Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but I’m playing Minecraft all the time!

Minecraft is a game where there’s a world, or multiple worlds, made up of blocks.  A lot of people think the graphics are crappy, but that doesn’t really matter right now.  Minecraft is a game of trying to survive in a world where you have nothing, but you can collect resources over time.  Your player’s name is “Steve,” and the main point of the game is just trying to survive, but the thing everyone likes to do most in Minecraft is – obviously – mining!

There are a few types of things you can mine in the beginning of the game.  The two main things you can mine  – once you get your first pickaxe (which is usually made out of wood) – are stone, cobblestone and coal.  Coal is used for making torches and putting it in a furnace.  Cobblestone is good for making tools, weapons and stuff, and it’s a basic construction block.  Stone is used to make buttons, weight-activated switches called pressure plates, and they’re also normal construction blocks, like cobblestone.  When you mine stone, you get cobblestone.

You start out at dawn, and as the day goes on, it will become evening.  But it’s a good idea to have armor and a sword ready, because there are zombies (called mobs) coming out as it gets dark. Zombies are normal foes – they just bump into you to damage you.  When you kill them, you get food.  Skeletons are like zombies, instead they don’t bump into  you.  They shoot arrows at you.  When you kill them, you get a few bones and a few arrows.

Something you should really know about is a creeper.  It looks like a stick with a green head, and it’s always frowning.  If you get too close to them, then they will blow up.  When you kill them successfully, then you get gunpowder.

What I like about Minecraft is that each time you create a world, it’s never the same – it’s always a randomly-generated world.  It’s fun because it’s always changing.    You can also change the game by getting texture packs, which change the art of mincraft.  So if you’re getting tired of the default looks, you can download a texture pack and it won’t look the same; the art will be different.

There are also mods, which are bigger changes than texture packs – they change the way you play.  They can add new things to the game, they can change things in the game, they can take things away from the game, and so on.  Some mods are packs of mods, but you install them normally, like a normal mod.  Some mods are also incompatible with each other – so if you have one mod and try to install another, your game may crash if you have mods that weren’t made by the same person.  (You can get a lot of mods, texture packs and things like that at PlanetMinecraft.com. )

One of the best things about Minecraft is that you can play with other people.  While in game play, you can press escape and there will be a button that says “Open to LAN. ”  This means that other people who use your internet server can join your world, so you can play with your friends.  If you want a permanent LAN world, it’s called a server. I don’t know how to make it, but my dad does.  Anyone who uses the internet can use the server if they type in the IP address.  And even when you’re not playing, other people can play on your server.  To access a LAN world or server that you’ve already set up, click “multiplayer” mode.  To type in a server IP address, click “add server” and then “server address” and then type in your IP address.

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What I discovered in Minecraft today:  if you have the mod pack “hack-slash-mine” and you hit a chicken with a wooden sword, your game will hang.