Ultimate minecraft 2016

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M NE IN W ECR S, A GU FT ID M ES AP AN S, D MO M D OR S, E!

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VOLUME 9 JANUARY 2016

XBOX ONE

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Wii U

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PC

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PS3

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360

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iOS

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ANDROID BUILD BIGGER!

MINECRAFT BUILDING BLOWOUT

Play any game in Minecraft!

20 packed pages of must-try Minecra builds

Assassin’s Creed, Fallout, Mario and more

2016 BUCKET LIST

MINECRAFT LOOT CRATE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS LEARN TO CODE WITH MINECRAFT

12 challenges every Minecra fan should try

The whole hog!

SURVIVAL ISLANDS

NINTENDO NEWS

GET CRAFTY

AMAZING MAPS

How long could you last?

Minecraft lands on Wii U

Cakes, cards and more!

15 maps you have to play

ESSENTIAL TIPS & TRICKS

MINECRAFT GEAR GUIDE

P R E S E N T S

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO

Future plc, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Tel 01225 442244 Fax 01225 732275 Email gamesmaster@futurenet.com

EDITORIAL Editor Matt Elliott Art Editors Graham Dalzell, Mark Wynne Production Editor Roy Delaney

CONTRIBUTORS

“We have everything you need to raise your spirits until Spring…”

The final, desperate slices of Christmas cake have been eaten, the mince pies are long gone, and the holiday season is but a faintly glowing memory. But fear not! It’s always party season in Minecraft, and we have everything you need to raise your spirits until Spring’s green shoots finally arrive.

If you didn’t get everything on your Christmas list, this volume has a guide to recreating some of the biggest and best new games in Minecraft. We’ve also got a bucket list of the things every self-respecting Minecraft fan should try in 2016, as well as a bumper guide for adding finesse to your builds. And if you fancy something more challenging, why not read our Survival Island diary and see if you can last longer than our intrepid explorer? We even have a real-life crafting guide for anyone who fancies a project to share with friends who don’t play Minecraft. You know such people? We’ve heard they still exist. We’ll show them the error of their ways, right?

Matt Elliott Editor

Louise Blain, Emma Davies, Thryn Henderson, Daniella Lucas, Tom Senior, Jennifer Simpkins, Jake Tucker, Iain Wilson

SENIOR TEAM Group Editor-in-Chief Daniel Dawkins Group Art Director Graham Dalzell

PRODUCTION Production Controller Fran Twentyman Production Manager Mark Constance

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING Commercial Sales Director Clare Dove Advertising Director Andrew Church (020 7042 4233) Advertising Manager Michael Pyatt Account Manager Steven Pyatt Group Marketing Manager Laura Driffield

SUBSCRIPTIONS Acquisition Manager Adam Jones Phone our UK hotline 0844 848 2852 Phone our International hotline on +44 (0) 1604 251045 If you would like to purchase the images featured in this publication, please visit www.futuremediastore.com or email mediastore@futurenet.com

LICENSING Licensing and Syndication Director Regina Erak (+44 (0) 1225 732 359)

FUTURE PUBLISHING Head of Content and Marketing Nial Ferguson Head of Games, Film and Music Declan Gough UK CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne Subscribe online at www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk Printed in the UK by William Gibbons Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT. Tel: 020 7429 4000.

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Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne Non-executive chairman Peter Allen CFO Penny Ladkin-Brand Tel +44 (0)20 7042 4000 (London) Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 (Bath)

© Future Publishing Limited 2015. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. The registered office of Future Publishing Ltd, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA. All information contained in this magazine is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this magazine. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant Future a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage.

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PRESENTS MINECRAFT03 3 PRESENTS MINECRAFT

Contents KNOW YOUR BIOMES

NEWS CALL FROM MINECRAFT! 07 VIDEO

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Cast of your phones – you’ll never need to pay a bill again with this great idea.

UP TO MONTHLY MINECRAFT MERCH 08 SIGN

Mojang up the stakes with Mine Chest Minecraft loot delivered to your home!

FINALLY 11 MINECRAFT ARRIVES ON WII U 12

Jungle

Nintendo’s versatile console finally gets a version of the Mojang masterpiece.

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Forest

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Plains

HAPPY NEW YEAR MINECRAFT BUCKET LIST 14 THE

12 monthly challenges every selfrespecting Minecraft fan should try.

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Savanna

YEAR’S 24 NEW RESOLUTIONS

Stamp out laziness – here are 15 good habits to get into for the year ahead.

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Ice 24

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PRESENTS MINECRAFT

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EXPAND YOUR GAME GAMES REMADE IN MINECRAFT 34 BIGGEST

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How to play Minecraft versions of Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Mario Maker and more!

SURVIVAL ISLAND DIARY 46 MY

We drop a wide-eyed writer on a deserted island, step back, and see what happens.

BONANZA 56 BUILDING

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Ocean

Add some finesse to your creations with this comprehensive building guide

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DEFEAT THE MONUMENT MAPS

We guide you through some of the toughest maps in Minecraft.

PROJECTS TO 78 REDSTONE CHANGE YOUR GAME

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Mushroom

Three redstone projects that will change the way you play Minecraft.

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BEST 88 MINECRAFT’S ADVENTURE MAPS

30 of the best adventure maps you can play in Minecraft right now.

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Plateau

ENTERTAINMENT 98 MAPS

Fifteen thrilling challenge maps to test the most talented Minecrafters.

OUTSIDE THE BLOCKS MOBS 108 MINECRAFT MADE FRIENDLY

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Swamp

Make your own spider cakes, enderman pop-up cards and a creeper piñata!

A CREEPER CUSHION 122 CRAFT

Relax with your own handmade creeper cushion. No explosions, we promise!

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Sunflowers

MINECR AFT MERCH MINECRAFT GIFT GUIDE 132 ESSENTIAL

A selection of the greatest goodies to kick of your New Year

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The End 132

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Learn to code without memorising all those endless fiddly numbers and letters.

PROGRAMMING MADE EASY WITH MINECRAFT Microsoft partners up with Hour of Code to teach basic programming

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hile some people are of building working Game Boys and even video phones, the rest of us are wondering how Minecraft even works in the first place. If you want to get into game development but aren’t sure where to start, Microsoft’s new partnership with Hour of Code means you can try your hand at easy programming without having to drown in inaccessible endless numbers and symbols.

“Hour of Code is focused on introducing basic programming skills in a simple, accessible way. It feels like a great fit for Minecraft, so we’ve been working with Microsoft to create a themed set of challenges,” explains Mojang’s Owen Hill. “The Minecraft Hour of Code takes

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about 3,600 seconds to complete and will introduce you to programming logic like Repeat Loops and If Statements. If you don’t know what those things are, play through this thing and find out!”

The project uses a system called Blockly and lets you choose between programming Steve or Alex. The UI is nice and simple, complete with Minecraft music to keep you relaxed, and has various challenges for you to complete. You simply need to drag and drop controls into a workspace – that snap together with a satisfying click – and you can even see the lines of Javascript that were written by your actions. Game Boys and smartphones await. The full tutorial is available online from Jens Bergensten (Jeb) from Mojang, and you can try this excellent project out for yourselves here if you fancy it: http://bit.ly/mchourofcode.

NEWS

NEWSFLASH Now you never have to leave the comfort of your blocky world to chat to your pals.

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Feline fine

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No place like biome

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Is this the real life?

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Record breaker

My Neighbour Totoro’s Cat Bus is just one of Pero of Planet Minecraft’s ace Studio Ghibli creations. He’s even created a version of the forest from Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind.

“This incredible device will let you make video calls” Verizon builds a working blocky smartphone Real life? Pah. We all know that Minecraft is more important than that (mostly) and now we don’t even have to come out of the game to make phone calls.

As demoed by both SethBling and CaptainSparklez on YouTube, US mobile phone company Verizon has created a working smartphone in Minecraft. This incredible device will not only let you make video calls but even browse the internet – albeit in very block-like form, a bit like the bygone days of ancient tech. The phone displays your

friends in real time using blocks and, of course, shows them your Minecraft avatar in return. Verizon has even created a selfie stick mode, so it’s possible to text real world phones with a perfect MMS selfie of your square self in your own world. Verizon worked with Minecraft architects BlockWorks to craft the marvellous in game tech, but how does it actually work?

“In the world of Minecraft, almost everything is made of blocks,” explains Verizon. “We’ve created a web application, Boxel, that translates real web pages and

streaming video into blocks so they can be built on a Minecraft server in real time. Our server plugin uses Boxel-client to handle the communication between Minecraft and the real world as translated by the web application.”

Verizon has made both Boxel and the client open source, so if you fancy trying it yourself (maybe after some Hour of Code work!) you can visit Github and get started on your very own version of ‘VerizonCraft.’

You can find out more here: http://bit.ly/mcverizoncraft

Minecraft Windows 10 and Pocket Edition now both have the option to download the Biome Settlers Pack for £1.49. It includes skins for Forest, Tundra and Desert settlers.

Samsung Gear VR, by Oculus, is coming to the UK at the reasonable price of £79.99. Good if you have a compatible Samsung phone and great news for Minecraft in virtual reality.

STAT ATTACK 16%

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How far record breaker Kurt J Mac got into the Far Lands after three in-game years.

Pixels per eye in the upcoming consumer version of the Oculus Rift.

Size of the audience at Stampy Cat’s Royal Society Of Edinburgh lecture

Kurt J Mac has made it into the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition for the Longest Journey in Minecraft. His quest to the Far Lands has covered 2097.15km – wowsers!

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SIGN UP FOR MONTHLY MINECRAFT MERCH Mine Chest is a box of loot delivered to your door ove over Loot Crate, Mine Chest is in town.

If you just can’t get enough Minecraftrelated goodness, then this might be worth getting out of your creeper-covered bed for. Mine Chest brings a box of exclusive merchandise to your door once a month for $29.99 – that’s £19.85 on our side of the pond – and memberships are available as recurring three or six month plans.

M What’s going to be in YOUR Mine Chest?

We just don’t know!

“According to a detailed study we haven’t actually performed, chances are you like Minecraft. That means you probably like Minecraft merchandise. Lovely, real-life Minecraft things to sit on your desk, or wear, or put in your pocket,” explains Owen Hill, chief word officer at Mojang. “Each Mine Chest is themed around a specific aspect of Minecraft and no two will contain the same bits and bobs, which can range from t-shirts to collectible figurines.”

Mojang says that what’s in each chest is a closely guarded secret, so we haven’t got

any idea what’ll be in the first ones arriving later this year, but we do know it’ll be inside a ‘premium collectible chest’ and you have to give your T-shirt size. All merchandise inside will be ‘the best items in the world from official Minecraft vendors’, and some might even be exclusive to the subscription. First announced at Minecon 2015, the Mine Chest Beta included only 5000 memberships that will start shipping soon, but Mine Chest Series 1 will start pre-orders imminently. To find out more, you can visit the Mine Chest site here: http://bit.ly/mcminechest

TALKING HEADS

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“I think I was eleven or maybe twelve and I started programming because I wanted to make games. One of my father’s friends told me that in order to make games you need to learn how to program. So that’s how I got started.”

“Your path in [Minecraft Story Mode Episode 3] Assembly Required will difer greatly depending on your choices made in The Order Of The Stone, so more than one playthrough is definitely recommended after your season concludes! This is one of our most divergent episodes yet depending on the paths you’ve chosen.”

“Stampy Cat’s one of the biggest stars of his generation and the Royal Society Of Edinburgh could not believe it when he agreed to come and give our Christmas lecture. In just over 250 years, this is the single biggest event in the RSE’s history.”

“Minecraft was something that I was desperate to get into virtual reality because I thought it would be critically important. I started pestering Mojang about it. I would drive home this case that ‘we don’t want to ask anything from you. Just let me try to build this, and if you think it’s cool, then we’ll figure it out from there.”

Jens “Jeb” Bergensten @jeb_

Nathan Ortega, Telltale Games @kenjisalk

Chris van der Kuyl, 4J Studios @chrisvdk

John Carmack, Oculus VR @ID_AA_Carmack

PRESENTS MINECRAFT

NEWS

Build this real-world electronicky box to aid you with further Minecraft adventures.

BUILD SNAZZY ELECTRONICS WHILE YOU PLAY Piper brings together engineering and Minecraft here’s plenty of educational ways to play Minecraft, but this successful Kickstarter project is a beautiful reminder that our favourite blocky world is also a perfect learning tool. Made for those between the ages of five to 105, Piper is a veritable treasure trove of groovy electronics.

Inside a plywood box that you can fully personalise is a 7” LED screen, Raspberry

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Pi 2, compact USB mouse and a powerbank that’ll let you keep everything juiced for up to five hours. That’s not all though, as also included are sets of wires, buttons, switches and a variety of other electronics that plug into the Raspberry Pi. These then interact with a modified Minecraft adventure map where you must aid a robot in navigating a treacherous planet. We like it already.

The first thing you do is build the robot’s controller hardware in real life, complete with buttons and wires, and you can always see what you’re doing on screen. Once this is

built there’s a massive amount of choice of what you can build to help the robot. Adding a row of LED lights to your controller will serve as a proximity sensor for diamonds and light up as you get closer, while adding diferent switches will reveal secret areas as you press them in the right areas.

It’s an exciting idea and as you progress through the map, you can unlock new tools and abilities, and can even go on to create your own personal maps to challenge friends. Woo hoo. Cost wise, Piper is $269.99 (£178.67) for the full kit.

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HOT OR NOT Minecraft on Wii U It’s finally here!

Long live the Gamepad

Star Wars skins everywhere

Minecraft in Gear VR

The Force is stronger than ever before

£79.99 is a great price to use your mobile for virtual reality, but only if you have a Samsung phone

Minecraft Story Mode We have absolutely no patience. Must know how it ends…

HOT

NOT

WINDOWS 10 EDITIONS GET A MASSIVE UPDATE Redstone and rabbits are just some of the new additions

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PRESENTS MINECRAFT

Mine Chest Argh! Heaps more quality merchandise we have to buy.

How could they?

here are many things to love about Minecraft Pocket Edition – the improvement of car journeys and flights and how it’s, y’know, pocket-sized – but up to now it has been missing one very important thing: redstone. Those who play across multiple consoles will know all about its magical creative properties, but it’s finally been included in the Pocket Edition and Windows 10 Beta as part of a huge update.

“Redstone is a mysterious power in Minecraft that works a bit like electricity in the real world,” explains the Minecraft blog. “Though this is the first iteration of redstone for Pocket and Windows 10 Editions, it still gives you the chance to create intricate devices, including

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Pocket Edition and Windows 10 catch up with the cool stuff.

powered roller coasters and automated doors. As we continue to update the game with more redstone components you’ll get to create even more complicated things. It’s an exciting time for engineers.”

Other additions in the update include crop hungrybut-cute rabbits who can be killed for hide and raw meat, you monster. Plus, there’s also a chance for them to drop a rabbit’s foot, which can be added to a Mundane Potion or the Potion of Leaping. Smaller add ons include desert temples and new types of wooden doors. There’s a long list of tweaks that have been made to the overall experience, but key tinkerings include spawning slimes and ghasts, skeletons now running away from wolves, and, satisfyingly, hunger restored by food items now matches the PC version. Good luck with all that redstone building. You’re going to love it.

NEWS

We thought it might never happen, but the Wii U version is finally here. Hurrah!

MINECRAFT WII U EDITION HAS LANDED Nintendo finally answers the block question t’s here at last. Finally, after all the teasing, leaked ratings and disappointment, Minecraft: Wii U Edition was released in December on the Nintendo eShop. The download comes with six content packs: two Battle & Beasts packs, Natural, City, and Fantasy packs, and a special Festive mash-up. There are also another 16 additional add-on packs available if you want to play with a specific skin.

These include The Simpsons, Doctor Who, and all three Star Wars skins: Classic, Rebels and Prequel.

“We’ll be adding more content packs to Wii U Edition in the near future (Wa-hoo!), and updating the core game with free updates, just like our other platforms,” proclaims Mojang’s Owen Hill. “As a quick reminder: all DLC packs

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are optional. You can have significant amounts of fun playing Minecraft without spending extra cash.” Instead of using the Gamepad for inventory management, Minecraft: Wii U Edition features of-TV play, which means that you can move all the action onto the Gamepad and free up the TV for those non-Minecraft types. Who needs to stop gaming now? Not us, that’s who.

What’s also exciting is that Nintendo has confirmed that it is collaborating with Mojang on new content specifically for Nintendo fans. This sounds suspiciously like specific Mario-related skins, but there are many Nintendo games that would look incredible in Minecraft.

Given the recent LittleBigPlanet and Mass Efect skins, it seems likely. Best of all, those famous Mario question blocks would be perfect in Minecraft. Move over Mooshrooms, this is the real Mushroom Kingdom.

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Cocoa pods found here have three growth stages. The longer you leave them, the more beans they’ll drop.

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ungles are the lushest of all the Minecraft biomes and are home to imposingly tall trees draped with vines. You can climb them for adventures – or harvest them to decorate your own home. Rare flora such as cocoa

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PRESENTS MINECRAFT

pods and melons spawn here, and you can also find ocelots that can be tamed and used to scare of creepers. In the PC and console versions you’ll also find jungle temples that contain a puzzle to open a secret loot-filled room. And who doesn’t like loot!

KNOW YOUR BIOMES

Climbing to the top of the lofty trees provides some of the best vantage points in the game.

You’ll need a raw fish to tame the ocelots and turn them into helpful house cats.

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CHRISTMAS HAS COME AND GONE… …AND WE FORGOT TO GET YOU ANYTHING. SORRY 14

PRESENTS MINECRAFT

HAPPY NEW YEAR

12 essential things every Minecraft fan should try!

January

WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUILD A SNOWMAN? What it is: We’re going to build a snow golem. He’ll loiter around and toss snowballs at enemies for you, which don’t do any damage, but the whole thing is a splendid lark. Hooray! e’ve put our heads together though, and instead we’ve gotten you 12 little gifts; 12 smashing ideas that every self-respecting Minecraft master should tick of their list. Stick with us, and we’ll give you a bunch of diferent presents, one for every month of 2016. Don’t feel you have to obey these to the letter, though! Pull the ideas apart, mix them together, try new things. As long as creepers aren’t involved, any damage is fixable.

So be bold, take chances.

All of the suggestions in this guide will slot into your existing world, despite the fact we’ve built them in Creative mode. You can slowly introduce them month by month if you want, but feel free to build them all at once if you’re feeling ambitious.

Good luck!

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What you need: Blocks of snow Jack o’lantern How it’s done: Building a golem is easy - the hard part is stopping a golem from melting. You see, snow golems will melt in biomes with a temperature higher than 1.0, or in an area that’s dry or warm. They’ll also melt if they get rained on or touch water. Build him in a snow or ice biome, though, and your frosty friend will live a long and happy life.

When you’ve picked a suitable spot for your icy chum you’ll need some snow and a jack o’lantern to make him a reality. Stack the bits on top of each other and he’ll magically come to life, like something from a Raymond Briggs book. Ice golems also trail snow around your house as long as the temperature is cold enough. You can use this to farm more snow to make more ice golems, before setting them loose on a pack of creepers, like we did. Truthfully, they were asking for it.

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February

THE VAULT What it is: Need somewhere to store those piles of snow? How about a vault where only you have the key? This Minecraft combi-lock will keep any door super secure.

you can see the combination of up, down, up, down. This is essentially your secret code - any other combination of lever pulls will keep that door sealed shut.

