Minecraft › 15 Little Known Minecraft Tips to Up Your Game!
Table of Contents
Wooden Slabs are Fireproof
You Can Walk Through Walls with a Boat
Invisible Blocks are a Thing
Need Guaranteed Safety? Stay in a Mushroom Biome
Buckets of Water Make Great Landscaping Tools
Create Instant Pockets of Air with Torches & Buckets
Cats vs. Creepers?
Finding Diamonds: 16×16 Chunks and Y-Coordinate 11
Pumpkins Can Make You Invisible to Endermen
Endermen Can’t Swim
Kill Skeletons to Help Your Farm
Clone Blocks with the Scroll Wheel
Use a Fence Instead of a Door to Zombie-Proof Your Home
Use Buckets of Lava as Fuel
Have a Water Source Every 5 Blocks When Farming
Conclusion
It’s been a little over a decade since Mojang Studios released
their award-winning game, Minecraft. Since then, players have
tirelessly explored this sandbox world, consuming everything it
has had to offer.
From hidden worlds to helpful cheats, player-created
Minecraft mods to detailed walk-throughs, there’s never a
lack of content in the Minecraft community.
Related Reading:
Minecraft – A Parent’s Survival Guide
What are Minecraft Mods? A Quick Guide for Parents
[Updated 2021 Edition]
Thus, it should come as no surprise that several dedicated,
patient Minecraft players have uncovered some wildly
unexpected – but incredibly useful! – in-game hacks. All of
which help make the Minecraft experience just a little easier.
We’ve taken 15 of those hacks and listed them all down in
this ultimate Minecraft guide!
Want to avoid angering Endermen? Tired of Zombies breaking
into your house? Don’t have any potions of water breathing but
still wanna explore that deep lake nearby? Keep reading to find
out how!
Wooden Slabs are Fireproof
Minecraft already has some pretty wonky physics. It should
come as no surprise that they have their own set of natural
laws as well. In real life, raw wood is flammable. In Minecraft?
Not so much.
They can still catch fire, unfortunately, but they don’t get
destroyed. They stay on fire until you put it out. Very useful if
you want to craft a wooden house with a bunch of fire sources
in it.
You could, in theory, also use it for aesthetic reasons (like a
roof that’s perpetually alight with fire). However, this could be
– quite literally – a fire hazard. Remember that other Minecraft
blocks aren’t as flame-retardant and plan accordingly!
You Can Walk Through Walls with a Boat
Is this a fun little hack that the creators left in for players to
find? A serious glitch that they just haven’t fixed yet? Or an
actual part of Minecraft’s laws of physics?
Who knows.
All we know is, you can use a humble boat to walk through
walls. You don’t necessarily get to sail through one, but it’s a
programming imperative that’s pretty fun to exploit.
Simply place a boat in front of a wall and gently push it into
the blocks of the wall until about half the boat is inside. Then,
left-click on the boat to enter it. Once your avatar is in the
boat, left-shift to exit.
Since players always exit the boat via the front half, you’ll find
that you’ve somehow glitched through the wall via the boat
entrance-exit dynamics. Again, a very cool Minecraft trick
that’s useful to know (especially when you need to make a
quick escape).
Do keep in mind that it’s a one-way trip, though! Since you can
only exit via the front of the boat, going in and out will keep
you on the side of the wall that the bow’s on.
Invisible Blocks are a Thing
No, really! You can actually spawn and place blocks that are
completely invisible but still function like regular Minecraft
blocks. They’re not just see-through, like glass or ice blocks.
They genuinely can’t be seen (unless you’re the person who
placed them—then you can see a thin outline).
This only works in Creative mode, though, but it’s still a neat
trick!
To summon an invisible block, type the following command
line prompt:
/give minecraft:barrier
You’ll notice a new icon in your inventory. It should look like a
red box with a slash through it. There’s your invisible block!
Just a few things to note: the invisible block can’t be pushed
by pistons and they can’t be broken if you switch to Survival
mode. But as far as setting up barriers and suffocating enemy
mobs, they work like normal solid blocks, do.
Related Reading:
Best Minecraft Survival Servers | Complete List
The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Commands and Cheats
[Updated 2021]
Need Guaranteed Safety? Stay in a
Mushroom Biome
Even in Hard Difficulty mode, no mobs – passive or otherwise
– will spawn in Mushroom Biomes. This is a great hack for
beginner players who’ve only managed to gather minimal
resources and need a place to sleep for the night. There are
many, many ways a mob-proof setting could be useful.
Say you want to build a self-sustaining food farm but you don’t
want to risk Creepers or Wolves or Zombies coming in and
undoing your hard work. Build in a Mushroom Biome. Say
you’re tired of fighting off mobs and you just want to focus on
crafting. Build in a Mushroom Biome.
