell!

Cool Wooden Floors

To spice up your house's wooden floors, alternate blocks of planks and wood, like shown below. You can also use crafting benches and furnaces, or anything else for that matter.

Minecraft Biome Test

Check out this preview of the new biomes feature in Minecraft. Looks like we'll be getting some variety in environments now.


The official list of biomes that will be available is:

• rainforest
• temperate rainforest
• seasonal forest
• forest
• savanna
• shrubland
• taiga
• desert grass
• desert ice
• desert
• and tundra

This Ghast Will Give You Nightmares

This Blender rendering of a Ghast (by DeviantArt user Riyuzakisan) shows how a Ghast would look in non 8-bit...

Ghast 3D - Minecraft by ~Riyuzakisan on deviantART

Minecraft Creeper Carousel

Aww, they look so happy!

Halloween Update Preview

PC Gamer has an article with some previews of the new Halloween update. This is the first screenshot I've seen with a full Ghast in sight. The Ghast is one of the new creatures that Notch is including in the Halloween update.

Read the article on PC Gamer >>

Adventures of a Minecraft Creeper

Hit the sssnooze button again, I dare you...

Minecraft Servers Down - Again

Well the minecraft servers are down again. This time it appears to be a DDoS attack on the servers. Lame.

Here's the minecraftforums thread on the attack.

And Notch's statement on the attack.

Looks like I'll go work on the Earth-covered house I'm working on in single player.

Minecraft Tetris

Just a pic of a little minecraft tetris I made on the reddit public server.

Survive Your First Night in Minecraft

So you've got Minecraft now, and start your first game. Now what? Chances are you've been plopped down on a beach somewhere in a deserted wilderness that is the Minecraft world.

It may look like a happy little world from where you're standing right now, but the Minecraft world will quickly turn not-so-friendly when the sun goes down. So you've got about 10 minutes to prepare a shelter for the night, or you probably won't survive it...

Halloween Update

Minecraft will be adding a new update this Halloween, including some awesome new features [wiki]:

• A "Hell" world that can be used for quick travel, where you "portal in" walk ten meters and then "portal out" and you're hundreds of meters away 
• New monsters 
• More danger at deeper depths in-game 
• Torches that eventually burn out, but are re-lightable, and the introduction of lanterns as a new infinite light source 
• Fishing 
• Multiplayer fixes 
• Craftable Jack-O-Lanterns and pumpkin helmets 
• Craftable watch 
• Infinite fire source

Click the picture to the right for more details.

Sounds like it's going to be an awesome update!

The Minecraft Baddies

Minecraft has several different types of enemies and neutral creatures. Some of these are useful, some are useless, and one will destroy half of that house you just spent hours building.

These creatures are commonly known as mobs. Some mobs will only spawn in darkness. Here's a short list of the hostile creatures and what you can do with them. The pictures are from the Minecraft wiki. There's much more detailed explanations over at the wiki.

Zombies

Zombies will only spawn in the dark. This means at night, they'll come out, and if you're not protected inside a house, they'll make a bee-line for you. You are just a tasty snack to them. Kill them and they drop feathers. Zombies will burst into flames on sight of the sun. Arguably this is even worse, because the only thing worse than a zombie, is a flaming zombie...