From behind, the workings are a little more complicated. You can hide these behind walls, under the floorboards, or in the ceiling - one redstone wire leads to the final output, while each lever’s signal travels through a set of logic gates to make sure they’re the right way round. To choose your own combination, you’ll want to copy the below in the picture, but configure it however you like.

The picture above is where the combination itself is decided. Each lever either leads to a redstone torch, or a bit of plain redstone on the other side. If it leads to a torch, the lever needs to be down; if it leads to redstone, it needs to be up.

It sounds complicated, but it makes sense when you put it all together. Choose whichever combination seems most secure to you! Your loot is worth protecting.

What you need: Redstone Levers Some loot worth locking away How it’s done: Check out the picture to the right and you’ll see what the finished article looks like from outside. Feel free to fiddle about with it all you like! If you look at the levers,

March

FARMING SEASON What it is: They call this the “Monster Grinder”. You can guess what it does. You use it to “farm” enemies, allowing you to grab their loot and experience quickly and easily.

What you need: A mountain of stone A dash of water How it’s done: Start by building a 23 block high, 5x5 tower, like the one in the picture. Surround the top layer of it in a 19x19 layer of stone, but leave that hole open. In the corner you need to make 8x8 islands. Connect these up at the edge of the top layer, and put signs on the inside of the opening. This will stop the water we’re putting in from falling down the hole. Fill the ends of those canals with water.

Finish it of by building up the walls and putting in a ceiling. Make an opening that you can hit monsters when they fall to the bottom, and you’re done! Wait by the opening, and doomed monsters will cascade down. Some will die instantly, others will be one hit away from death, and armoured enemies will still take a couple of hits. Okay, so that’s not technically grinding monsters, but it’s close.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

April

A HOME AMONG THE TREES What it is: As Spring gets into full swing and plants begin to flourish, it’s time to become one with nature again. Let’s make a treehouse!

What you need: Wood. So, so much wood.

Leaves (better bring some shears, too) How it’s done: Start out with a 3x3 hollow wooden tower. You can use any type of wood but generally pick a type that matches the local trees. We’ve gone for oak here. Put up some ladders on the inside, and you’ll need a door of course!

An authentic treehouse is built amongst the leaves, so you’ll need a layer of leaves along the bottom of your leafy home. Start by putting a layer of foliage down as a base. You can get leaves by using shears on real trees which grow basically everywhere. Go mad, but try not to scissor yourself.

This is where you can get creative. We’ve used oak wood for floorboards, placed on its side, but you could use anything - planks work very well, too. Build up the walls, and if you want to expand your treehouse out into a luxurious tree-mansion, save space for a second floor, too.

When doing the roof and ceiling, feel free to experiment. We’ve only done a few layers, but you can make your roof flat, pointed, or something else entirely.

Next, get creative and decorate! We’re decadent types, so we went for glamorous chandeliers, as well as an armour rack for our diamond gear. Get us!

May

START A ZOO What it is: If you haven’t built a petting zoo yet, you’re missing out on one of the true joys of Minecraft (and a source of food in desperate times). Let’s start with sheep.

What you need: Fences A gate Sheep Lots of wheat

How it’s done: You’ll need an area to keep your animals, so build your woolly friends a new home/ prison with fences and a gate.

Now we need the main feature: the sheep. You can do this with other animals too, but the drops are obviously diferent. Once you’ve found one roaming the blocky wild, hold some wheat in your hand. The sheep will start following you at the sight of it, the greedy blighter, so there’s no need to feed it to them.

Take the sheep back to your zoo and close the gate behind you.

Congratulations! You have a zoo. A really small, unimpressive zoo, but a zoo nonetheless. Stay with us.

Not exactly a big one, though, is it? That’s why you’ll need lots of wheat. When you’ve got two sheep, feed some to each of them. Hearts will spring from their heads - the universal symbol for lurrrrve - and they’ll run at each other until a baby sheep is born. Ah, the magic of life.

It takes time for the two parents to recover, and you’ll have to wait for the baby to grow up before they can help grow the zoo’s population. Repeat this process, though, and eventually you’ll have your very own petting zoo!

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June

FRIEND TO THE ANIMALS What it is: Let’s create a living wool farm. This will give you a near unlimited supply of coloured wool, and let you hang out with a bunch of sheep.

What you need: Dye. There are 16 kinds. Bring two of each colour you want.

Fences Shears So. Many. Sheep.

How it’s done: To do this one we’re going to use the crowd of sheep you made in the last project. Look at them; don’t they look nice? Now it’s time to make your petting zoo work for you. Divide them up into smaller pens, but leave plenty of space.

You should have as many pens as you have colours of dye, with two sheep in each pen. Now dye the two sheep in each pen with the same colour and feed them just like you did in the petting zoo.

When they get together and make a baby sheep, you might notice the baby sheep is a little diferent from the usual glowing white. Keep breeding the sheep and you’ll see they’re all a nice uniform colour. Move in to each pen and do the same, happily colouring sheep as you go. We’ve labelled ours, but it’s not essential as you can just look at a sheep to work out what colour the pen is. You probably didn’t need us to tell you that, did you?

You can eventually make your wool farm as big as you want, and it’s great to have a farm for gathering coloured wool for future projects. It’s also much cheaper and easier than dyeing it all by hand. Thanks, science!

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

July

FIREWORKS What it is: TNT Catapult Launcher - we shouldn’t have to tell you why this is fun.

What you need: Sticky pistons Repeater

August

THE ONE WITH THE CHICKEN PRANK What it is: We call this the chicken cannon. Build one of these under your friend’s house to ‘deliver’ chickens directly to their living space. And who wouldn’t want that?

What you need: Dispenser Hopper Comparator

Redstone dust Slime blocks As much TNT as you have. All of it.

How it’s done: Dig a trench two blocks long and put a sticky piston facing upwards at one end.

Cover the piston and remaining hole with slime blocks. Now wash your hands.

Set up your dispenser full of TNT one block behind your slime blocks. Place one repeater (on three ticks) facing the slime, with another set to default, facing backwards. After the second repeater, place a block of your choice with another sticky piston facing forward. Stick a block of slime to that piston, then put your button on your dispenser. It should look like the picture above.

Now when you push the button, your TNT pops up, gets pushed forward onto the slime block launching pad, and flings itself forward into the horizon. Magical!

Repeater Redstone A big tunnel Lots of chickens How it’s done: Set up a dispenser with a hopper on top and then build a chickeny prison around it with your block of choice. Glass works well, so you can see if any eggs are being laid into the hopper.

Set up a tunnel between your dispenser and the home of your victim - build it far away and underground for maximum annoyance (if they can’t hear it or see it, it’s harder to find and destroy). Fill up the hopper cage with chickens.

Place a comparator in subtract mode behind the dispenser, then a block with redstone on top, then a piece of redstone. Place a block over the comparator and redstone and a repeater diagonally opposite the comparator connected with redstone.

Place a block behind the repeater and, if your dispenser has eggs in it, they should start firing out. Sit back and watch the baby chickens fly. You rotter, you.

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September

SPECTATOR SPORTS What it is: A roller coaster. The fastest way to explore your world!

What you need: Rails Powered rails Detector rails A minecart A button Something to build your track with - we’re using oak planks Fences How it’s done: This is a build that you can get creative with - we’re just giving you the tools. Start out with the beginning (and end) of your track: you’ll want to set up a series of powered rails as your start, with the first one at an angle, which is where you’ll put your minecart. Put up a button alongside them, so that when they’re of they act like a brake at the end.

Now you’ll want to build the main structure. We’ve gone for something simple.

Experiment with it! We’ve got more roller coaster tips on page 56, if you need ‘em.

Put down your tracks now, use the detector rails followed by powered rails to give yourself a little oomph. Remember - detector rails don’t work on an incline!

Put down the rest of your tracks and give it a go. Test out what works - you might need a bit more speed in some places, so be ready to tweak. Add fences as supports and give your ride a whirl!

October

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT What it is: With Halloween approaching, it’s a great chance to convert one of your current houses into a haunted house with tons of scares.

What you need: A house Cobwebs Monster heads Tripwire hooks and string Note blocks How it’s done: A haunted house is simple to make and can be pretty impressive in creative hands. Start of simply by building a house; we’ve used dark oak wood and planks to make sure it’s nice and dark inside.

Place a tripwire over the door - this simply leads to a note block to try and scare whoever enters. Boo! Use redstone torches to light it up - they make very little light. It’s always pretty dark so anything could pop out. By hiding a creeper head around a dark corner - lots of people might jump at the sight. Add paintings to your house too: the one with the skull is especially creepy.

Up on the top floor, it’s good to hang cobwebs from the high ceiling, like the whole place hasn’t been used for years. With creative use of skeleton heads and fences, it’s almost like some heads have been left on pikes to rot.

Charming! Use these ideas to make something equally chilling.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

November

CHASING WATERFALLS What it is: A waterfall covering the entrance to your house is a nice way to hide your humble abode, or make yourself feel like an evil mastermind. Both are fine, really.

What you need: A sticky piston Some redstone A lever How it’s done: First of all, you’ll need a lair to hide. It’s easiest if it’s one made in a clif, but you could use this on top of your house as a water feature too.

Make sure you’ve got a pool of water on the top, and set up a one-block barrier that will be pulled by the piston to release the water. Underneath it, put down a sticky piston.

Make your way underground, and get underneath the piston. From here, put down redstone all the way to the back of whatever block your lever is on.

We put the lever inside our base, but you could put it outside too. Pull it down, and you’re ready to go! Experiment with how the water flows and try to hide the sticky piston if you can. That’s what a real evil genius would do.

December

WINTER WONDERLAND What it is: A snowy paradise. Presents, trees and an igloo.

What you need: Wood Leaves Glowstone Dyed wool (you choose the colours) Snow TNT A button How it’s done: We’ll finish with a simple winter wonderland, with everything you need for a lovely Christmas. First of all is a Christmas tree: start of with a trunk and work your way up it with circular layers of leaves. Make it as big or as small as you like! Afterwards, decorate it with wool tinsel and baubles, as well as glowstone for lights.

You’ll need a rest after that, so why not make yourself an igloo? A bunch of snow, which we’ve fashioned into a dome, would be a nice place to relax and maybe eat a bit of your warming mushroom stew.

There needs to be presents, though! First of all, start with the frame for your gift.

Use wool, and change up the colours to whatever you like.

What’s in our present, you ask? Well, we wanted this year to end with a bang, so we filled it with TNT. Slap a lid on it (and, if you’re doing the same as us, a button for the recipient) and there’s your Christmas in Minecraft sorted! Beats any cracker.

Looking for more ideas? Why not try these...

If you want to build in weird places you might like to try an undersea lair with a glass roof, or an underground forest. Perhaps a city in the sky?

Redstone fans might want to try a

rail network, an elevator or even a calculator. (It’s more exciting than it sounds, we promise.) If you want to turn your mind to something big, why not a great wall or fortress? There’s

never been anything wrong with a gigantic castle or even just a harbour complete with a whopping great lighthouse. If you’re artistic, you can make a mural using the coloured wool

from your farm. Immortalise your family, pets or your favourite game character somewhere on your server you see everyday. Get creative!

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You’ll sometimes find mushrooms under certain tree canopies, which are vital for making mushroom soup.

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KNOW YOUR BIOMES

Sometimes apples will fall from cut trees.

They’re great for relieving hunger if you can’t find any livestock nearby.

FOREST F Forest biomes are often small, so be sure to replant a tree every time you cut one down to ensure you don’t exhaust your wood supplies.

illed with precious wood, which is vital for making tools and the workbench early in the game, forests are the best place to start out. Be careful though as they’re often hilly and dark, with dangerous mobs spawning under the leafy branches. They’re especially difficult to navigate at night as the trees can obscure your vision, so creepers become much harder to spot and can easily sneak up on you. BOOM!

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

NEW YEAR NEW GAME Follow our new year’s resolutions to give your Minecraft habits a makeover hat are your new year’s resolutions this January? To eat less chocolate?

Stop biting your nails? Do all your homework on time? Yeah, we were joking about that last one, don’t worry. But while we’re at it, how about ditching all of your bad habits in Minecraft, as well? What do you mean you have none? Hear us out.

Whether it’s relying too heavily on the materials on your doorstep, keeping an inventory that’s as messy as

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your bedroom, or planting crops in haphazard fashion, it’s incredibly easy to pick up these traits through sheer laziness. But all you need is a little efort, a smidgen of willpower and perhaps a dash of planning, and you can become a better Minecrafter – safer, more eficient and fit to face the harshest of foes. What’s more, anyone can do it, regardless of skill level. So how can we help? Well, we’ve got 15 ripping resolutions for you to follow so you can give your game a welcome spring clean. So, repeat after us: in 2016, I will…

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01 Keep my house secure even as I’m building it We’ve all been there – getting so caught up in the excitement of placing our cobblestone walls just so, with lovely glass panes for the windows and a perfectly positioned wooden door, that night falls almost without us knowing. And what’s missing? A bloomin’ roof. So what gets in? Bad things. Time for a new rule: keep a roof on at all times. Even if it’s just a layer of dirt blocks, it’s still better to have it in place before the hostile mobs spawn, rather than frantically putting it on as spiders bear down on you with their hundreds of creepy legs. Hundreds, we say.

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Keep my inventory tidy Hey, we’re not here to judge the state of your bedroom.

Go ahead and keep your clothes in a floor-lump if that’s how your choose to live your life. But making sure your inventory is in order is a no-brainer. Keeping items sorted by category means you’ll spend less time searching for that one item you need right now, and makes it easier to see what you’re carrying. Even more important is your toolbar. Having your axe, shovel, pick and so on sat side-by-side minimises the amount of scrolling you’ll have to do when collecting materials, and keeping two swords – a third of the way from each end of the toolbar – means you’ll be ready for attack as soon as you see a tasty-looking pig. Yum, piggy dinner.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

04 Cook all my food

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Keep a bed with me at all times Which is the lesser of these evils: giving up one block of inventory space for a bed, or ending up stuck miles from home and having to wait out the night in a hastily constructed shelter? Sometimes things get hairy, and we’d take cosy, speedy cowardice over ages spent waiting in the dark any time. Just build a quick shelter (away from hostile mobs, of course), smooth out your sheets and it’ll be morning before you know it. Go on, turn that inventory into a permanent Ikea van, and don’t spare the meatballs.

As the Snickers adverts say, you’re not you when you’re hungry. So it’s easy to leave your good sense at the door and just reach for that raw chicken breast to stave of starvation. Sure, you won’t catch salmonella from it, but what a waste of all the goodness it could ofer! Gordon Ramsay would be ashamed of you. It might be a pain, but cooking everything means you’ll get the absolute most out of it. Do it in big batches and you’ll never be without a tasty roast dinner for a packed lunch. Far more delicious, and you get to call yourself a domestic god/dess.

05 Do my crafting at night In Minecraft, as in real life, indoors is the best place to be once it’s dark and cold outside.

Not that our actual houses are surrounded by zombies and skeletons, mind. Sleeping is, of course, one way to make it through ’til morning (and the one we’d recommend for real life), but crafting is another great plan.

Not only will your supplies of tools, food and other gubbins be replenished, but you also won’t have had to spend any precious daylight hours doing so. Who needs sleep, anyway?

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Do some target practice Bows and arrows are great against enemies where you want to keep your distance, but they’re no use if you don’t know how to properly fire them. Flailing about in a mad panic as a skeleton archer gets ever closer is nobody’s idea of a good time. And after all, arrows don’t grow on trees, do they? (Apart from the wooden sticky bit.) Set up a small, fenced-in area with a few unlucky sheep or pigs in it Build yourself a platform a short distance away, and practise your aim by taking potshots. Cheeky bonus: you’ve just sourced yourself breakfast.

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07 Build a holiday home We’re sure that your main Minecraft dwelling is a veritable masterpiece of architecture, worthy of featuring in its very own episode of Grand Designs. But are you really content with just one flash crashpad? Nah. So put in a little extra efort and build yourself a themed holiday home. The further afield you go, the more useful a base it will double up as. If you’re normally a savannah-dweller, why not construct a cosy cabin up in the mountains? Or if the forest is your usual stomping ground, put up a beach hut and relax by the waves.

08 Only cut down trees a reasonable distance away from my house Yes, we get it. Fetching wood is a boring, Cinderella-style exercise in drudgery. We understand the temptation to just nip outside and get it over with. But spare a thought for your future self: eventually you’re going to totally ruin the view from your house! All it takes is a little extra efort – walk a minute or so away from home, and you can chop away with impunity. You could even kid yourself that it’s because you care about the environment.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

PICK YOUR PUNISHMENT A great way to keep yourself on track with your resolutions is to give yourself a list of punishments for each infraction. Each time you break one of your 15 new rules, pick a rap on the knuckles from this list:

s No using the sprint button for a week s No flying in creative mode for a week s A day of only using wooden tools and weapons

s Ten minutes spent clearing weeds from the area around you

s One hour spent wearing a jack o’lantern helmet on your head

s 20 minutes without looking at the map

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Maximise my farm’s efficiency Anyone can farm in Minecraft, but it takes a bit of thought and planning before you can really call yourself a farmer. Crops need water, so to maximise your yield in the minimum basic space, plant crops in a nine-bynine square around a single block of water, and put up a fence around it. To harvest your crops, just pour a bucket of water over the middle of the field, which will wash the crops up against the fence. You could also create an automatic egg farm – check out our Autumn issue, or search on YouTube for tutorials.

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Build myself a beacon, just in case We all like to think that we’re invincible. That we’re never going to end up miles from home, savaged by a rogue spider, respawning minus a map in the middle of goodness-only-knows-where. But imagine that it did happen, and you were struggling to navigate home, and you knew you could have done something to help. You’d feel like a right clownshoe. So build a tower a few blocks square in the vicinity of your homestead, and top it with blocks of redstone lamp. Voila! A beacon to bring you home, whenever you need it. Just in case.

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11 Always put torches on the right-hand walls of mines When you’re adventuring underground – especially if you’ve been exploring through a whole bunch of twists and turns – it’s easy to get lost. It’s common sense to place torches on the walls as you go to make sure light levels stay high enough to prevent hostile mobs from spawning. And it’s less spooky, obviously. But if you’re canny, you can also use them like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs to guide you home. If you always make sure to place your torches on the right-hand wall as you’re progressing into the mine, all you’ll need to do to get out is to keep walking with the torches on your left.

That’s almost too simple. Ah, sweet daylight!

12 Place myself steps while digging downwards There’s almost nothing more frustrating than getting stuck at the bottom of a hole of your own making.

It’s the Minecraft equivalent of painting yourself into a corner. So if you’re exploring downwards, place a block behind you each time you drop down a block. This will give you a ready-made staircase for when you eventually want to get back to the surface, saving you the less-than-ideal choice between becoming a mole person and painstakingly carving a set of steps into the wall to get you out. Neither of them are much fun.

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Never look Endermen in the eye, even out of curiosity That Enderman is a mysterious figure. Tall, dark… could he even be handsome? There’s only one way to find out – just take a… nope! Four words: just don’t do it. He might be one of Minecraft’s spookiest foes, but he won’t attack you as long as you keep your distance and don’t look directly at him. Provoke him, though, and it’s almost impossible to get him to quit. You know what they say about curiosity and cats. You really don’t want to be a dead cat.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

14 Face my fears…

Remaining in your comfort zone might be, well, comfortable – but you’re never going to find adventures by doing that. So maybe the best thing you can do to up your Minecraft game this new year is to start taking steps outside of it. Used to playing on peaceful? Up the difficulty to include proper enemies. Like to stay in creative mode?