It’s wonderfully isolated – and safe! – way of living.
Related Reading:
Minecraft Adventure Mode | Everything You Need to Know in
2021
Minecraft Houses | The Ultimate Guide, Tutorials, & Build
Ideas
Buckets of Water Make Great
Landscaping Tools
Did you know that you can use buckets of water to quickly get
rid of Grass Blocks and Cobwebs?
Instead of hacking away painstakingly to clear the area, just
grab a bucket of water and begin pouring. You’ll notice that
the water “washes away” the grass and cobwebs, leaving you
with either a flat landscape or a clean, dust-free hallway.
Create Instant Pockets of Air with
Torches & Buckets
… and ladders, and glass panes, and fences, and so on.
Minecraft’s rules about being underwater are pretty set in
stone. Players can breathe for a maximum of 15 seconds
(barring the use of potions, enchantments, etc.). Afterward,
you start taking 2 damage every second until you replenish
your air supply.
Related Reading:
Minecraft Enchantments | Everything You Need to Know
Now, there are plenty of scary Minecraft mobs. But being
trapped underwater, dying a slow death as your screen
gradually turns red can be pretty traumatizing.
Thankfully, you can cheat your way out of this situation (for a
limited time, sure, but every extra second helps) if you’ve got
some torches, ladders, fences, or doors in your inventory. Any
block that has “air” around it – so basically, any block that
doesn’t take up the entire cube – can be used to create a
temporary pocket of air underwater.
Standing in the block as though to use it will automatically
place you in that pocket of air. And if you use fences, you can
actually link these pockets of air to create a makeshift
underwater tunnel to freedom.
If using a torch, place it on a vertical surface underwater next
to your head to breathe. The water will snuff it out, but it’s a
good way to reset your 15-second timer.
If you have a bucket, you can scoop up water (one bucket =
one block) to create a temporary air block. Again, neat way to
reset your timer.
Here are some other Minecraft items that you can use as
emergency air sources:
Iron bars
Glass Panes
Fence Gates
Trapdoors
Ladders
Slabs
Doors
Signs
Walls
Cats vs. Creepers?
Did you know that Creepers are deathly afraid of cats?
Yup!
Just like the titular character in Stephen Sommers’ 1999 hit
film, The Mummy, Creepers will avoid cats at all costs. If you
have a bunch of them hanging around your house, Creepers
won’t touch your borders at all.
They won’t work against other mobs, of course, but if Creepers
are your primary concern at the moment, then yes. We highly
recommend stocking up on a bunch of cats.
Plus, they make really cute pets!
Finding Diamonds: 16×16 Chunks and Y-
Coordinate 11
We know the numbers are confusing, but let us explain.
When you’re mining for diamonds, it’s in the game’s program
to spawn three or more diamonds per “chunk.” Now, one
“chunk” in Minecraft measures 16×16 blocks. So if you’re no
longer finding diamonds, it’s possible that you’ve exhausted
your chunk. Time to move on to the next one.
The best place to find diamonds is at the Y-11. This refers to
your Y-coordinate, which measures height or depth. You can
check your coordinates by pressing F3. There are also more
diamonds at a depth of Y-11 to Y-16, but Y-11 has proven to
be the sweet spot.
How to make use of this info? Say you’re not finding any
diamonds. You check your Y-coordinates. You’re at Y-6. You’ll
know you can afford to go deeper to Y-11 (up to Y-16).
But say you haven’t gotten another diamond and you’re at
Y-19. Remember that there are three diamonds per 16×16
block. This means that you should probably go wider instead
of deeper. Else you risk losing your diamonds in lava.
Pumpkins Can Make You Invisible to
Endermen
If you’ve played Minecraft for a while, you know how
intimidating the tall, gangly Enderman can be. Sure, they’re
usually peaceful. But once you accidentally make eye contact
with them, it’s game over. They turn into this gangly, shrieking,
charcoal-colored mess of a mob that’s capable of relentlessly
pursuing you to the ends of whatever world you’re currently in.
In this case, you might think it’s safer to just keep your eyes
on the ground as you walk past. But this leaves you vulnerable
to a lot of other elements.
If you want to successfully skip past them, risk-free, all you
need to do is equip a pumpkin as your head armor.
Will you look silly? Sure. But your viewpoint will be restricted.
In turn, the game won’t register any eye contact you make
with Endermen—even if you’re looking directly at them!
Related Reading:
The 15 Most Notorious Minecraft Mobs – The Ultimate
Strategy Guide
Endermen Can’t Swim
Let’s say you don’t have a pumpkin in your inventory. Now
you’ve accidentally locked eyes with an Enderman and they’re
pissed. You know there’s no way you’re winning this fight.
What do you do now?