Stretch yourself by switching to survival. And, of course, if you consider yourself a seasoned player, there’s always a trip down to The End to meet its most notorious inhabitant…

15 …but do some research first Just barrelling into the Ender Dragon’s lair spoiling for a scrap is asking for trouble in the worst possible way.

You’ll be dead before you can say: “This is The End.” Probably even before you can say only: “This…” You’ll

need some seriously sturdy armour, plenty of arrows and diamond weapons – not to mention potions to help you recover from the damage you’ll take. It’s worth looking up an in-depth strategy guide, and

we’ve included one on page 32 because we’re lovely.

Be prepared to spend time destroying the dragon’s health totems, and if in doubt, take cover. Heroes may be glamorous, but not when they’re dead.

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The Ender Dragon is Minecraft’s toughest test. Want to slay it?

Then simply follow our ten-point guide…

Once you reach The End, there’s no going back until you’ve defeated the Ender Dragon. You’ll need enchanted weapons and armour, strength and health potions, some cheap building materials, and a lot of arrows.

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FINDING THE STRONGHOLD

You need at least 12 eyes of ender – crafted with an ender pearl and blaze powder. Throw an eye into the air and it’ll float before hitting the floor: the direction it floats is the direction in which you’ll need to travel to reach the stronghold.

3 END PORTAL

Head to the stronghold and search for the end portal. You’ll find it toward the bottom, suspended over a pool of lava and protected by a silverfish spawner. Pop your ender eyes into each slot of the portal and it’ll activate.

4 THE END

Take care when you enter: you spawn on a small obsidian platform, under or beside the main End island. Dig your way to the top or build a platform across. The Ender Dragon shouldn’t attack until you reach the surface.

5 DEALING WITH ENDERMEN

The End is teeming with endermen, and they can make a would-be dragonslayer’s life hell. Pumpkin hats waste a valuable armour slot, so dump a water bucket on the ground near to a group to de-aggro them.

6 SOMEWHERE TO HIDE

You may find that your first scuffle with The End’s draconian dictator doesn’t go quite as planned. So make sure you dig a nice safe area to fall back to with healing items and enough supplies to repair your gear.

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HEALING CRYSTALS

Each main obsidian pillar contains an ender crystal. They’re your first target. Their purple rays heal the Ender Dragon, so killing him while they’re active is impossible. Luckily, they’re fragile. A few wellaimed arrows should do it.

8 CAGED CRYSTALS

Two crystals are sneakily encased behind iron bars, stopping you from taking them out at range. So you can jump-stack your way to the top of a pillar and find that you can easily knock down the barrier.

6 ACID ATTACK

The Ender Dragon has two attacks. His long-range acid ball is easy to avoid and — if you’re wearing enchanted armour — not too harmful. His second, an acid spray, is much more deadly. So keep moving and dodging.

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FINISH HIM

After circling the pillars a few times, the Ender Dragon will stop and hover over the centre of the island. Now’s your chance to pelt him with arrows!

A purple explosion will eventually signal your victory.

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EXPAND YOUR GAME

1 BEFORE YOU GO

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Rabid gameplayer? You need never leave the comfort of your own blocky universe again…

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hy buy lots of diferent games when you can stick to Minecraft? Players have been stretching the game’s flexibility since launch, and now almost anything is possible with the right tweaks, redstone circuits and resource packs. Want to build cities, wear a hood and freerun around historical landmarks Assassin’s Creed style? No problem. How about an underwater city to rival the likes of BioShock’s Rapture? Too easy.

From Mario Maker to Zelda and even Call of Duty, you’re just a few downloads

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away from morphing Minecraft into a game to rival the biggest new releases Brilliantly, you can choose how deep you want to go. We’ve included some adventure maps so that you can jump into a new game world quickly, but if you want to build your own Mario worlds, or construct a settlement in a tough Fallout wasteland, you can use the resource packs and modded items in this list to simulate each game world in greater detail.

As always, check the mod descriptions on each download page for installation instructions and for Minecraft version compatibility info, and have fun!

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You could say that Super Mario Maker owes more of a debt to Minecraft than the other way around. After all, Minecraft is amazing at producing player-created worlds in its own right. There are still plenty of ways to bring that distinctive Mario flavour to your game, and turn Minecraft into a cheerful, challenging platformer while you’re at it.

Super Mario Brothers http://bit.ly/1DEwCDi

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ario’s blocky world is perfectly suited to Minecraft, as this charming Super Mario Mod demonstrates. This funtime little mod captures both the sights and the sounds of the Super Mario universe with a suite of custom blocks representing warp pipes, brick walkways and the famous floating question-mark loot blocks. It’s almost like a Nintendo-flavoured home from home.

You can break these blocks by jumping and hitting them with your super hard super Mario head – just like in, erm, real life – all while clothed in Mario’s stylish red cap and blue pants combo. Treasure blocks will even make a satisfying ping when you hit them, and there are classic Mario noises for jumping and hitting a flagpole, which rewards you with that familiar Mario fanfare.

The blocks and items are all craftable in survival mode, but this mod is great for making your own courses in creative mode, where you can arrange the brick blocks and warp pipes into great jumping courses in a few minutes. It’s like a dream made real, that’s what this is.

The tricky thing is that this mod requires Forge to work, which you can download and install from here http://bit.ly/1IWLVHN.

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Oh my days, this is making our heads pop just thinking about it.

Make and mould your own fantasy Mario worlds!

http://bit.ly/1HRC1vu

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his spectacular map captures the joyful inventiveness of the Mario Galaxy games with a series of colourful floating puzzle islands. From giant robots to lava pits and floating disc worlds, it’s impossible to predict where the map will go next. As you hop from platform to platform you traverse floating pirate ships and delve into crystal orbs and mysterious pyramids full of creepers and jumping puzzles.

It’s a great testament to the classic Galaxy games, but also a remarkable Minecraft build that pushes the limits of the game with mindbending structures. The map contains 28 ‘galaxies’ with power ups and even boss fights in giant planets and, of course, Bowser’s castle. It’s challenging, but a magical way to enjoy Mario in Minecraft.

http://bit.ly/1NdDCvr

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f you’re looking for something more lightweight than the Super Mario Brothers mod that captures Mario’s colourful levels perfectly, the Medley texture pack is a great choice. The textures are created at 32x32 pixel resolution, which makes them more detailed than conventional Minecraft textures, and they’re fantastically faithful to the classic early Mario platformers.

You can install the texture pack and play Minecraft normally for an odd survivalist Mario experience, but really this is perfect for making your own levels, Super Mario Maker style. Build a course three-to-five blocks wide, test all the jumps and then challenge your friends to complete it in the fastest time possible. Home made Mario – how cool is that!

Super Parkour http://bit.ly/1ghu0E9

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f you’d rather tackle some Mario-esque challenges rather than build courses, this is the map for you. It vaguely replicates the first level of the original Super Mario Brothers, but with a Minecraftian twist. A few jumps in you meet Toad, and can loot his little house for coins. Poor Toad!

Otherwise you’re navigating jumping puzzles on a five-block wide course. Look out for the holes in the floor and some tricky distance leaps in a race to hit the final flagpole. There are loot blocks, of course, which grant you coins when you hit the switches on their undersides, and you can invite up to three friends to join you. Be warned: the course is quite narrow. It’s all too easy to push a friend into the abyss, intentionally or otherwise. The course is a test run, and there may be sequels in the future set in water and desert themed environments. It’s a great way to get inspiration for your own maps.

The two greatest things in all history merged into one. Look, there’s Mario’s flagpole, Minecraft style!

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Mario Galaxy-Craft

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Every year the Assassin’s Creed series gives us a new city or two to explore with magic assassin parkour skills. Anything the Assassins can do Minecraft can do too, as you’ll see from this suite of mods and maps.

Assassin Craft Ah, the famous Assassin’s Creed guard. Totally expendable in every way. Don’t any of these people have families?!

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http://bit.ly/1SQ9FmG

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he iconic garb of the Assassins can easily be yours in Minecraft thanks to the Assassin Craft mod. This adds a bunch of new recipes that bring the killer cowls and weapons of the series into your Minecraft world, from Arno’s French cutlass to Altair’s signature flowing white robes.

The mod also adds Assassin’s Creed guards and villains to assassinate with a variety of crossbows and hidden blades.

There’s a blacksmith to help you gear up, and the Romulus dungeon, full of enemies and secret treasure. The cutest addition is the hay bale block, which you can dive onto from any height to avoid taking falling damage. You’ll finally be able to perform the leap of faith in Minecraft!

EXPAND YOUR GAME

Roman City http://bit.ly/21RAYDb

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he great thing about Minecraft is that you can visit almost any city that has featured in an Assassin’s Creed game. Want to recreate Unity? Try the 1:1 recreation of Paris in Minecraft (http://bit.ly/1jQeeB5). Prefer Syndicate? Try the London map instead (http://bit.ly/1SQ59o3). The Roman City map is our favourite, however, brilliantly evoking the grand structures of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

The map reportedly took five months to build and features massive structures like a chariot racing track and the Colosseum in its original form, as well as luxury villas and lovely gardens. Load up the map with Assassin’s Craft and the parkour mod installed for a solid Assassin’s Creed simulation in Minecraft. Run, climb and vault to your heart’s content!

Assassin’s Creep http://bit.ly/1bkAEXB

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his adventure map harks back to the dusty streets of the first Assassin’s Creed game. It’s an open world city full of jumping challenges that will have you precariously climbing the tallest towers in town. You’re on a mission to find nine wool blocks. Once those are gathered a final door will open to a hidden dungeon. As in the source games, there are hidden feathers, diamonds and wanted posters to collect along the way. It’s almost pretty enough to be the real thing.

This map works well with the brilliant Assassini-Construttori texture pack (http://bit. ly/1KTJFpV) that brings the sandy tones of Assassin’s Creed’s cities to buildings in Minecraft.

There’s even an Animus edition inspired by the reality-warping efects of Animus glitches.

Parkour mod http://bit.ly/1HFQkm9

I Let’s just hope there’s a lovely, soft bale of hay for Steve to land in. This is what we call a real leap of faith!

you want to become a true assassin you must master the art of freerunning.

And by ‘master’, we mean ‘install the Assassin’s Creed parkour mod’. This mod lets you freerun up walls that are three blocks high, which makes it nice and easy to climb buildings. You can also hold down a button to dangle from blocks if you need to negotiate any especially tricky overhangs.

This mod works well when combined with others to create an immersive Assassin’s Creed experience. Once you’re used to the extra moves, it’s hard to go back to ordinary Minecraft jumping. If you slip and fall, the mod even lets you roll to avoid taking damage. The somersaulting camera might leave you a little woozy if you do this too often, however.

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Minecraft is already a survival game, so it only requires a marginal tone tweak and some custom items to help make it suddenly feel like Fallout.

Good resource packs and the Fallout mod do the job nicely.

Mineout Resource Pack http://bit.ly/1k32oVi

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ow we need to get Minecraft looking suitably disheveled, as though a thousand nuclear payloads have wiped out the world. The Mineout Resource Pack is a standout efort that retextures the world to make it look brown and filthy and generally unpleasant, but in a good way!

The desert earth looks suitably desolate, NPCs now look like hardened wastelanders straight from Mad Max, and enemies have been redone to bring them closer to Fallout’s denizens. Cave spiders have been given a tail to turn them into radscorpions, while cows have received an extra face on their texture to turn them into the two-headed brahmin pack beasts of the wasteland. Also, chickens are green for some reason.

The retexture of your inventory menu is especially neat. The mod adds a skin that makes it look as though you’re equipping items using a Pip Boy. Wowsers! If it’s not to your taste, you can also have a go on the neat Industrial Wasteland Texture pack (http://bit.ly/1Nm2qPB), which looks more like the airy deserts of Fallout: New Vegas.

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You can’t find a glass of clean drinking water, but giant robt helpers are everywhere.

What a world!

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ne of the most downloaded Fallout themed adventure maps on the planet, Rebuilding Humanity throws you into the wasteland in 2351. There you can survive the desert and discover a number of side quests, or head straight to the Big City where the main storyline awaits.

The star of this adventure map is the wasteland itself. It’s full of ruined structures to explore, underground sewers and interesting nooks and crannies. There are even co-op only areas that you can only enter with a friend. The characters you meet are all nods to real Fallout lore, and enemies include famous Fallout villains like the Super Mutants.

At the time of writing the mod is currently down in anticipation of a massively updated 1.8 release which will purportedly add new locations, NPCs, story endings and even radiation to give the map a true survivalist element. This may have changed, so check just in case. Older versions are available in an unsupported form (http://bit.ly/1OVtjhQ), though we’d recommend waiting for the next official release.

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allout 4 added deadly radioactive storms to the series for the first time. Every so often, billowing green radioactive clouds roll across the wasteland, dropping radioactive rain and lightning on the wastelanders below. Perhaps that’s why our chickens are green? Anyway, there’s nothing that can quite match the luminous lime colour of those storms in Minecraft, but the Local Weather Mod adds some truly spectacular weather that will make your wasteland seem that bit more dangerous.

In addition to Minecraft’s ordinary rain and snow, this mod adds lightning storms and tornados. The latter suck up mobs in spiralling patterns, and will even fling you miles into the air if you get too close. Hail storms chuck hundreds of tiny blocks of varying size down onto your poor head. A really bad one can start knocking you around, which is inconvenient when you’re engaged in a pistol duel to the death with a swarm of radscorpions.

The Fallout Mod http://bit.ly/1OT1K8Y

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efore we bring the wasteland to Minecraft we need to gear up. The Fallout Mod will let you do exactly that, adding dozens of weapons and chems from the Fallout games to give you something of a fighting chance.

The guns here are the star of the update, modelled with a high-quality and relatively realistic look. You have to craft ammo to use them, but once you’re up and running you’ll be sniping mobs with revolvers, pistols and worn old automatic weapons.

If you take a hit you can be thankful for the addition of stimpacks, which restore your health. A syringe of Med-X boosts resistance to all damage for a time while Psycho, true to the Fallout games, boosts your damage output. For an authentic wasteland experience, use Psycho in combination with the new melee weapons and beat of attackers with rusty old pipes.

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Fallout: Rebuilding Humanity

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No matter what the genre, hundreds of classic game worlds have been remade in Minecraft. It goes to show that you can do almost anything with the will and a lot of time in creative mode. And long may that be so…

CivilizationCraft http://bit.ly/1Y1coQX

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n interesting twist on the PC empire building strategy series, Civilization, this modded server asks players to band together to gather resources and erect buildings that boost your empire. Those of course include some of Civ’s famous wonders of the ancient world. It’s a multiplayer afair that relies on trade, deal-making and competitive expansion. The buildings also look lovely, but be warned, “this is a very long term game” according to the CivilizationCraft wiki, that may require quite a lot of dedication if you’re to get the most out of it.

Call of Duty http://bit.ly/1Qiu0Dd

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uns guns guns! This Call of Duty inspired mod adds some of the most detailed gun models you can hope to use in Minecraft. Weapons vary from pistols to light machine guns and assault rifles. You can use iron sights aiming to hit targets, and damage varies depending on the model and where your shot hits. So load this mod up, create a little arena and invite some friends in for a few rounds of deathmatch.

Mine 4 Dead http://bit.ly/1L1YkO8

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great co-op adventure map that pits you against zombie hordes in a doomed city. It honours Valve’s terrific zombie survival shooter with character textures representing every hero from the series. Safe rooms with beds ofer brief respite, and there’s even a four-minute finale event to mimic the desperate last stand moments of Left 4 Dead.

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http://bit.ly/1upB6bH

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he city of Rapture is one of the most memorable game worlds ever created, and now you get to explore it in blockbased form thanks to this ambitious build. The famous introductory lighthouse has been faithfully recreated, and huge underwater buildings carry the same sense of claustrophobia that BioShock captured so well. The map is unfinished, but what’s there is still an impressive ode to Irrational’s creepy underwater hell.

CraftFighter http://bit.ly/ISc7L8

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ot a Minecraft mod, but a free game that reimagines Minecraft as a Street Fighter style beat-’em-up. Such imagination! The prototype version was developed for Minecon 2012, but now it exists as a free download that lets you pit Minecraft’s iconic characters against one another in classic 2D side-scrolling combat. Skeleton, Villager, Creeper, Steve and Pig duel for glory, and you can play against friends to discover which character is the best. Pig for the win! He is our cover star, after all...

Ocarina of Time http://bit.ly/1sci35L

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his stunning build recreates the world of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in Minecraft in gorgeous detail. The creator says that the map took six months to make, and it shows in the care and attention given to famous landmarks like the Great Deku Tree and Death Mountain, complete with ominous hovering smoke ring. If you like this, it’s also worth checking out the Twilight Princess map (http://bit.ly/1hkjF9l) from the same creator. You can invite up to three friends to join you. Well, it would be rude not to…

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BioShock

You’ll often find shallow waterholes, which are good sources of sugar cane or clay.

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he great, open grassy expanses on Minecraft are excellent places for finding cows, sheep and pigs to slaughter for meat, as well as horses for transport, flowers for dyes and grass for wheat seeds.

KNOW YOUR BIOMES

PLAINS

The PC version features a savanna plains variant that appears on plateaus and has numerous trees.

They’re the perfect place to set up farms to gather resources, as livestock is easy to lure back and pen in. The open landscape makes it easier to spot enemies nearby, too, which make plains great places for building your shelters. Handy!

Yellow and red flowers are common here and can be used to create dyes.

Use these directly on sheep to make your own multicoloured herds.

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DIARY OF SURVIVAL ISLAND Cranking it up a Notch with one of Minecraft’s toughest challenges

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DAY 1

1. Play on at least Normal dificulty. Hardcore dificulty is a great test for Minecraft veterans: you get one life, there are no respawns, and your world save disappears if you die. Starving to death is possible, but backing out isn’t, as you can’t change the dificulty setting.

2. Start on an island seed (duh!). There are some great ones to be found on the Internet. For an authentic challenge, use an island that has only a few trees and some grass.

3. No island-hopping! You’ve got to survive on your island with what little you have, and players who gather resources from elsewhere will be fed to the Wither. You’ve been warned.

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ait, where am I? Oh, not again, GamesMaster! Well, at least they left me with my shoes this time.

Best get cracking.

I spring into action like a cubic ninja, punching trees into splintery submission. Grass is next: yield your riches, pixelated pasture! One set of seeds?!

My stomach is eating itself already.

Scanning the island 1 (a process that takes half a second) reveals a handful of friendly and potentially delicious animals to get acquainted with. I make direct, purposeful eye contact with a pig as I craft a wooden sword. Dominance asserted.

The setting sun saves his bacon 2, because I must dig a dirt bunker to hide in, lest any mobs decide to spawn all over my survivalist hopes and dreams. A safe sunrise and a few blocks of cobblestone later, 3 I’ve built a furnace. The pig is trying very hard to hide, but a rabbit practically leaps into my waiting oven.

What a team player. You seeing this, pig? You’re first on my list, buddy. Just you wait…

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THE RULES ver wished you could just get away from it all and make a fresh start on a desert island? Well, our writer said she was alright thanks, actually, but we booted her out into the Minecraft wilderness anyway.

It’s character building. Her resolve was strong, her challenge mildly unreasonable: set the game to Hardcore difficulty, start on an island seed with nothing but a few trees, grass and sugar cane, and eventually battle the Ender Dragon… without a single death. Victory would mean mad XP and a dragon egg fry-up for everyone; failure, the immediate deletion of the world save. Also, we’ll make her wear a tiny paper hat with “CREEPER FODDER” written on it. But remember: bullying in the workplace is bad, kids.

Our intrepid explorer still hasn’t returned to us. We can only hope she’s living it up on her island, riding about on pigs and swimming in end game loot. Fortunately, we’ve managed to get hold of her survival diary to find out exactly what happened. Will the race to The End, er, drag on? Or will it be cruelly cut short by an errant zombie? Read on, find out, and be inspired to kick of the New Year on your own survival island.

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DAY 2 Mood: Realistic

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aplings are planted and seeds are sown, but now I’m grubby, tired, and starving – and it’s raining. Perfect.

Gritting my teeth, I begin the lengthy process of hollowing out my crude hole in the ground into a mine 1. The smell of smoke fills the air, and the thought of BBQ teases my mind, as the furnace burns wood into charcoal for my torches. The pig lasts five minutes before I pork chop him into bite-size pieces. RIP, Peppa. You can’t say you weren’t expecting it.

A full stack of cobblestone gathered, I begin the construction of my epic fortress. There’s sand as far as the eye can see, so windows aren’t an issue 2. After a brief flirtation with the idea of a skylight (I abandon this, deciding that summoning Kevin McCloud would only mean another mouth to feed), I plump for a spiral staircase.

A full moon rises as I stack up steps and lay out the second floor of my base. I long for bed. 3

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s if being hungry and sleep-deprived wasn’t enough, I’m desperately lonely.

My companion count has recently decreased by one – burp – and even the rabbits are keeping their distance now. Fine, be that way! I’m of to the mine, losers. Almost instantly, I dig up some iron, and can’t wait to go rub it in their furry faces – but I also dig up a creeper 1. No armour, no respawns: no chance. I nopenopenope outta there, hopping all the way back up the stairs to the surface.

This is when I suspect that I’m starting to go a bit wrong in the head: I see a cow. And then another cow. And two sheep. What is going on? The entire cast of Babe has turned up in my absence. Am I hallucinating? No, it would appear. The torches on my island must have helped spawn them. I totally meant to do that. Totally.

I can now make a farm and breed animals for food.

Every animal is precious, so obviously I immediately kill a sheep, and dye its wool to make myself a flufy friend. Think I’ll call him Wilson.

DAY 4 Mood: Hungry

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erding the cows and sheep into a pen isn’t easy without a sheaf of tempting wheat, but I manage it with a few encouraging shoves 1. Once the harvest comes in, breeding them will be a doddle, but I can’t aford to kill any right now.

I’ve got one pork chop left, and a couple of apples to wash it down with.

My hunger bar is satisfied: my soul is not.

I set to work crafting iron armour from my bountiful ore: in hardcore survival modes, the best ofence is a good defence. Ofence is a pretty good ofence as well, though, so I waste no time in whipping up a lovely, sharp iron sword 2. But that mine won’t excavate itself. I fling myself back down into it, and run headlong into a skeleton 3. Okay, let’s run through my options. Number one: run. Number two: wee myself. Number three: give him a good walloping. With my trusty iron gear, I avoid a combination of one and two, winning the battle – and some bones into the bargain.

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DAY 3

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DAY 5

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Mood: $$$

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ncouraged by my skellybob success, I decide to stay another day in the mine, plowing through the cobblestone like a hungry hungry hippo. All at once, I run smack into a cluster of diamonds 1. DIAMONDS! Before I’ve even managed to make bread! Priorities, am I right? I’ve never been punched in the mouth by a precious gem before, but it feels pretty darn sweet.

Time to take ’em home to my woolly orange pal.

Wilson doesn’t really react when I show of my haul, and I’m a bit annoyed, until I remember he doesn’t actually have a face. Shrugging and turning away, I do some mental maths and figure out that ten diamonds is enough for a pickaxe and a sword, with plenty left over for an enchanting table. Result.

The sun starts to rise over my bone-mealed farm, and I can almost taste the freshly-baked bread as I survey my empire. “Everything the light touches is ours, Wilson”, I tell him. He didn’t reply. Again.

DAY 6 Mood: Cocky

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his survival island lark is well easy, innit? Wheat and sugar farm on the go, torches keeping nasty mobs away and speeding up crop growth, enough bling to cement my status as Island Swagmaster 1 (there are no prizes for second place, Wilson)… Piece of cake. Well, I haven’t quite managed cake yet, but steak I can definitely grab me a piece of.

I saunter over to my cow and sheep pen and start making it rain wheat.

Breeding my two sheep will produce enough wool for me to make a bed – I haven’t slept in days, but at least it’s not afecting my mind...hatstands!

Doughnuts. Creme brulee? Quite. Once my cows have produced ofspring 2, I make one of them into mincemeat. A hiss interrupts my evening meal.

I turn around, to be greeted by… Well, just look at the picture. A spider is all up in my grill 3 (and my grilled meat). Fortunately, I survive, thanks to a mixture of smacking it over the head with a steak, and hysterical crying.

It’s a dark reminder of the danger that lurks all around.

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SURVIVAL ISLAND TWISTS 1 The Veggie – Don’t eat any meat!

2 Big Softie – Only use wooden tools and leather armour.

3 Sleep Is For The Weak – No beds allowed!

4 Pacifist – Don’t kill any mobs except endermen and the Ender Dragon.

5 Itty-Bitty Island – Survive on a 10x10 island.

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DAY 7 Mood: Domestic

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h, the seventh day. The traditional day of rest. I decide to spend the day pottering about the island and generally avoiding any bother. A few more trees have sprung up, meaning I can make signs and name some of the island landmarks. The farm is christened Slaughterhouse V-eal 1 (Wilson’s a Vonnegut fan), and the fortress Casa del GamesMaster 2, because everything sounds more impressive en Español.

I lay out a gravel path between the fortress, the farm, the mine, and my crops. It crunches underfoot as I carefully pluck the island’s flowers, replanting them in neat rows in front of my home sweet home. For my interior, sticks and wool create a tasteful skull painting 3, which also serves as a handy reminder of my imminent death. Yay! My day of rest is rounded out in the best possible way: I can finally make a bed. Crawling under the covers, I consider giving up the Ender Dragon pipe dream. This is heaven.

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DAY 8

Mood: Tormented

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hate Mondays, I think, as an unreasonable amount of eyes cast a red glow from a shadowy void in my mine 1. My sword makes swift work of the spider – but like his brother before him, he doesn’t even have the decency to drop string. No bow and arrow for me, then. But that’s the least of my worries: I fight of two zombies and a creeper from the same horrible hole before I retreat to the surface, heart pounding and health low.

I’m not even safe in my own home. A skeleton sloshes through the water behind my fortress, and I have trouble getting up close as it peppers me with arrows. It’s soon impaled on the business end of my sword, but it’s managed to fire an arrow into the business end of me 2. Ouch.

As luck would have it I’ve finally got leftover wheat to make bread, and it’s been a bad day at the office, so I do what I always do when I’m sad: go home and eat quite a lot of carbs. 3

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DAY 9

Mood: Adventurous

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obs be damned! I refuse to cower in my fortress like a big, blocky baby. Instead, I’ll speed around on the high seas in my trusty boat. Yes, I know I’m not allowed to set foot on any other land. I’m just looking.

My wanderlust satisfied, my feet back on solid ground, I have an epiphany. My torches are keeping mobs at bay 1 – but I’ll need endermen to spawn. They drop ender pearls, which are key to getting to The End. The solution: create an unlit platform that will trap enemies. I surround Mobs ‘R’ Us with fences, dreaming sexy, foolish dreams of browsing its dangerous wares like my own personal supermarket, smooth jazz playing in the background. Nice.

For now, I start hunting my lanky prey underground.

I very quickly spot purple sparkles, and when more endermen join the party, I’m left clutching more pearls than an afronted 1940s housewife. Epiphany number two arrives: to craft the Eyes of Ender that point me to The End, I must make blaze powder. Which comes from blaze rods.

Which come from the Nether. Gulp.

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Mood: Betrayed

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might as well start mining the obsidian to make a Nether portal while I’m down here.

Diamond pickaxe: check. Buckets of water: check. Now for some lava. There’s a sticky bubbling somewhere nearby – I grind through cobblestone and catch sight of a few orange drops plopping thickly through the block ahead. I hold my breath, carefully revealing a large pool of lava that could easily turn me into a chargrilled chump.

Dumping water on it creates obsidian, and I mine ten blocks to make my personal portal to hell.

I fancy that’s enough peril for one day, so it’s back up to the island for animal-breeding and a lovely meal of mutton. But it’s anarchy at Slaughterhouse V-eal: the cows rush at me when I open the gate.

I dole out justice via my new diamond sword, gaining some leather in the process. Furious, I storm of and begin making books 1; an enchanting table will be helpful once I’m up against the dragon. May this beautifully-bound tome serve as a lesson to you all, traitorous cows.

DAY 11 Mood: Reluctant

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eah, I could build the Nether today, but I’ve got no bow and, er… Mobs ‘R’ Us needs upgrading! It’s not attracted a single enderman 1 (only the married ones. Arf), so that most likely means it should be bigger and darker. Perhaps higher walls will block out more light and increase spawns: there are still more ender pearls to collect if I want a shot at finding that stronghold.

Time to build the portal? Well, um… you’ve got to stop and smell the roses at some point, right? I think I’ll just dawdle about the island. Admire the scenery. My mine needs a name 2. Very important work – crucial, actually. Right, that’s done.

Let me stop you there, before you ask about building that thing again, because Wilson has been woefully neglected as of late 3. We take a romantic stroll along the beach (well, he just sort of sits there and I walk around him). Alright, I’m procrastinating! Can you blame me?

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DAY 10

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know, I know. I’ve got to do it. Putting together a Nether portal is dismally simple: a vague rectangle of obsidian and death. With my flint and steel, I light that sucker up, and all manner of unsettling noises emanate from the infernal dimension beyond. A shudder runs through me.

There’s no reason to panic. Sure, I’ve only got one life, and there’s a chance I could spawn right into lava… I shake that thought of, thinking of those much-needed blaze rods, and decide to get practical.

Iron armour on, diamond gear ready, plenty of food, buckets of water, torches: I kit out my hotbar with all the essentials. Obviously, Wilson gets a spot – if we go down, we go down together.

Hopefully it’ll be a largely uneventful trip. I step into the portal. I’ve got a solid set of armour, a diamond sword 1, and the most powerful weapon of all: friendship. What could go wrong?

DAY 13 Mood: Unlucky

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PDATE: EVERYTHING GOING WRONG, EVERYTHING ON FIRE. Whilst I haven’t spawned into lava, it’s all over the place 1: flowing in waterfalls from the ceiling; gurgling ominously below my narrow pathways in vast lakes; setting fire to the Netherrack underneath my feet. Each step could be my last. I grip Wilson tightly. In my head he let out a reassuring sigh. Only in my head, mind.

Focusing on my goal of finding a Nether fortress, and therefore blazes, I sneak past many a zombie pigman. The search is fruitless. I lose track of time, and, convinced I hear the creepy wheezing of blazes, dash of into the distance. Nothing – and now I’m totally lost.

Just when I conclude that it might be a good time to build a base somewhere, a massive black blob comes hurtling at me at speed 2. A giant magma cube?! Really, Nether? Wait… Does this mean that there might be a fortress around here? 3

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Mood: Help me

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hat happened? What day is it? Ugh, I must have been knocked out by that magma cube. The fortress! I was close! I spin around, but everything feels unfamiliar.

For instance, there certainly wasn’t a gang of zombie pigmen surrounding me before. As I search for a way out of the ambush zone, a friendly-looking light flickers in the distance 1. I squint at it.

Next thing I know, it smacks me square in my flammable face.

UNFRIENDLY LIGHT. GHAST FIREBALL. It’s too dark to make out the weird floating mob, but I can hear its harrowing demon-baby cooing as it rapid-fires at me. I’ve got no bow to shoot it with, and my health is dipping fast, so I swing my sword wildly in an efort to deflect its projectiles back at it. The zombie pigmen find this to be highly impolite 2, and decide that my immediate evisceration is fair punishment. The ghast finishes me of with a fireball. I’m dead. Cooked like a well done steak 3. Slaughterhouse V-eal will love the irony.

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SUPER SURVIVING

Making your world work better for you

h, those first nights in Survival mode. Fond memories of huddling in your fresh new dirt hovel, waiting patiently for the sun to rise and hoping nothing and no one notices you. Just like a real holiday. It’s no wonder a home to call your own is the primary mission for most, but it can be overwhelming to think about how to put together your perfect dwelling.

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A well equipped house is the key to surviving, of course – but you don’t want to just survive, you want to thrive! You want to be ready to take on the world, well armed, well fed, and well supplied. And when you do, you want to win. Well don’t worry you brave survivor, help has arrived.

It’s no big deal that everyone has their own favourite set-up – diversity is the spice of life after all – but it’s fair to say there are some essentials that basically any super secret awesome base

can benefit from. Whether you’re carved into the mountainside or nested in the jungle treetops, at least some of these ideas are going to apply.

This isn’t your basic must-have checklist though; this is about making something good, and then making something even better. There are some cool builds ready to take you from surviving chump to thriving champ. They may take a bit of preparation, but they are all pretty resource friendly – you’re not made of redstone, after all.

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LET’S TALK HOUSES Where does a house begin? Walls seem like a good idea: and if one set of walls is good, then another must be better! A second wall ofers extra protection between you and things that want to blow a hole through your kitchen.

If you have the patience, go three or four deep to increase the chance that the inner side survives an explosion if it has to. Stone isn’t a rare resource, after all, so go big and go bold. Don’t forget an overhang to stop spiders, too - you won’t regret it.

Speaking of easy oversights, do check all your doors are button or pressure pad operated. That way there are never any nasty surprises waiting inside thanks to a door accidentally left open… what, were you born in a barn? No pressure pads outside though. That’s pretty much just inviting mobs into your home (they’re so not welcome).

So you’ve got a maximum security setup now, but what do you fill your empty shell with? Everything! If you can craft, smelt, cook

Thirdly, let there be light. There’s nothing worse than cosying up in a home that turns into a monster party house after sundown. Get those corners lit! If you’re not into the bright glow of lamps permanently on, why not create yourself some nightlights? These work well for brightening the outside of your home during the night hours only – just pop a daylight sensor on top of your lamp and right-click it into night mode. Cosy!

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or brew it, there should be a room in your house set up for that purpose, preferably as easily as possible. Hard work is for chumps!

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Here’s an example: why bother brewing by hand like it’s still the Dark Ages? Instead, dedicate an entire room of your palatial retreat to brewing for you. For each potion, set up a stack of dispensers for potion

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ingredients, a chest to pass them through, and then link everything up with hoppers. Now you can simply slam a button every time you want healing potions, and there’s now absolutely no fiddling in your

inventory to get in the way of your hefty brewing marathon. Sounds dandy to us.

Feeling safe and sound in your home now? Good, then it’s time to take it to the next level.

Portcullis

Alright, so obviously you’ve got a great wall set up now. It might even be the best wall ever made, but you do need to get in and out of it. You could just

craft an iron door and a button and be done, but is that thinking big enough? No, it isn’t. But a portcullis gatehouse absolutely is. At two blocks high you can

ride a horse right through without dismounting, which makes it a clear winner over a basic door. Plus, you’ll always get to make a more dramatic entrance.

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Making this fancy feature isn’t too hard. Dig down and layer your sticky pistons, pistons, and gravity afected blocks. Now wire these up as shown to make your gate opening mechanism. Above, you need only basic pistons to push the gate

back down into place afterwards. Both mechanisms are connected up behind buttons, and then the whole system can get covered by a fancy gateway so your wiring doesn’t get messed with. It’s a thing of quite beautiful simplicity!

Moat and Drawbridge 2

It’s certainly a well protected perimeter now. But wait, there’s more! Adding a moat around your base not only keeps mobs far enough from your wall that you can pick them of with a bow and arrow, but also makes you feel like a feudal lord in an actual fortress – always a bonus. We get it though; you don’t want to be slowly sloshing your way home through a puddle, and a bridge would bring the mobs right to your door.

“ADDING A MOAT AROUND YOUR BASE KEEPS MOBS AT BAY”

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Luckily there’s a solution. Simply dig into the bottom of your moat, line up a bridge of sticky pistons, and wire them through an XOR gate to make sure you can raise and lower the drawbridge from either side. Now you can walk safely over your water (or lava, if you’re an evil genius sort), then drop the drawbridge back into the floor unseen. If you really want to hide it, build earth or leaves around the levers, and carry a bucket of whatever you chose to smooth the liquid surface over when the bridge is lowered. Sneaky!

This one is dug underneath the main house like a bunker, but you could put it anywhere. The build takes advantage of the diferent positions of items in frames, producing diferent strengths of redstone current. You need to choose your password before wiring the lock up, so make sure you remember it! Once you’ve set your password by rotating items in frames, you wire them three together and run the redstone to an iron door. If you’ve got the obsidian to spare for building a small room and corridor, then the password is the only way to get in without breaking down the door.: perfect for hiding your secret stash of stuf in multiplayer.

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Garbage disposal

Alright, so you’ve put all the hard work in and what you’re left with is a super secure and sturdy house… as well as an inventory full of dirt from all the foundation holes you’ve been digging. It’s a pain, but there is a solution, of course. You could

stand and manually empty your pockets into a lava pit, but you know better than that. If it can be automated, it should be automated, and waste disposal is no diferent. You’ve got the skills now, so get automating!

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Password locked room 3

FARMING YOUR LAND Every weary explorer needs a good meal, and farming is less bother than the hunter gatherer life. One sneaky solution is to let villagers do the work for you. Once you find a village ready to be taken advantage of, you’ll need a farm and two unlucky slave...er, we

Farming isn’t just about food, of course. Wood is an easily farmed resource with 1000 uses (maybe more, you can count if you like). It may seem like an unusual choice, but consider growing your tree farm under a ceiling – you can only chop

mean villagers. Fence one into a farm, and at the end of the farm place a hopper above a chest. Trap another villager in a hole behind the hopper, and the farmer will try to throw food to the other. Your hopper should steal the chucked grub and deposit it in the chest. Thanks, villagers!

wood so high, so put in a ceiling of glass to stop trees growing out of your reach, saving you some tree climbing time. It’s all about the simple life, and time spent arranging stuf now will save you loads of hassle and hard work later on.

If your daily bread is sorted and you’re ready to farm harder, then it’s time to step up.

Excess food can be stored up for later eating, and you can never really have enough wood.

Self farming cactus is an easy one, due to the pop-of efect of the blocks when growing next to a filled space. Grow your cacti underneath a grid of floating blocks. Place a little river to sweep your popped cactus gently downstream into a hopper and a chest, and your cactus will happily farm itself. Clever cactus!

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So see what you can do about learning some new fangled farming skills, and let the farm itself do all the work for you. You’ll be able to live like landed gentry. Hurrah!

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Small stacking crop farm

Low on space in your enclosure? Forget about traditional farming, and think upwards. If it can be stacked, then go ahead and get stacking! A basic two-wide farm setup stacks excellently, and you can

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reduce farming time by automating the process with water (you will need to replant by hand, though, so leave doors for access). Follow the layout shown for each layer of farm, and use a redstone torch tower

around the back to reach the upper levels. When the button at the front is pushed, the dispensers let their water go and harvest for you. Simplicity on a shelf – if only it could do the eating for you too…

Chicken farm

Chicken is a delicious resource, and if you’re picking the mobs of from atop your castle walls then a handy supply of arrow feathers isn’t bad either. Easy is always good, so why not link a dispenser up to a hopper system, stick in a lava-based

chicken-death-pit, and then spit their precious resources straight into a chest. Make sure to set the repeater to the right position before you fill up your chicken cube, otherwise your dispenser will just be jamming items fullspeed into the lava burn zone.