Head for the nearest body of water and jump in. Endermen,
for some reason, can’t swim. So if they jump in after you, they
immediately sink. The safe zone is about two blocks away
from solid land – which means you should be in the third
block onwards if you want to live.
Endermen will sink through the first block, but they can – with
their crazy reach – still reach you from the shore if you’re
within a two-block grabbing range. So just stay out of that
distance and you should be safe.
Kill Skeletons to Help Your Farm
Want to grow plants and trees really fast? Kill some skeletons
and harvest their bones. You can use these to craft bonemeal,
which is hands-down the most effective fertilizer in Minecraft.
Applying it to almost any plant, tree, or grass block will
instantly speed up the growth period. In some cases, in fact,
bonemeal is powerful enough to make a plant reach full
maturity in seconds. Doesn’t always happen, but check out
this video by AnimatedDisc as an example.
There are very few plants bonemeal won’t work on, by the way.
Here’s a quick list:
Cactus
Vines
Nether Wart
Chorus Plants
Sugar Cane (Minecraft Java Edition only)
Every other plant block is a fair bonemeal game.
Related Reading:
Hey, Parents! Did You Know that Minecraft can Teach Your
Kids Java Coding?
Clone Blocks with the Scroll Wheel
This is another handy little building hack that you can use in
Creative mode. It’s a great way to quickly grab the blocks you
need in a quick second.
Simply middle-click on your mouse’s scroll wheel while you’re
looking at whatever it is you need. This will automatically
place a block of that item in your hand.
Say you’re looking at a torch on a brick wall. Click the scroll
wheel, and you’ll have a torch block. Then move your
crosshairs to the wall. Click the scroll wheel. You’ll have a
block of a brick wall.
You can even use this trick on passive mobs. Click the scroll
wheel while looking at the mob and you’ll instantly obtain a
spawner for that mob.
Use a Fence Instead of a Door to
Zombie-Proof Your Home
Do zombies keep breaking down your door at night?
Yep, we’ve all been there.
If you don’t want to build your home in a mushroom biome,
the next best thing you can do to guarantee a full night’s rest
is to zombie-proof your door. And it’s actually incredibly easy
to do so.
Option 1 is to build your door one block higher. Place it on a
stone block or any sturdy barrier block. Zombies won’t be able
to reach it, but you certainly can.
Option 2 is to place a fence in lieu of an actual door.
Minecraft zombies aren’t programmed to break down fences
and so will be successfully stopped when they reached the
entrance to your humble abode. The clear space above the
fence allows you to fight them off as well!
Use Buckets of Lava as Fuel
If you accidentally stumble across a pool of lava, don’t be so
quick to run away. Grab a bucket and scoop some up! Lava is
an incredibly potent source of fuel for Minecraft furnaces. To
put that into perspective, blaze rods can fuel a furnace for
about 120 seconds.
A bucket of lava can fuel a furnace for about 1,000 seconds.
Lava is also one of the key ingredients in crafting obsidian, a
rare block, so. Might as well stock up on as many buckets as
you can, right?
Have a Water Source Every 5 Blocks
When Farming
Tired of your crops drying up? Keep them within five blocks of
a water source!
Farmlands only become dehydrated when they’re six blocks
away from water. Within five blocks of the source, they’ll stay
hydrated for as long as you need them to. So if you’re building
a farm, plan accordingly.
Some people alternate rows of water and farmland for
aesthetic reasons. Others build pools of water right in the
middle of farmland areas. There are plenty of ways to utilize
this hack without compromising the visuals of your farm!
Related Reading:
9 Creative Minecraft Farms for Ideas and Inspiration
Conclusion
So, there you have it! 15 little-known Minecraft tips for a fun,
stress-free experience! Of course, there are definitely more
Minecraft hacks out there that we didn’t cover here. But we
feel these fifteen tricks are uncommon enough and substantial
enough to really make a difference in your game.
Here’s a quick recap:
- Wooden Slabs are Fireproof
- You Can Walk Through Walls with a Boat
- Invisible Blocks are a Thing
- Need Guaranteed Safety? Stay in a Mushroom Biome
- Buckets of Water Make Great Landscaping Tools
- Create Instant Pockets of Air with Torches & Buckets
- Cats vs. Creepers?
- Finding Diamonds: 16×16 Chunks and Y-Coordinate 11
- Pumpkins Can Make You Invisible to Endermen
- Endermen Can’t Swim
- Kill Skeletons to Help Your Farm
- Clone Blocks with the Scroll Wheel
- Use a Fence Instead of a Door
- Use Buckets of Lava as Fuel
- Have a Water Source Every 5 Blocks When Farming
With that said, feel free to let us know any little-known
Minecraft tips that we might have missed! Or go out there and
discover your own hacks. The discovery aspect is a huge part
of Minecraft’s incredible replay value, after all.