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Sheep breeding and meat farm

Chickens aren’t the only animal in town who can be penned into a surprisingly small space and harvested in a slightly horrific way: sheep are pretty useful to have around for both food and wool, the versatile little mites, so they get the autofarm treatment too. A two compartment system with a dispenser of wheat

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and a dispenser of lava means that you can wire up one button to get the breeding started, and when the babies have scooted across the tiny gap to the other side and grown up, it’s button number two for the lava death drop. You absolute monster, you.

The windows in the chicken and sheep autofarm

Automatic dye farming

It may not be the most necessary resource in your world, but this little trick merits mentioning. Setting up a square of dispensers around your two-high plant, firing bonemeal at it will force it to duplicate at high speed, stacking up the dye swatches

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mean you can make sure the machine is working once you’ve built it, but if you’d rather not see 20 baby lambs engulfed in flames then feel free to use an opaque block instead. Everyone will understand.

(Also: definitely never shove animals in a crate in real life. Or burn them with fire. That’s definitely bad.)

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at the flick of a switch. Making the redstone clock underneath is a noisy business, but for an inventory full of dye in mere seconds, it’s worth bearing in mind. Be aware of how much bonemeal this machine uses though. It’s a lot. So much.

Well, you’ve conquered the land, and made it work for you – now the world below the surface awaits your expansion. Running through your tunnel system is dark, dangerous, and not very

First of, a little railway safety 101: if you have the resources, create an outgoing and an incoming line! It may be twice the work, but if you’re playing

interesting. Thankfully, railways exist, and they’re here to solve all your problems. Well, most of them. Mainly the ones that involve travelling on rails. But that’s enough to get started on, right? Good! Let’s go.

multiplayer then you’ll avoid any inconvenient crashes, and it means you can put a stopping point at the end of the line – that way there will be

A stopping point can be as simple as dropping the cart into a little dip in the ground – but to avoid any pile up of carts it’s easy to automatically break and deposit them once you step out. Place some cactus behind a hopper, and your cart will break and get stored on arrival. If your line is carrying people rather than items, don’t power the rail with a torch, but instead use a pressure plate activated when you walk away.

no carts accidentally racing of back the way you came and leaving you stranded. Unlike loved ones or evil cats, a stopped cart will never abandon you.

To get to a stopping point, the cart has to start somewhere!

A launching dock helps to make a lonely hole in the ground feel more like a proper train station. Plus, it also saves you the awkward shuffle of trying to get your minecart going, and means you don’t have to carry one around with you all the time. Link up your dispenser full of minecarts to one button, and your starting powered rail to another, then with two button pushes you’re of into the depths, fuss free. All aboard!

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DIGGING DOWN AND BRANCHING OUT

“THERE’S A RAILWAY EMPIRE WAITING FOR YOU TO BUILD IT” The third and final point is a waypoint – a dip to stop the cart, linked to a switching rail – so you can decide which way to go, then head of again. Just use a powered rail in the hole and a button to the side, so you can leave when you’ve chosen your destination. It’s better than real trains, and much cheaper.

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Small scale elevator

If you’re mining for the good stuf, you’re probably doing it across a whole bunch of diferent levels. You’re not some layabout who has time for stairs and ladders though; you’re a busy mining tycoon who needs an elevator (or seven).

This version is fairly redstone light, using water and boats instead – good for

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You’ve got all the options open now, but there’s a railway empire waiting to be built. Ramp up your industrial revolution and build some helpful machines to get you going places. You can run subterranean lines right across your environment, or just a handy short one to get to the cupboard. The choice is yours.

short distances, although a little awkward to use. Because, y’know, boats. You might have to play around a little with how you place the boat to make sure you dismount at the appropriate place, but this is quick to build and very compact, making it a fine addition to any healthy mineshaft system.

Automatic smelter

Now you’re down in the depths and ready for rails, you’re going to need an awful lot of iron and gold. What have you learnt so far? That’s right: Automate Everything, Always.

To get this furnace going, hopper fuel in from a chest to the side, and ore from a chest above. When the finished items are hoppered out of the bottom, shove them upwards through droppers and into a third chest. Can you smelt what the rock is cooking?

Automatic cart filling station 3

If you’re filling up your inventory far from home and then sending it back in minecarts, here’s some good news. You can build a station that fills up the cart from a hopper until it’s out of space, then shoots it away. The comparator is linked up as shown, to the powered rail on one side, and the new cart dispenser on the other.

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The powered rail will light up when the hopper stops doing its thing and send the full cart away. The dispenser will check if the hopper still has items in, and if so, spit

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a new cart into place. (Make sure to set the repeater to the right position though, so that the dispenser has enough time to reset.) Easy!

Empty cart safety rail

Powered rails are great invention, but the sight of the empty carts whizzing of into the distance without you is frustrating. Fear not! You can build in a safety mechanism that means your cart will never again leave without you. You simply need to adapt your launching pad from before. You need a trip wire strung across the exit, set to trigger the rail switch.

An empty cart will pass under it, loop around to the side, and be shot up into a cart breaking endpoint where it returns to the chest. A cart with you inside it will trigger the trip wire, switching the rail and allowing you to make your journey! How clever is that? That was a rhetorical question. It’s really clever.

Of course, these are all small scale improvements

to your day to day living. Don’t just stop with these suggestions! The more resources you get your hands on, the better and brighter your future.

Experiment, learn and make life easier for yourself. In the meantime we’ll be here, knee-deep in redstone, working out how to automate our automating systems. Does that make sense? Probably not.

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SAVANNA D

enoted by the flat topped acacia trees dotted about its flat landscape, Savannas are a one stop shop for the budding equestrian. It’s one of the only locations in the game, alongside plains, where horses will spawn naturally. It would make a fitting place to set up a home base, especially if you can find a village to trade with (or to steal harvest from, you wrong ’un).

Generally speaking savannas are flatter than your average biome, although you can get a hybrid savanna/plateau, too.

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KNOW YOUR BIOMES

Things to do in a savanna: 1) Ride horses. 2) Say “Yee-haw!” 3) Walk like you’re desperate for the toilet (ie: like a cowboy).

They might not be the tallest trees going, but the acacias you find here make for excellent treehouse building material.

Gather up a load of the wood planks here, and carry them to a jungle for optimal Ewok village construction.

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HOW TO

BEAT MINECRAFT’S HARDEST MAPS Survival tips for Complete The Monument maps, said to be Minecraft’s ultimate challenge.

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kay, you’re using the right version. You’ve read the rules. What now? If there’s a chest near your spawn, make sure to collect everything you can carry. If you can, take the chest as well. Just like at your real house, storage space is always useful. Your first job is to set up a base camp from which you can venture out into the world. The best place to make camp is near the monument itself. That’s the central point of the world, and a place you’ll be returning to often.

Build your camp the way you’d build any shelter: ensuring it’s well lit and safe from monsters. If you can, fence of the area to ensure you can work any farms or crops you might build without fear of a surprise attack.

Take your time, and don’t be tempted to head out until you’re fully prepared. Complete The Monument map dungeons are some of the most difficult you’re going to face, and so proper preparation is the key to survival.

As with any Minecraft home, your base camp should contain a crafting table, chests and a furnace. You’ll also want a bed so you can respawn in safety should anything unfortunate happen while you’re gathering materials.

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READ THE RULES W

e know, right? The whole point of most Complete The Monument maps is that they give you more freedom than adventure maps. But, as with any community-made thing, even these maps are designed to provide a specific experience. Following the map’s rules will help you get the most out of that experience, even if it’s just making sure that you’re using the suggested difficulty setting.

More than that, the map’s readme file or installation instructions will tell you what version of Minecraft to use. While maps will still work with the current version, they’re often balanced around the features available at the time the map was created. If you’re using the PC version of Minecraft, you can rollback to an older version through the launcher. Create a new profile, and, in the editor, click the ‘User Version’ drop down list to select the map’s preferred setting.

Oh, and no. You can’t use dyes to create your own coloured wool blocks.

That’s just cheating!

MAKING FOOD o complete your base camp, you’ll need a reliable source of food. While carrots and potatoes make for an easy-to-plant crop farm, they can be difficult to find. Wheat seeds are easier to harvest, although the crop must be made into bread before it can be consumed. The benefit of either carrots or wheat is that they can be used to breed pigs or cows respectively.

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Ultimately, you’ll want an animal farm.

Cooked meat replenishes a large portion of your hunger bar, and can be essential to surviving dungeons. Create a fenced-of area in your base camp, and should you come to a cow, pig or mooshroom, use either wheat or a carrot to lure them back to your pen.

With two or more, you can start breeding, ensuring a healthy herd that can provide a large supply of tasty life-giving meat.

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BUILDING A CAMP

STEADY AS YOU GO C

WINNING A FIGHT f you’re running through corridors, you’re always in danger of being overwhelmed by mobs. Even the odds by using cobblestone to create a blockade. Create a single-block high barrier at about head height across the entire width of the corridor. Not only will monsters not be

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able to reach you – giving you time to rest and recover – but you’ll be able to take them out in safety by attacking their feet with your melee weapons. Once you’ve cleared out an area, you can break down the barrier and push further in, setting up a new blockade as more enemies appear.

TM makers love filling their dungeons with large, dark areas, or rooms filled with spawners. Remember: you’re free to craft and destroy at will, and slowly turn the situation to your advantage. Illuminate areas with torches as you travel through them, both to ensure that no mobs can spawn behind you, and to mark out the zones that you’ve previously travelled through.

If you’re dealing with spawners, consider tunnelling towards them to disable them from below. Either that, or fill your bucket with lava and use this to clear out a room in relative safety. You don’t have kill every enemy in a fair fight. Be creative!

PACKING UP ongratulations, you’ve got a fully functioning base camp. That’s just the first step, though.

Now you’ll need to actually head into the world, tackling the map’s dungeons and challenges for those precious blocks of wool. If you’re heading into a dangerous area, you’re better of travelling light. You will most probably die attempting to complete a CTM map’s hardest areas, and losing lots of equipment and materials can be a big setback.

Make sure you have the following: a couple of swords, pickaxes and bows, a bunch of arrows and torches, some armour, a bucket, flint and steel, and any potions you may have found or brewed – particularly health or regeneration potions. A stack of cheap building blocks like dirt or cobblestone can also be useful. If you have a long distance to travel before reaching the dungeon, consider bringing a bed. You can always create a small outpost at the entrance, giving you a forward spawn point away from the main base.

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WATCH OUT FOR TRAPS ind where you’re walking. If you’re in a room filled with sand or gravel, it probably means that it’s a trap.

Place a block or torch on the surface and the entire room could fall away into a monster trap, or, worse, a lava pit. Always know the quickest exit route, and, if you do have to place a block, try to jump onto it as it’s placed.

If you use dirt or cobblestone, it will hang

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in the air – letting you build a bridge back to safety. Another devious trick involves silverfish. Map makers will sometimes create corridors full of silverfish eggs. Break one, and the critter will attack you. Hit it, and more will spawn until you’re overrun. The best defence is to kill it instantly to avoid triggering new spawn – either with a fully charged bow, or by setting it on fire.

ESCAPE THAT ROOM gh, mazes are the worst.

And CTM mapmakers love them. You’ll find a few bedrock mazes along your travels, and many will be filled with ample amounts of monster spawners and other nasty things. To get through them, pick the left or right side and simply hug the wall as you travel your way around – placing torches as you go. It’ll take a while, but you’ll make it eventually.

Don’t worry too much about the monsters, either. They’re also pretty bad at mazes. They get confused by all the corners, letting you easily attack them while they’re stuck in a corner, aimlessly hopping at a wall.

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THE BEST COMPLETE THE MONUMENT MAPS A top five countdown of our favourite CTM adventures…

5 UNCHARTED TERRITORY III

A beautiful and massive map from Amlup’s Uncharted Territory series. It starts out relatively gently, but gets progressively harder as you go along. The map features custom monsters, and has plenty of hidden traps to avoid as you journey across the world in search of the 16 coloured wool blocks.

The standout moment has got to be the Hypercharged section. It’s an obsidian maze absolutely packed full of creeper spawners.

That would be bad enough, but many of these creepers have been souped-up to be faster and even more deadly than ever. It can be tough going, especially if you’re playing solo. Luckily, their massive explosions will help destroy spawners. www.bit.ly/MineCTM1

4 FROM ASHES

Never mind survival, From Ashes is just an all-around great map to gaze at in wonder.

It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world, and features a giant, open map filled with the ruins of a once great civilisation. To get the most out of From Ashes, you should use the included texture pack. It really makes the environment feel like a world gone wrong.

There is, of course, still a vast number of things to do there. There are 16 trap-filled dungeons to conquer, custom loot to find, unique mobs to kill, story books to find and villagers to trade with. Wowsers! www.bit.ly/MineCTM2

3 RAGECRAFT 2: INSOMNIA

Ragecraft does things you wouldn’t think possible in a Minecraft map. Like Uncharted Territory, it’s got custom monsters, but the diference here is that they’re tied to some truly terrifying moments. It’s a combatfocused map, but with a twisted emphasis on horror and hallucinations.

The stand out section comes during a dungeon called Fear Of The Dark. You’re told that when “it” happens, you need to hide.

It refers to a shrill shriek, and temporary blindness for your character. When it happens, make sure you’re safely locked away in a room to the side, or the ghostly apparitions will instantly get you. www.bit.ly/MineCTM3

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Vechs’ Super Hostile Series helped popularise the CTM map genre. As the name suggests, they’re punishingly dificult – ofering up plenty of tough challenges for adventuring experts. Spellbound Caves is probably the easiest to get started with, although it’s still harder than most maps you’ll encounter. There are 10 dungeons to tackle, each filled with potions and enchanted loot.

Be particularly wary of the University of Arcane Enchantments, which contains blaze and ghast spawners that can quickly get out of hand. Bring buckets filled with water and, if you can find the ingredients, try brewing up some fire resistance potions. www.bit.ly/MineCTM4

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DIVERSITY Diversity works slightly diferently to other CTM maps. Rather than a survival-based adventure through multiple dungeons, each of Diversity’s rooms is diverse… er, varied. It’s a best-of collection of map types, with every room taking you to a diferent type of Minecraft map.

For instance, there’s a map inspired by Dropper, in which you must fall elegantly past a series of hazards. You’ll also find a huge parkour challenge, a boss room, a puzzle map and, yes, a survival challenge.

If you want to complete Diversity, you’ll need to be an expert at every kind of challenge that Minecraft can ofer. www.bit.ly/MineCTM5

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2 SPELLBOUND CAVES

ICE PLAINS

It never rains, it pou… actually, it never rains but snows in this biome.

We’re not fans, if we’re honest…

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KNOW YOUR BIOMES

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ou can get snow on hilltops and in colder regions in general, but you’ll know a true tundra when you see it. Large, flat and near empty of wood and life, staying alive may be quite a challenge. Oddly beautiful spikes of packed ice can form here, though these are incredibly rare. Water sources, such as rivers and sea fronts, will also freeze over here.

You’ll need a silk touch enchantment to harvest packed ice, and its use is fairly limited outside of building materials. The good news is it won’t melt in sunlight, however.

If you do need to cross an ice plains biome, even if just for exploratory purposes, it’s worth setting up bases as you go and taking food with you.

There’s little to be found here, and these biomes are usually fairly expansive.

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REDSTONE BUILDING GUIDE Breakout builds to refine your redstone skills…

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Mastering the rosy art of redstone can help you construct all kinds of cool contraptions.

ow a wise man once said – when you are tired of building in Minecraft, you are tired of life. But once you’ve built one gigantic tower and mined down to the bedrock, what else is there for you to do?

Maybe it’s time for your Minecraft world to have an industrial revolution that sees you bringing powerful redstone creations to life. This can be hard work – we’ve failed repeatedly in our early attempts to learn redstone circuitry. But if you’re experienced at building then you

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SUGARCANE AUTO-FARM

should find these guides easy to follow. We made all these wonders in Creative mode so we had perfect conditions to build, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it you should take them across into your survival world and use them to make your life easier.

To build it all you’re going to need wood, sand, stone and plenty of redstone. Most should be easy to find, but for redstone you’re going to need to dig deep. Good luck, and don’t be afraid to experiment with these designs – we’ve chosen simple machines to ease you in, but there are a lot of diferent combinations. Feel free to go wild!

THE SECRET DOOR

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THE HORSE TESTER

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SUGARCANE AUTO-FARM

COMPONENTS For this project you’ll also need these

The sugarcane farm is not only a great introduction to redstone, but to automatic farming as well.

Farming provides you with plenty of valuable materials, but requires an awful lot of upkeep, so an auto-farm is great to let you concentrate on the more important things in life.

Place a row of eight sand and a row of eight wood parallel to each other, with an empty row in between. Place a filler block between the two rows and use your bucket to fill the middle channel with water.

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Build a two block high wall behind the row of sand, then climb up onto the row of sand.

Layer eight pistons along the top of your wall, followed by a second layer of eight pistons again.

You should be left with a four block high wall, topped with pistons.

These pistons are your farming implements, responsible for chopping down your sugarcane when it hits the right length. Isn’t science wonderful?

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At the open end of your water channel, leave the three end blocks empty and place a wooden block at each side. Burrow four blocks down in the empty three spaces, and at the top, set a

4 Behind your newly formed piston wall, build yourself another line of blocks three spaces from the ground. This row should be directly behind the pistons.

Now run another line of blocks eight across two blocks above the one you just built.

If you’ve done it right, there should be a one block gap between the two, and the upper piston row’s back should be exposed.

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Iron fencing Redstone torches Double-chest Water bucket (with water) Hopper Tripwire hook String (for tripwire)

tripwire across the opening of the channel.

You’re nearly ready to wire this whole area up. As redstone doesn’t tell you when you’ve done anything wrong, make sure your build looks exactly like the photo.

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Extend those shelves that you made earlier by one in the direction of the torches (see image 5 for an example of the shelving), then cover the bottom shelf in redstone dust, and on the top shelf place a repeater. Set the repeater to the fourth position before filling the rest of the shelf with even more redstone dust.

You can go ahead and plant the sugarcane now too – just place a single one of each in each of the sand blocks and mentally prepare yourself to become a sugar baron.

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We’re nearly there! Just a few finishing touches to go. Now above your water channel, build an iron fence directly in front of the places where the sugarcane will grow. This is to stop the pistons from pushing the sugarcane out of the machine or over the water channel to a soggy death.

The last step is to hop into the bottom of the hole at the end of the channel. Place your chest at the bottom, leave one space above the chest empty so it will open, and place the hopper above it at the end of the water stream.

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How it works As your sugarcane grows, it will trigger the pistons to push out and break it, causing it to fall into the water channel. When it hits the water channel it'll flow to the end and trigger the tripwire that you strung across the stream earlier, which will retract the pistons. Then it will fall via the hopper into your chest for you to collect later on.

Because sugarcane will always grow to three blocks tall as long as there's the space to do so, it won't require replanting to grow, and the pistons will trigger again and again as soon as it hits its full height. Magic farming!

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Put a piece of redstone dust on top of the wooden block holding the tripwire on the piston side of your channel, then go one block out and one up. Place another wooden block with a redstone torch on top. Then another wooden block, then another torch. Then another wooden block after that. On the backwards facing side of the first and third wooden blocks, place redstone torches, they’ll be diagonally above the shelves.

THE SECRET DOOR

COMPONENTS For this project you’ll also need these

Let’s try something a little bit more advanced now. Have you ever wanted to have a truly secret base to keep your loot free from friends/enemies/everyone ever? The secret door is the answer. It’s totally undetectable unless they accidentally mine through it, and it adds a touch of class to any building.

First, cut away one corner of your room next to the empty doorway you want to convert into the hidden door. We’ll need space to work while building this side of the contraption. On the outside of your room, diagonally from the

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A room to build the hidden door in Some space around the room (we recommend building the room in mountain for a true Evil Lair feel) Minecart tracks Minecart A button Detection rail Redstone torches Two sticky pistons

corner block, place two floor level blocks, and then two steps upwards to follow.

Placement of this needs to be perfect because we’re taking advantage of the fact you can push a minecart on a diagonal block. So be careful as you go.

On your impromptu staircase you’re going to need to place a rail, a detector rail, then two more rails. We didn’t do this, but to make sure that your minecart never derails, once the curve banks upwards you can remove the last piece of rail and put a block there instead to act as a kind of bufer, a bit like on real railways.

Place your minecart on the rails in the corner and rebuild your side wall at the lowest point, leaving a gap at two blocks high. Walk into the rails and make sure that the minecart can be easily pushed along them. Seal up the wall in identical blocks to the rest of the room, so as not to give anything away. It’s a secret door, remember…

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Place a redstone torch on the side of the detector rail, facing your empty doorway. Check the picture for the exact placement, because you’ll need this to be right to open and shut the door.

Go to your doorway and place a sticky piston two blocks down facing upwards and one pointing the opposite direction two blocks upwards. Place a block on each piston – again, of the same type as the rest of the wall or your undetectable door is going to get very detectable.

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the signal between the top piston and the soon-to-be-secret door.

Your bottom piston can run flat along the ground, although remember that it will need one block of space to work, so you can't put the floor directly on top of it. If you want to dig it lower, remember to step it back up towards the torch, one block at a time.

Place a button in your corridor behind the door.

This will open your door from the inside so that you can get back out into the room once your secret door seals behind you.

Link it to the side of the torch with a line of redstone, along with a repeater that is set to four. This will ensure that you have enough time to get back through the door before it closes and avert any potential trapping issues.

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The hard part is all done, so now comes the sneaky part. You need to conceal all of your engineering work so far, making sure that the mechanism and all traces of your wiring are hidden.

If your wiring is being concealed by the top layer of a hill or clif, you’ll want to make sure that the ground above it is uneven, so that it looks like a natural hill.

However, if you’re building deep underground then this isn’t quite so important.

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How it works By walking into the corner of the room you’ll now be able to push the minecart up onto the detector plate, despite the corner looking flawless as above.

When the hidden minecart rides up over the detector rail, it activates the redstone torch which sends a signal to the pistons, getting them to retract the door and allowing you inside.

A short time later, the detector rail deactivates and the door will shut. Simple. As. That.

From the inside, hitting the button will serve the same purpose as the detector rail, but less secretly. Pushing it will let you outside before shutting the door a little while later.

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Now it's time to link your pistons to the detector rail, using the redstone torch and dust.

Now you need to link up the top and bottom pistons to the torch, but because redstone can only travel up one block at a time, you'll need to build a set of steps for the redstone trail to run down in order to carry

THE HORSE TESTER There’s a good chance some of you didn’t even realise the horses in Minecraft had variable speeds – we certainly didn’t until fairly recently. That’s why you need a horse tester. This is surprisingly complex, and can be a good introduction to some of the weirder things you can build in Minecraft.

Autofarming? Sounds like a great idea. A hidden door? Cool! A machine that tests how fast your horse can run so that you’re riding the fastest horse for miles around? Neigh on ridiculous. But let’s do it anyway.

COMPONENTS For this project you’ll also need these A horse of unknown speed Two hoppers Two pressure plates Redstone torches Pulse limiters More redstone torches Two sticky pistons Hopes & dreams

Make a track 57 blocks long. Make sure the ground is flat. If you want it to look the part, dig up the track and put down some wood or wool to make the track look unique to the space around it.

That done (or not), place a pressure plate at each end of the track, with 13 Redstone dust from each side of the pressure plate moving towards the centre of the track.

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Where each line of redstone dust ends, place a block, then a repeater (facing towards the middle of the track), and then another block.

On the first block you placed, add a redstone torch on the side furthest from the track. On the second block, place a torch on the front. Join the two torches together with a line of redstone dust. This is a little tricky to explain with words, but as long as it looks something like the picture above you’ll be good to go. These are your pulse limiters.

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Mirror this action on the other side, with your second pulse limiter facing inwards too. Lay a line of redstone dust between the front torches of each pulse limiter. This will join the entire track up with redstone. In the centre block of the redstone dust line, place a repeater facing away from the track. Create a four block L-shape in front of the repeater – you’ll want a block on the floor right in front of the repeater, then two more in front of that, but one block up. The fourth block is on the right hand side of the last block in the line. Add a redstone torch to both sides at the end of the L, and then a sprinkling of redstone dust on top of all four blocks. We’ll be using more screenshots for the next part, as the positioning is a little more delicate and tricky to explain.

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piece of redstone dust behind the empty space. The pistons will move the Redstone block between these two positions, which will act as a switch, as the redstone dust will automatically be active when the redstone block is shifted into place behind it.

Make a line of redstone from the piece you just placed, and lead it of to the side of your new switch. Connect it to a sticky piston, and place a redstone block in front of the piston. Looky here, you’re making another switch! Don’t forget to leave a space for the redstone block to be pushed into when the piston extends, and then place another one.

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Behind the unconnected redstone block and the empty space place two hoppers that are connected to each other. Hold Shift while placing the hoppers to connect them to each other rather than the redstone block. Finally, place a stack of items into the hopper behind the currently empty space, and voila, you have your horse measuring kit!

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How it works When the horse runs over the first pressure plate, the switch you built in the centre of the track will activate. That will light up the redstone trail to your third piston, shoving the redstone block in front of the hopper to activate it. The items will empty from one hopper to another until the second pressure plate flips the centre switch and shuts the process down. The fewer items in the second hopper, the faster the horse. How’s that for maths?

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Place a redstone block underneath the fourth block of the L, and leave the space underneath the third block empty. Place a sticky piston to the side of the redstone block and the empty space, both of them facing inwards. Now place a

Having a hard time seeing anything in the murky depths? You are not alone. Sort yourself out with the Clearwater mod to increase the general brightness.

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DEEP OCEAN I

t might initially appear similar to the regular ocean biome, but delve down into the depths and you’ll find potentially epic secrets within. In deep oceans, the sea bed can be upwards of 30 blocks deep, making navigation a real pain as light generally won’t travel down that far. We recommend a combo of a cracking quality helmet with the respiration enchantment, and the tactical use of air pocket creation for optimal exploratory options.

Deep ocean is the only biome where you’ll find ocean monuments. Be extra careful when exploring these as we’re talking endgame difficulty guardians to fight against here.

Carry an empty bucket and you’ll be able to scoop a block’s worth of water out from in front of you, giving you a quick hit of oxygen.

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AMAZING MINECRAFT ADVENTURE MAPS We show you many ways to admire the art and skills of the most creative crafters…

EXPAND YOUR GAME

HOW TO INSTALL ADVENTURE MAPS Once you’ve downloaded a map, copy the map file into your Minecraft save game directory. To find this, enter %appdata% into the search bar in the Windows start menu, and then look for the ‘saves’ folder inside .minecraft. If the download comes with a texture pack, move it to the ‘texturepack’ folder in .minecraft. Then when you next start Minecraft you’ll be able to choose the texture pack you need and load the map savegame normally.

Many adventure packs are designed to run with earlier versions of the game, but rolling back Minecraft is easy. In the Minecraft launcher in the bottom left corner you’ll see a ‘New Profile’ button. Click this, label the new profile after the version of Minecraft you want to run (ie. 1.4.2) and then select the version you want from the drop-down menu next to ‘Use version’. Whenever you want to run a map that uses an earlier version, select the relevant profile and you’ll be good to go.

WRATH OF THE FALLEN www.bit.ly/1HRBPN0 If you’re looking for a hack-and-slash challenge to take on with a pal, then Hypixel’s Wrath Of The Fallen is an excellent option, especially if you like your combat frenzied and fast-paced. Magic items like the devastating Venomhusk bow are there to be looted from WotF’s unique monsters. You’ll need them to face the colossal 20 foot zombie boss.

dventure maps are a showcase of the cleverest and most creative ideas the Minecraft community has to ofer. Many are complex enough to be considered as separate games that live inside Minecraft. There are puzzle maps that take hours to complete, parkour maps that challenge you to jump through twisting courses as quickly as possible, and there’s even a fully featured heist sim that has you infiltrating facilities and hacking keypads to steal treasure.

If that’s not your thing, why not take on the monster-infested dungeons of Wrath Of The Fallen, or enjoy the peaceful exploration of Revenge Of The Gods. The best bit? Most of these maps can be enjoyed with friends.

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ALIEN: A CRAFTER’S ISOLATION www.bit.ly/1ws48pG Perhaps the scariest game in this collection, A Crafter’s Isolation brings gritty sci-fi horror to Minecraft. Inspired by Alien: Isolation, the map spawns you in a dark facility populated by spidery facehuggers, killer androids and, of course, the alien itself.

The Xenomorph may be a repurposed horse model, but that doesn’t stop it from being oddly terrifying. Luckily you can bring a friend to share the fear. Eeek!

ESCAPECRAFT 3 www.bit.ly/1L1YlSi The latest and most accomplished of a trio of room-escape puzzle maps.

There are dozens of rooms to get out of and a couple of diferent endings to discover, but the main stars are the traps, which you can manipulate in a variety of satisfying ways.

Use fishing rods to activate distant switches, flood a room, or send the floor collapsing into an impromptu staircase. Be sure to install the included texture map, or the secret areas will be impossible to find.

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POKÉMON JOHTO www.bit.ly/1nOU1GB The worlds of Pokémon and Minecraft collide in this ever-growing adventure map from Blitzcrank. The Pokémon themselves are for the most part repurposed weapons, but there are some brilliant touches like the reskin that turns dogs into Eevees. Mostly, though, this just feels uncannily like a Pokémon world, especially if you use the special resource pack to alter the textures.

DIVERSITY www.bit.ly/1Cu45Tk

KINGDOM OF THE SKY www.bit.ly/1vsXfJP Another floating exploration map with over 100,000 downloads. This one uses YouTube videos to provide narration as you explore. This map is particularly notable for its beautifully constructed statues, a startling sense of scale, and some neat dungeon mechanics. Install the texture pack included with the download to get the most out of it, and roll Minecraft back to 1.4.7 before you start.

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This map has it all – parkour challenges, mobs to fight, boss battles in glass cages, puzzle rooms and more. You’re on a quest to recover blocks of coloured wool, but each colour is tied to one of the above flavours of adventure. It’s a good place to start, because it lets you sample a wide range of the Minecraft adventure genres out there in one go. You’ll have to use Minecraft version 1.7.4 to play this one.

EXPAND YOUR GAME

ANT FARM SURVIVAL www.bit.ly/1NYcyj0 An entire series of adventure maps with a clever twist. You’re a tiny man lost in an ant farm. Peer through the glass and the ordinary room beyond appears vast. This brilliant perspective trick makes a great backdrop for a game about forging a new life in your little glass world. Variants include Sky Ant Farm Survival which, as you’d expect, traps you in a new ant farm floating in the stratosphere.

GLORIA

WESTEROSCRAFT

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Don’t be misled by Gloria’s cramped island opening, this is one of the most celebrated adventure maps out there. It’s exceptionally well engineered, and makes creative use of redstone circuits to cleverly script events. A villager tells you that it looks like a storm’s on the way, and a few minutes later it starts to rain and you’re pulled into the island’s mysteries. Roll back to 1.6.4 to play, and install the included resource pack.

A great way to explore the world of Game of Thrones without getting your head chopped of. It uses so many custom blocks that it needs its own separate launcher. Once downloaded, you can use the starting town to warp to dozens of finely recreated locations from the series, including The Wall and a vast rendition of King’s Landing. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the series, it’s still a nice place to wander.

ASSASSIN’S CREEP www.bit.ly/1bkAEXB In conjunction with the Assassin’s Creed texture pack (www.bit.ly/1KTJFpV) this map creates a convincing facsimile of the first Assassin’s Creed’s dusty city streets. You’re not here to kill people (though you may have to if you anger the guards), instead this is a chance to test your parkour skills. Bound across rooftops as fast as you can to claim blocks of wool – the order has to train their assassins somehow!

BLACK LIGHT www.bit.ly/1pawype It’s a tough task to turn Minecraft into a horror game, but Black Light does just that with its Russian asylum. It’s set in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, so everything is grimy, grim and sparsely lit. You’re mostly wandering and finding out what happened, but you might not be able to shake the feeling that there’s something else in there with you...

MARIO GALAXY CRAFT www.bit.ly/1HRC1vu A cubist remake of one of the best Mario games ever made, this map lets you Mario your way through 28 galaxies worth of strange floating planets, space ships and rainbow roads. Expect to see lots of unusual floating builds in Galaxy Craft’s unpredictable universe, including a sad moon, a floating lava mountain and a floating pond world.

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DEEP SPACE TURTLE CHASE

MINE 4 DEAD www.bit.ly/1K7zJZL Minecraft has zombies already, so why not create Valve’s brilliant co-op zombie survival game Left 4 Dead? Mine 4 Dead’s landscape, overhauled by the included texture pack, turns the game into a desolate post-apocalyptic city, illuminated by fires and smeared in graffiti. Don’t admire the bombed out buildings for too long, as the zombie hordes are a constant pain and you need to reach the boat to make your escape.

ADVENTURE TIME ADVENTURE MAP www.bit.ly/1xXTQ6Q Prepare yourself for a truly mathematical adventure with this level based on some of the show’s greatest episodes. The Adventure Time texture pack (www.bit.ly/1dytOa2) does a good job of recreating the art style of Ooo, and it’s a fun way to visit Finn and Jake’s treehouse, the Candy Kingdom and the Ice King’s domain.

www.bit.ly/1HRC6Q3 “A tale of love, loss, and Michael Bay ’splosions” is how the creators describe this action-packed space-based adventure map, and the sequence in which you escape an exploding asteroid station on a ship certainly lives up to that billing. Be sure to follow all of the instructions on the download page if you want access to the custom soundscapes and textures.

HEROBRINE’S MANSION www.bit.ly/1F33Kl3 Notch has denied the existence of the infamous Minecraft ghost Herobrine, but we know better. Download this map to explore Herobrine’s massive evil house. There are six bosses and lots of enemies, so it’s best to take some friends in for backup. Be sure to explore as much as you can, as there are a bunch of secret rooms to find and items to loot. Make it far enough and you may even meet the dark spirit himself.

TREASURE HUNT

THE DROPPER www.bit.ly/1s3xQR0 Fall with style in this inventive base-jumping map. Each of The Dropper’s 16 levels starts with you standing on a hatch. Pull a switch and you’re dropped into huge free-fall zone. Avoid the trees rushing past, try not to hit the huge glass spiral and always keep an eye out for a life-saving block of water to catch your fall at the end. One to avoid if you’re afraid of heights!

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www.bit.ly/1TpONU3 A bunch of pirates have gotten themselves cursed again and left all their treasure hidden on an island in Bermuda. As an intrepid explorer (read: thief) you must find their stash, hidden somewhere in their mighty and not-entirely-abandoned fortress.

Beat the map’s greatest challenges and you’ll find some mighty fine booty – the legendary Atlantis Crystal.

REVENGE OF THE GODS www.bit.ly/1p4Ku2R Take a break from combat and jumping puzzles with this gorgeous, meditative exploration map full of epic builds, beautiful settings and the odd light puzzle. Don’t expect much in the way of story or context, but it’s great if you want to chill out near the tree of life for a while. Its creator claims the map has been downloaded a quarter-of-a-million times already. Will you make it 250,001?

SKYLANDS www.bit.ly/1dQ0oM2

THE CODE www.bit.ly/1m9zKis The first of a trilogy of excellent puzzle maps, The Code puts you into a corridor that links to a sequence of challenge chambers. Each contains a brain teaser that makes varied use of Minecraft’s wealth of switch and pressure plate mechanics to hide number codes. Write down answers on ingame paper and feed them into The Code’s machine to progress. The Code 1 requires Minecraft 1.6.4. The sequels should work on later versions.

A floating world that’s all about exploration and discovery. It’s huge.

Really huge. As in, one of the floating structures is a whole mountain range. There’s also a beach, an ascended forest, the celestial wastelands and a bunch of treasure huts and dungeons to find.

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TOY STORY 2 www.bit.ly/1jCKpCH Like Ant Farm Survival, this map does great things with scale. As a toy in the familiar Toy Story universe you have to navigate around your family’s huge house, which is rendered with joyful detail on a massive scale. Reach the garage and you’ll have to platform your way around the family’s blue car that you’ll recognise from the movie, and you’ll find other characters from the Toy Story universe hiding around the place as you explore.

STAR WARS www.bit.ly/1DMo2hX

SUNKEN ISLAND www.bit.ly/JQLlTP This started out as a simple build project and grew into a fully featured adventure map set on an island in a sunken patch of ocean. The island looks unlike any other, with its huge twin mountains, but dig deeper and you find that they hide a gorgeous underground city. If all that wasn’t good enough, there’s a story too, told by signs dotted throughout the world.

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This Hoth-themed level is worth a download just to test out the ace Mine Wars texture pack (download here: www.bit. ly/1eooGwf). It’s not a huge map, but it does let you wield a lightsaber (in either diamond or Sith red form) and take on squadrons of Storm Troopers. We can confirm that humming the Star Wars theme while you play makes it up to 10% better.

EXPAND YOUR GAME

TPC PARKOUR 2.2 www.bit.ly/1s8at9g 260 stages of tense speed-jumping puzzles spread across 27 stages, TPC Parkour 2.2 merges the creator’s earlier TPC project with a host of new levels to create a huge challenge. It really is tough. Expect to face plenty of platforms that can vanish underneath you if you don’t perfectly nail the correct timing. Making it through in good time feels amazing.

SURVIVAL ISLAND

THE HEIST

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When you first arrive on this tiny, empty patch of sand, it feels like there’s no way to survive the night, let alone build an empire. However, using ingenuity and a good knowledge of Minecraft’s crafting systems you can do extraordinary things.

The map’s loftiest challenges ask you to build an automated cactus farm and construct a two-storey house with 20 windows. It’s a really fun map to master.

More than 6000 command blocks were used to create this adventure map about pulling of the perfect robbery.

You can use some impressive toys to get the job done, like a Gameband that lets you see through walls, hack numpads and stun robot guards. The Heist even changes the health system into an alert bar. If it maxes out, the facility locks down and the robbery is over.

How cool is that?!

THE TOURIST www.bit.ly/1IOqpsb The Sacre Coeur Basilica of Montmarte makes for a spectacular introductory build to this atmospheric exploration map, which features over four hours of wandering and puzzles. There’s a melancholy tone to the abandoned post-apocalyptic towns you explore, a feeling that’s enhanced by The Tourist’s bespoke score. Come for the ambience, stay for the astonishing architecture.

STAIRCASE www.bit.ly/1xxirfb More a psychological experiment than an adventure, Staircase is based on a famous indie horror game called Never-ending Staircase. The premise is simple: proceed down the almost pitchblack staircase until you reach the end.

Simple, right? The horrible noises you start hearing as you walk complicate things, and the jump scares that lurk in wait may have you reaching for the escape key.

QUESTWORLD www.bit.ly/1G4c5vd If you’re going to be shipwrecked, you might as well crash into an island full of fascinating puzzles.

Questworld’s problems are all powered by a clever system of redstone wiring, and will take some consideration to beat. Your score is denoted by the number of diamonds you manage to collect, so be sure to look for the huge secret puzzle to complete the set.

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Before you start shearing mooshrooms for their red mushrooms, remember that once they’ve been shorn they’ll turn into regular old cows. Better to milk them (using a bowl) to get mushroom soup!

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Use an axe to take down these big ’shrooms. Don’t forget to replant any harvested mushrooms. You can use bone meal to grow them big again.

Mycelium grows on dirt like grass, but is better for growing mushrooms. You can’t till this stuff for farming normally, so bring some dirt blocks with you for a base.

MUSHROOM I

t’s not just the prospect of shroomy soup to cook up that makes the discovery of a mushroom biome a good thing. Hostile mobs won’t spawn here, even underground or at night, so this is an ideal place to build a base. You will need to bring your own livestock and seeds for farming, though. Mushroom biomes are always found near the ocean, often as isolated islands. Build a big home and invite friends to become a real fun guy…

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MAPS ENTERTAIN

H ey, you! Yes, you with the excellent bookazine and the weary expression.

Bored of wandering aimlessly through adventure landscapes? Tired of taking tours of other people’s huge, empty castles? Then do we have an opportunity for you. Two words: Extreme. Custom. Maps. Okay, that was three words – but these downloadand-play maps aren’t about tedious stuf like counting and safety. They’re about ACTION. That’s ACTION. Yeah.

And we’ve packed more action into these eight pages than Arnold Schwarzenegger riding a space rocket into the sun with a rucksackful of kung-fu penguins and fireworks strapped to his back. Oh, and he’s got roller skates on.

Hold onto your diamond helmets, because these custom maps don’t let up. Whether it’s hardcore parkour in dangerous locations, crazy brainteasers that test everything you thought you knew about your grey matter, or survival situations that’d make even Bear Grylls beg to be airlifted home to his mummy, 15 of the very best are right here.

Newbie or not, there’s something for every kind of player – we’ve even divided them up into three useful categories for you. How terribly nice of us. Kick of 2016 with a bang by putting yourself on the map. You’re gonna be a star, kid.

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NMENT

Lights!

Camera!

Creepers!

Be the star of the show in 15 thrilling challenge maps

PARKOUR Free-running wild in some of Minecraft’s coolest courses

HOW TO…

First, you’ll need to locate your Minecraft save game directory. If you have Windows, type %appdata% into the search bar in the start menu. If you have Mac iOS, go to ~/Library/Application Support. Look for the ‘minecraft’ folder, and there will be a ‘saves’ folder inside. Now for the fun bit: download your chosen map, unzip the file by double-clicking it, then drag it into the ‘saves’ folder. Start playing your custom map by loading it like a normal world save!

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s Minecraft players are individuals.

You can’t define us; we won’t fit inside your reductive little boxes. A parkour map where we jump about in boxes, you say? Oh, go on then. Only because they’re so extraordinarily beautiful, each one a biome in perfect microcosm, with expertly staggered difficulty levels. There’s mushroom island, a twilight forest zone, and a cake-themed stage, too! This map is ideal for parkour beginners – but even seasoned Steves will enjoy bouncing about in the floating glass rooms, grabbing books and gear along the way. And yes, there’s a water level.

There’s always a water level.

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Skyscraper Parkour

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on’t look down! 255 blocks is a long way to fall, so make sure your toes are feeling extra-twinkly before you attempt this monster. Block-precise jumps are required for you to scale the dizzying heights of the skyscraper from the inside. Lifts are for quitters: you’ll have to earn your ascent, even balancing precariously on panes of glass at certain points (on PANE of death, right, guys? Wait, come back!). When you reach the ladder bits near the top, you’ll be glad of the generous checkpoints – the blue blocks of clay ensure that you won’t have to re-climb bits you’ve already conquered.

Deep Freeze http://bit.ly/1SEDoyN

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ou know that one Cornetto at the very back of the freezer that’s been there so long it’s pretty much just a chunk of ice and sadness now?

That’s you in Deep Freeze. Stand still too long and you’ll be encased in falling ice. Dodge enough of it, and you’ll find that all that glacial death is brill for climbing on, up to the wooden platforms and out of the chilly cylinder. When the ice runs out, you could always use your friends’ heads as handy platforms – this map can be multiplayer magic, and difficult enough to put you of ice-cream for life.

Infinity Race

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Sonic the Hedghog http://bit.ly/1lz0Q5D

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hile you’re waiting for Sega to release a new Sonic game that isn’t utterly pants, why not load up this gorgeous Minecraft tribute to everybody’s favourite hedgehog? It’s got entertaining and accessible platforming, explosive TNT spring jumps, and a real working timer to let you know exactly how fast you gotta go. It hasn’t got Green Hill Zone background music, though, more’s the pity. The best bit of the course? It’s got to be dashing through Doctor Eggman’s giant, creepy mouth – although the secret underwater message you can see on the jump just before him comes a close second.

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peedy, striking, and simple, this twoplayer parkour race… Wait, no, hang on.

It’s definitely not as simple as it looks.

Challenge a friend, and the further on you hop, the more surprises you’ll find in the green-and-blue assault course. Nets made from cobwebs, pressure plates that pop out more platforms, and teeth-gnashingly tricky piston mazes throw unpredictable challenges into the mix. Tons of frantic fun comes from racing sideby-side, but if you’re thinking about sinking a few arrows into your competitor, think again. PvP is against the rules, so you’ll have to rely on pure skill to come out on top.

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Biomebox

PUZZLE

More high-stakes action? Nah, complex fractions, more like‌

The Code

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L

a! What is this, 2007?” we hear you cry. No, it’s not RuneScape. It’s RoomScape, and the third iteration at that. The 1.8 build plonks you into a maze of flufy blue rooms, which would be rather calming if it weren’t for the fact that you’re totally imprisoned in the blimmin’ thing. Only your braincase stands between you and escape: the maze boasts 20 mind-boggling rooms, which include doors barred by piston puzzles and colour-changing pressure plates.

Map creator Karott2000 has truly outdone himself with this one, but don’t be put of by the title: completion is definitely possible.

EXPAND YOUR GAME

RoomScape 3 Impossible

ike a glittery Rubik’s Cube on holiday in the Bermuda Triangle, this puzzle map is both aesthetically-pleasing and endlessly mysterious. What starts out as a simple yet exquisite quartz corridor of pressure plates and coded papers soon transforms into increasingly creative riddles and elaborate constructions. There’s even a bit of parkour in one of the later levels – and there are quite a few of those later levels, all of them more fiendishly mind-melting than the last. Here’s a hint: download a QR code reader to your smartphone before you start. You’ll need it to solve an essential puzzle later on. Thank us when you’re done.

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Me and my robot http://bit.ly/1m3mWhk

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Disarm the bomb

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f you’ve ever quantum-leapt around the physics-defying puzzle shooter Portal, you’ll know that an inanimate, faceless buddy makes the experience more fun (RIP Companion Cube). Enter this perplexing map: you’re given a robot friend to help you. He weighs down pressure plates!

He opens doors and reveals hidden platforms! He can be named anything you can think of! No, not that, you maniac. Use your inexplicably magical bow and arrow to teleport back to your robot and vanquish all 11 levels with the power of friendship. And don’t worry – there’s nary an incinerator to be seen in this one. Phew.

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elcome to your first day on the Minecraft Bomb Disposal Squad! Excited? Nervous? Good. Little bit of info for you before we start: Disarm The Bomb is a teensy bit of a misleading title. It’s not just one bomb. It’s several bombs. Ten, to be precise, each with its own complicated detonation system that you’ll have to decode and disarm before the timer runs out and we all get blown to smithereens. Ready? Of course you are – that’s the quivering lip of a confident crafter. Here are your wire cutters. Of you pop!

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30 ways to die http://bit.ly/1jFwFbQ

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orget everything you thought you knew about Minecraft success. Your objective here is to die. Over and over and over again. Sure, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the first few levels (You + lava = blocky BBQ), but as you complete more puzzles and spawn inside diferent floating cubes, meeting a sticky end becomes ever more baffling. If you’re a Minecraft veteran and have had plenty of experience with accidentally offing yourself, you’ll probably only get truly confuddled at about halfway through the 30 levels: the brewing stand and pig maze puzzles are particularly fiendish, be warned.

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SURVIVAL Tough it out in weird and wonderful wasteland worlds

WHY NOT TRY?

PVP: Built for 2+ players, competitive PvP arenas let you and your friends battle for the grand title of King (or Queen) of All Minecraft.

ADVENTURE: Are you an RPG fan?

This type of map is for you, with its breathtaking environments, awesome quests and enthralling tales.

CTM: Avoid pesky mobs and hunt down specific blocks, then use them to Complete The Monument.

HORROR: Get confronted by haunted houses and the spookiest ghouls.

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robably the most famous L-shaped floating island in the Minecraft world, this absolutely had to make it onto our list of must-play maps. You might feel a bit short-changed when spawning on this ragtag bunch of blocks: the estate agent said “cosy”, but what she clearly meant was “impossibly small and extremely dicey”. Even punching the island’s single tree into bits feels like taking your life in your hands. Fortunately, there’s a handy chest of limited goodies to make use of, and if you’re savvy, you can quickly build yourself a hovering haven. Check out the rules and challenges before you start, though, because that’ll help!

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Water Dome Survival

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emember the underwater city of Rapture in BioShock? Remember how nothing went wrong there and everything turned out totally fine? Exactly.

There’s no need to be nervous about spawning under the sea, in a glass bubble populated by very little indeed. Work hard, dig a few mines, then snag yourself some Potions of Water Breathing and you’ll easily conquer the eight diferent domes down on the ocean floor. Mineshafts are common and zombies drop leather, so it isn’t a total washout. Now get crafting the kind of domed paradise that would make Sandy Cheeks jealous!

World in a jar http://bit.ly/1aowOZU

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verything’s better in jars: marmalade, tiny wooden ships, entire universes… Yep, get ready to make your home in a giant terrarium, because this survival map bottles you like a fine malt whisky. After you’ve done some housekeeping in your jar, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to reach the precious resources in others without, y’know, falling into the abyss. There’s an NPC village to explore, a mushroom biome, and even a maze jar. Things get hysterically funny/ frustrating once you try to shepherd animals from their jars over to your base, though. Embrace the chaos.

Desolation http://bit.ly/1lG5u1O

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SkyGrid http://bit.ly/1R15NS3

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e decided to save something very special for our final spot. There’s honestly nothing quite like SkyGrid. No need to book an optician’s appointment – it really does look like that, with thousands of single blocks stretching as far as the eye can see in a stunning geometric grid. Map creator (and our new god) SethBling recommends gathering stuf to make a cobblestone generator and a bed ASAP. With a solid base to work from, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can create a home within this surreal structure.

And get this – even the Nether is in SkyGrid formation. Gulp.

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on’t you hate it when you’re whizzing around in Minespace, minding your own business, and space raiders (not the delicious bagged snack, silly) appear out of nowhere to crash your party (and your ship)? We’ve all been there. Relive the thrills and spills of surviving on an alien planet in this super-hostile map. This is your first port of call for a bonafide challenge: nothing grows without bonemeal; the days are shorter; meteor showers are a regular occurrence; wood and water supplies are sparse; ores are more uncommon than usual. Lovely. We’ll just be over here in our dirt bunker, gently rocking ourselves back and forth.

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Skyblock

Plateaus are most impressive when they are found hybridised with mesa or savanna biomes.

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his visually striking environment is an iconic upgrade of the hills biome, only with each hill boasting a flat bit at the top.

Perfect for when you’re after a location for a hilltop fort, a skull-shaped castle in the side of a mountain, or for building an easily spottable home base. You will have to devise a way to scale the sharp incline, though…

Mesa plateaus can occasionally have each hill separated by swathes of flat wasteland. These can be tough to navigate and to keep an eye on.

If you plan on building atop a plateau, better build a ladder or some steps to help you when getting up and down. Or, if you’re pro, craft yourself a working minecart escalator.

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KNOW YOUR BIOMES

PLATEAU

BAD MOBS TURN GOOD! here are plenty of Minecraft critters that you wouldn’t want to bump into down a dark alley. You know the types we mean – spiders, endermen, creepers… Yeah, we’d give those guys a wide berth, too. But it doesn’t have to be like that! We’ve got a trio of craft projects here for you that’ll help to turn your opinion of those hostile mobs from ‘awful’ to ‘awesome!’. Try some of these crafty creations, and you’ll be hailing them as your new best buds, trust us..

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Turn those baddies’ frowns upsidedown

Over the next few pages, we’ll be taking you through how to fashion a pop-up enderman card (because nothing says ‘happy birthday’ like a block-stealing fiend with an aversion to eye contact), construct a creeper piñata (we’ve all wanted to bash them about a bit, haven’t we? Seves the blighters right) and bake some spooky spider cupcakes (mmm, so many legs!). Just follow our simple instructions, and you’ll soon be happy to hang out with the most hostile of mobs. Now, where did we put that torch?

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ENDERMAN CARD

CREEPER 2 PIÑATA

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It’s never pleasant to look up and suddenly see the spindly limbs and glowing eyes of an enderman towering over you. But what if, rather than trying to make you dead, he was actually just trying to wish you a happy birthday? There’s only one way to find out: by making this popup card, and use it to surprise unsuspecting friends or family. Heck, at least this way they’re fine to look him in the eye.

MATERIALS Two sheets of purple card One sheet of black paper Scrap paper Double-sided sticky tape Scissors Ruler Purple and silver sparkly gel pens

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STEP 1 First things first: you need to make your basic card that the pop-out will, well, pop out from.

Take a piece of purple card that’s twice the size you want your finished card to be, and fold it in half. We used a sheet of A4 card for this, but you could go as big or as small as you like. You want the fold to be nice and precise, so go over it a few times with your thumbnail.

STEP 2 From your other sheet of purple card, measure and cut out a rectangle 5cm long and 1cm wide (this is assuming you used an A4 piece of card in step 1 – you’ll need to make it a bit longer/shorter for a bigger/smaller card). Fold this rectangle in half, and fold each end towards the middle, about 1cm from the edge.

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STEP 3 Open up your card base, and make two small pen marks – each 3cm from the central fold – roughly in the middle of the card’s height. They’re only for reference, and will soon be covered up, so make sure you keep them nice and small. This is the guide for your pop-up, so make sure they’re even!

STEP 4 The little tabs on your card rectangle will act as ‘feet’ for your pop-up – the small piece of card will act like a small hinge that stands up when you open the card. Cut two pieces of doublesided sticky tape that are the same size as these feet, and use them to attach your hinge to the card – stick each foot to one of the guide marks you made in step 3. To make sure these stick really well, it’s worth closing your card and placing some heavy books on top of it while you carry on with the next couple of steps.

STEP 5 Using some scrap paper, sketch out your enderman figure, and then cut it out. You don’t want him to be any taller or wider than your card – in fact, you want him just to pop out of the middle – so keep that in mind while you’re drawing. As he’s such a prominent feature of your card, it’s also a good idea to fold your scrap paper in half, and sketch out just half of the figure against the fold – that way he’ll be perfectly symmetrical when you cut him out. Don’t worry if you’re not great at drawing – this is just a template, and you can take as many tries as you need!

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STEP 6 Once you’ve got an enderman template that you’re happy with, use it as a guide to carefully cut out your enderman figure from your black paper. He’ll need to have a fold going down his middle, so – as you did with your sketch – it will probably help to fold your black paper in half. Once you’ve done that, use your gel pens to give him his chilling, characteristic eyes.

STEP 8 8. Write in a birthday message (or any other occasion) and your pop-up card is ready to pop! How you decorate the front is up to you – may we suggest a nice, clear, friendly Minecraft landscape to lure the recipient into a false sense of security…?

STEP 7 Salvage your card from under those books, and open it up. Put a strip of double-sided tape across the back of your enderman (roughly where his belly button would be, if creepy, antisocial supernatural beings had such things), and then use this to attach him to your cardboard hinge. Make sure you line up the folds neatly!

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PIÑATA

You certainly wouldn’t be alone if you’d ever thought that the best way to sort out a creeper would be to give him a sharp clip around the ear. Problem is, in-game that tends to leave you with a destroyed house, if you aren’t careful. This creeper piñata, though, will explode in a shower of goodies, leaving you with a floor covered in sweets. Don’t know about you, but we’d definitely prefer that to the other option…

MATERIALS cardboard box, green crepe paper, black paper, PVA glue or double-sided sticky tape, yarn, sweets, sellotape, wooden skewer, scissors

STEP 1 Using the point of your scissors, make a small hole in the middle of your box’s top side. (You might find it hard to source a cube-shaped box for this, so it’s fine to use a rectangular one. If you desperately want a cube for accuracy, you could make your own out of cardboard, but it won’t be as sturdy.)

Fold a length of yarn into a loop and tie a large, strong knot in the end, then thread the loop through the hole in the box so that the knot remains on the inside. Use sellotape to secure it. You always wondered what was inside a creeper, right?

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2 CREEPER

STEP 2

STEP 3

With your wooden skewer, poke lots of little holes all over the sides and bottom of your box. This might sound like a silly thing to do, but it means that your piñata is more likely to break open once you start hitting it – if your cardboard is quite thick, it’s definitely worth giving it a bit of help so that you’re not bashing away at it forever!

Fill your box up with sweets, or small presents if you’d prefer. Wrapped sweets are best for this, because they won’t go sticky if you’re making your piñata in advance, and it doesn’t matter if they fall on the floor when the piñata breaks open. Make sure there are plenty for everyone! Tape your box up nice and firmly once the sweets are in.

STEP 4 Cover your box in green crepe paper, attaching it to the box using either PVA glue or double-sided sticky tape (whichever you’d prefer).

If you use glue, though, you’ll be able to see a slightly darker mottled efect where it’s dried, which adds to the authentic creeper look. You might want to use a few layers of crepe paper, especially if your box has labels on it that might show through otherwise. Once you’re happy with it, leave it somewhere safe to dry completely – if you’ve used glue, it’s worth leaving it at least overnight.

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STEP 5 Once your piñata is dry, cut out eyes and a mouth for your Creeper out of black paper. Attach them to the front of your box, ideally using double-sided sticky tape. Press them on really firmly.

HANGING OUT Why not make some miniature creeper decorations to hang around your piñata for added efect? Simply follow the same steps outlined for the piñata itself – without the sweets, unless you’re feeling incredibly destructive and want to smash everything in sight – using smaller boxes to create a whole family of dastardly decorations. Just look around the kitchen for inspiration: stockcube boxes, egg boxes and so on would all work. If you prefer, you could also fill these with sweets to use instead of party bags – creepers for everyone!

STEP 7 When it’s party time, hang up your piñata, fetch a stick and set to destroying it! Thankfully, this is one creeper who won’t cause any damage when he explodes – unless you count the damage to your teeth from the sugar in all those sweets, that is…

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STEP 6 Cut four strips of crepe paper, and scrunch each one together at one end.

Sellotape one of these to each corner of the bottom of your piñata – they’ll dangle once it’s hung up to give your creeper its set of legs.

STEP 1 Set your oven to 170º (or 150º if you have a fan oven) and leave it to heat up while you’re making your cake mix. Boring, but important, that. In a large bowl, mix together your flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and 40g of the butter, until it looks a bit like chocolatey grit. If you have a mixer, this stage will be much easier – but it’s still possible to do it with a wooden spoon and some patience!

3 MATERIALS 100g plain flour, 140g caster sugar, 20g cocoa powder, 1½ tsp baking powder, 120ml milk, one large egg, vanilla extract, 190g butter (take it out of the fridge about an hour before you start), 450g icing sugar, black food dye, red wine gums, licorice sticks, icing bag, plain dark-coloured cake cases, 12-hole mufin tin

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SPIDER CUPCAKES One of the worst things about spiders – both in Minecraft and in real life – is their eight horrible legs. Eight! That’s almost ten! We decided to turn this grim feature of their anatomy to our advantage, turning their icky appendages into tasty licorice sticks. Oh, and turning their bodies into delicious home-baked chocolate cupcakes. And their evil eyes into wine gums. Basically, if Willy Wonka turned into a zookeeper, we would be his favourite employees…

STEP 2 Crack in your egg, add a small splash of vanilla essense and mix it together – then add the milk a little bit at a time. Don’t worry if the batter you end up with seems runnier than a normal cake mix – you’ll end up with lovely, light cupcakes this way.

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STEP 3 Put a cake case in each of your tin’s holes, and then carefully divide your cake mix between the 12 cases. They won’t be full right to the top, but this leaves them enough space to rise. Bake them for around 25 minutes – you can tell when they’re done by popping a sharp knife into the middle of one of the cakes and seeing if it comes out clean. Let them cool completely before you ice them.

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STEP 4 Mix the remaining 150g of butter with the icing sugar until it forms a creamy icing – you might need to add a splash of milk or water to loosen it up a bit, but make sure you only put in a tiny bit at a time! Mix in your food dye until you get a deep black colour. Food dye tends to be stronger than food colouring, so start of slowly (and make sure you stick to the guidelines on the bottle for the maximum recommended amount).

STEP 5 Fill a disposable piping bag with your icing, and snip a V shape in the end – make it about 1cm across.

Use the bag to pipe a thick swirl of icing on the top of each cake. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect, as you’ll be putting decorations on top as well!

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STEP 6 Cut your red wine gums into small squares for eyes (you’ll need two per cake, so 24 in total), and snip your licorice sticks into ‘legs’ a few centimetres long (eight legs per cake makes a whopping 96 of these). Arrange these various body parts on top of each cupcake, and enjoy your deliciously spooky handywork!

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SWAMP LAND Y

ou can tell swamplands not just by the darker tone of grass and obvious watery-ness, but also by the abundance of lily pads and vines growing all over the shop. Ideal for finding sugarcanes, smaller clay deposits and mushrooms, this sea-level biome also has a chance to spawn a witch’s hut: perfect for getting your hands on witch loot, including the occasional potion. Watch out for slimes, though. They spawn like it’s out of fashion here at night, which can make a midnight stroll an experience to forget.

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If you’re setting up a farm it might be worth gathering a few lily pads first. They’re great for crossing water surfaces quickly without having to build full and complicated bridges.

KNOW YOUR BIOMES

Full moon in the sky? Not now, but beware later: slimes are even more likely to spawn and make your life a misery.

Slimes aren’t all bad.

Sure they can see through blocks and split into two more mobs upon death, but grab some slimeballs from them and you can craft leads, magma creams and sticky pistons.

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HOW TO

CREEPY CRAFTY Let your creative side out with our creeper cushion how-to 122

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KIT LIST All your cushiony ingredients - A 16” cushion pad - Half a metre of green fabric - Matching green thread - Two squares of black felt - Some velcro - Fabric glue - Scissors - A few sewing pins - A ruler - A pen or pencil - Some baking or tracing paper - A sewing machine or sewing kit - An iron

f you fancy giving your bedroom, games room or living room a bit of a revamp, why not do so with your favourite game? Cushions are a really great way to do this – they’re super easy, only take a few hours to make and don’t need a whole ton of materials. Seeing as they’re the most iconic creatures in the game, we’ve gone for a creeper face. Their vivid green skin also means they’ll add a wonderful pop of colour to any room. Ah, who are we kidding? We just think there’s no better way to decorate than with one of Minecraft’s most recognisable baddies!

To make your cushion cover, you’ll need the following: a 16" cushion pad; half a metre of green fabric (cotton or light canvas would be ideal for this, but just ask in a fabric shop if you’re not sure); matching green thread; two squares of black felt; some velcro; fabric glue; scissors; a ruler, pen/pencil and some baking/tracing paper; and a sewing machine or sewing kit. Our instructions assume you’ll be using a sewing machine, but don’t worry if you don’t have access to one – all of the sewing can be done by hand, and will just take a little longer. Whatever you use, please be careful not to prick or cut your fingers.

We hear they’re precious.

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TRACE YOUR TEMPLATE

Measure and cut out your pattern pieces onto your baking or tracing paper, using the dimensions shown on page 129. You’ll need one each of Piece A and Piece B. All of the corners need to be right angles, so be careful as you’re drawing them out – using the edge of the paper as one edge of each piece is a good idea to help with this, and you could even use a protractor to make sure your rectangles are perfectly ship-shape.

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2.1

2 PIN IT TOGETHER Lay your fabric out flat. If it has any wrinkles or creases in it, it’s worth ironing it now. Then place your pattern pieces on top and pin them into place. If you’re having trouble keeping the paper lying flat, putting your pins in so that they’re at a diagonal angle to the edges of the pattern pieces will help. Now cut out your pattern pieces from the fabric, and unpin the paper. You’ll need to make two of Piece B, but just one of Piece A.

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SWEET TREAT

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ou’ll be doing a bit of waiting around while the glue dries on your project, but that’s time you can use to make snacks! To recreate Minecraft’s famous red-and-white cake, just make up a basic victoria sponge mixture, and bake it in a square tin (if you don’t have one of these, you could always just use a bread knife to square of the edges of a round cake). Brush the top with some gently warmed apricot jam, then roll out some white fondant icing to size. Finish it of with some squares of red fondant icing, and you’ve got a cake fit for the Ender Dragon himself!

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2.4

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MAKE THE HEM

Take one of your Piece Bs and turn them so that the patterned/coloured side of your fabric (the right side) is facing downwards. Fold down one of the long edges towards you by 1.5cm, and iron it into place. Then fold it over again by another 3cm, and again iron it into place – this makes a hem and stops the fabric from fraying. Sew along your hem, about 2.5cm from the fabric’s new edge. You’ll now have one hemmed edge and three unhemmed ones. Repeat this with your second Piece B.

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3.6

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LINE IT ALL UP

Place Piece A with the right side facing up, and then place your first Piece B on top of it (right-side down), lining up the unhemmed edges and making sure that two of the corners are square. The right sides of the fabric should be facing one another. Pin the pieces together. Line up and pin the other Piece B in a similar manner, but using the opposite edge of Piece A. The two hemmed edges of the Piece Bs will overlap – but don’t worry! This will form an opening for you to pop the cushion into.

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3.2

5

SEW AND SEW

Sew around the edges of your cushion cover, leaving a 1.5cm gap between your stitching and the edges of the fabric. This will give you a bufer against fraying. When you reach a corner, simply stop 1.5cm away from the edge of the fabric, lift your machine’s presser foot (the bit holding the material in place) and turn the fabric 90º, leaving the needle in the fabric as you do so.

Once you’ve turned it, just pop the presser foot back down and you’re good to carry on sewing. Be careful to remove each pin before you reach it, though – sewing over them can break your needle!

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5.1

GO GO VELCRO

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Cut your velcro so that it’s a few centimetres shorter than the width of the opening at the back of your cushion.

Apply a generous amount of fabric glue to one side of the velcro, and press it firmly into place inside the top flap of the cover’s opening. Be patient, and let it dry completely – it’s a good idea to leave something heavy on top of it as it dries. Then repeat the process with the other side of the velcro and the bottom flap.

6.1

7 CORNER TIME Now that your cushion cover is all in one piece, it’s time to sort out the corners. Using a pair of scissors, trim gradually (and very carefully!) in towards each corner, making sure you leave at least a few millimetres of spare fabric around the stitching. Once you’ve done that, turn the cushion cover inside-out – although this will actually return it to being the right way around! If your corners are being stubborn, you can use your pen (put the lid on first so you don’t make it all inky!) to poke them out fully from the inside. Give your project one final press with the iron. If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, after all.

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6.2

8.2

8 GET YOUR FACE ON Cut out the templates for the creeper’s face from p128. If you can’t bear to cut up your precious bookazine, you could trace them on to some more baking paper instead. Pin them to the felt (you should be able to get both eyes from one square of felt, and then the mouth from the other) and carefully cut around them.

8.1

GLUE THE BITS Arrange the features on the front of your cushion, and make sure you’re happy with where they’ll sit. It’s best not to put them too close to the edges. When you’ve got them just right, pop some glue on the back of each feature (make sure you go right to the edges, so that they don’t peel of) and fix them firmly to the cushion cover. Again, it’s time to play the waiting game. Why not make the cake on p124 to kill your boredom? Mmmmm, cake…

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IT’S READY! Once everything is dry, all you need to do is open up the velcro and insert your cushion pad. Voila – your own cuddly creeper pal!

Please note, we can accept no responsibility if your creeper cushion explodes and destroys part of your house. Sorry about that.

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er to Remembcareful be extrau cut out when yo plates! the tem

CREEPER MOUTH

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They might just look like blocky squares of paper, but wait till you get them on your cushion!

DIMENSIONS 45cm

45cm

CREEPER EYE 1

32cm

45cm

CHANGING FACES

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CREEPER EYE 2

f you’ve been bitten by the sewing bug, a little imagination is all you need to make some other famous Minecraft creatures. Just follow our instructions up until step 8, then design your own template of your favourite character. How about purple and white felt on a black cushion cover to make an enderman? Or black on grey to create a skeleton? Heck, you could even fashion your own Steve – we’d love to see your pictures!

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Don’t bother trying to place a sunflower in a plant pot. They’re two blocks tall and so, much like peonies and lilacs, won’t fit.

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f ever there was a biome generated specifically for two lost lovers to bound across before smashing together in a springtime embrace, then it’s this one.

Flat, and peppered with those titular perennials, these plains are the only place you’ll find naturally spawning sunflowers. Alongside dandelions, these can be used to obtain yellow dye.

While other flowers tend to come across as pixelated messes of colour, sunflowers are easy to recognise, due to their perfectly round shape.

Having trouble finding a use for the humble sunflower?

Well know that these yellow chaps will always face east – useful for navigation.

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KNOW YOUR BIOMES

SUNFLOWER I PLAINS

MERCH-CRAFT The very best Minecraft loot you can buy

MIGHTY MINI FIGURES £2.99 These tiny figures are awesome for two reasons: 1) They’re blind boxes, so you don’t know which one you’re going to get – if you unwrapped one of these cubes you’d get a double surprise; and 2) You won’t need loads of shelf space to get a good collection going, because they’re adorably tiny! There’s always the chance you’ll end up with three of the same Minecart Steves, though, so finding friends to swap with might be a good idea. www.amzn. to/1LDWXpV

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BARGAIN BUY!

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CUSTOM ENDERTOY FIGURE FROM £9.99 This might have to be the coolest Minecraft toy we’ve ever seen. Yes it’s a simple figure, but it’s also a completely customisable one. Want a collectible version of your favourite Minecraft YouTuber? Yep, they’ve got it. But the best thing of all is that if you put in your own username you can make a toy of yourself. Yes, you. Eeek! That’s a pretty cool thing! https://seuscraft.com/store

MAKE YOURSELF!

THE GREAT MINECRAFT BAKE OFF Want to make your own Minecraft cookies?

Well why don’t you try this tasty recipe…

Ingredients: 250g softened butter 140g caster sugar 1 egg yolk 2tsp vanilla extract 300g plain flour Carefully cream all of the butter and sugar together until they are completely combined.

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Next, add the egg and vanilla extract and thoroughly mix them in.

Sift and add the flour bit by bit until you have a smooth dough. Don’t be afraid to use your hands to bring it all together at the end.

Preheat your oven to 1800c (or 1600c for fan ovens) and while you wait for it to heat up, wrap the dough in cling film and put it in the fridge to chill.

This will help stop the shape from splodging out when you bake it.

Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper then take out your dough. Roll to about 1cm thickness then cut out your shapes. Arrange them on your baking tray, and make sure there’s plenty of space around each biscuit.

5 COOKIE CUTTERS £13.23 Make tasty, filling snacks for your Minecraft sessions with these appropriately shaped cookie cutters. They work really well with a simple sugar biscuit recipe, and while it can be a bit fiddly to get the dough out of the thin bits on the weapons, they hold their shape really well. All they need is plenty of green icing. www.bit.ly/1HymPjk

Place them in the oven for 10-12 minutes, or until they are just turning golden brown at the edges, then remove from the oven and transfer them to a wire rack until they’re completely cool.

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For the icing, mix together 300-400g of icing sugar with 3-4 tablespoons of water, then add a few drops of food colouring in your desired colours.

Make sure the biscuits are definitely cool, and then ice your biscuits. If they’re still warm the icing will slide right of. And nobody wants that.

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MINECR AFT MERCHANDISE

ith so much Minecraft merchandise out there these days it can be hard to figure out just what is worth spending your money on and what’s worth skipping. That’s where we come in! We’ve separated the confusing lapis lazuli trash from the sparkling sapphire treasures to bring you the ultimate collection of Minecraft loot that you’d be proud to display on your shelves for when your pals come around.

As well as some more extravagant items, we’ve also got plenty of bargain buys for those on a budget, too.

Whether you’re celebrating a birthday or you just love delicious loot, there are sure to be a few things here that are worth putting onto your wishlists. Perhaps it’s worth leaving the magazine open on these pages in strategic places around the house in order to give friends or family a not-so-subtle hint…

CLOTHES AND STUFF Show the outside world your love of your favourite game, and instantly identify with similarly afflicted fans…

BARGAIN BUY!

DIAMOND BRACELET £3.39 No, not that kind of diamond – this is a bargain buy after all. But even if doesn’t sparkle as brightly as the real thing, it’s still a fun little gift. www.amzn.to/1ZOTaMz

MINECRAFT SOCKS £14.99 Like Minecraft but can’t wear a Creeper jumper at school or work for fear of being mocked or chastised? Well now you can express your fandom in secret by wearing these socks. Hidden snugly in your shoes, no one will know you’re wearing them unless you casually flash a bit of ankle. It’s like being part of a secret society… www.amzn.to/1khpszt

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MINECR AFT MERCHANDISE

CREEPER ANATOMY ZIP-UP JUMPER £39.70 Now you can be a Creeper inside and out. The outside of this jumper look just like your favourite explodable monster, while the inside hides just what a Creeper is made of. Wowsers! www.bit.ly/1ZORzXa

PERIODIC TABLE OF MINECRAFT SHIRT £19.99 Show of your mining expertise and science nous with this really cool t-shirt. www.amzn.to/1W0XitB

CREEPER FACE BEANIE £9.92 Keep your bonce snug this winter with this warm beanie. It’s warm because it’s made of still smoking Creeper ashes… No, really… www.bit.ly/1yfbKS8

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LEGO MINECRAFT LEGO and Minecraft are the perfect partners for overworld building fun…

THE FARM £20 If you fancy something slightly more sedate, pop on your pumpkin helmet, seize hold of your hoe and check out The Farm. There’s the usual stuf you’d expect – carrots, wheat, cows and sheep – but it comes with actually-growing sugar cane!

Okay, so it only grows if you build it, but it’s still pretty awesome. http://amzn.to/1MHi2SP

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Essentially like playing hardcore mode, but with LEGO. As well as the endermen, there’s also a cheery ender dragon. The only thing more dangerous than this would be walking barefoot through a brickfilled bedroom. In the dark. http://amzn.to/1l7sTJn

THE CRAFTING BOX £40 The Crafting Box, as you might expect, is more about building a selection of awesome things rather than a single scenario. We could talk excitedly about the eight potential builds, 500-plus blocks, and selection of accessories, but let’s be honest: the thing we’re most excited about is the mooshroom. Yay! http://amzn.to/1HqIfNS

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MINECR AFT MERCHANDISE

THE ENDER DRAGON £60

LEGO MINECRAFT THE DUNGEON £29.75 Any of the Minecraft LEGO sets will make for a great gift, but we love this one in particular as it’s got a lot of variety at a pretty afordable price… www.amzn.to/1LiQwXP

LEGO MINECRAFT THE MINE £113.52 If you want to really splash out, however, THIS is the way to go. The detail in the Mine set is incredible, and has loads of layers to it. The minecart also makes for a fun rollercoaster-like ride for Steve (or any unsuspecting zombies who may be passing by). www.amzn.to/1QJ620Q

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MINECR AFT MERCHANDISE

LIGHT UP TORCH £15.99 This light up torch is a great way to turn any bedroom into your own Minecraft dungeon. Either hang it on your wall for that true mineshaft feeling, or carry it out into the wilderness to help illuminate your overworld adventures for real. www.amzn. to/1khaNEv

DIGGING WALL DECAL £19.84 To add to that bedroom/mineshaft feel, this wall sticker will make it look like you’re digging into your own wall. Put up one of the light up torches on either side of it and you’ll have your very own underground fortress. It might unnerve your folks or your landlord a tad, though… www.bit.ly/1Nj5D4t

MAGNET SHEET £17.99

ALEX FIGURE £6.25

Someone else in the family hogging the TV so much that you can't play Minecraft? Well take over the fridge instead and build your own adventure scenes with these gorgeous magnets. www.amzn.to/1RQiPzo

With Steve merchandise being so easy to find, it’s great to have a figure of his lady-faced counterpart Alex to go adventuring with. There are loads of other figures in the same style, and each one is really well made, too. They also work surprisingly well with the paper craft sets as backgrounds. www.amzn.to/1LYA42z

BARGAIN BUY!

BARGAIN BUY!

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PAPER CRAFT SHELTER PACK £12.99 Want somewhere for all of your figures to live? Then these easy-to-build papercraft blocks are a great choice. They’re made from sturdy card with clear folding instructions so you won’t be left frustrated while building them. You can also mix and match with other sets to build some great custom projects.

We’ve got ours set up as background on a display shelf. Envy of the office, we are. www.amzn.to/1PAvpUb

BARGAIN BUY!

ENDERMAN SOFT TOY £7.99 Look at his floppy little limbs!

There are loads of diferent cuddly Minecraft toys you can buy, but the Enderman has a special place in our hearts as it feels like it’s brimming with character and cute menace.

Just don’t look it in the eye… www.amzn.to/1khi7zZ

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OFFICIAL BOOKS £3.85 EACH OR £11.55 FOR ALL THREE This collection of books will tell you everything you need to make great builds and master redstone circuits. They look pretty snazzy all lined up in a row, too. www.amzn.to/1M81u66

MINECR AFT MERCHANDISE

YOUTUBE GOODIES Show your appreciation for your favourite YouTubers with this cool gear

BARGAIN BUY!

STAMPY’S LOVELY BOOK £3.85 DOWNLOAD ONLY!

This activity book is great for young Minecraft fans, and will take you through some of Stampy’s best adventures in cute, cat-shaped style. www.amzn.to/1XdoYsp

YOGSCAST: THE DIGGY DIGGY BOOK £6.00

THE ADVENTURES OF STAMPY CAT (PARTS 1-4) £7.50

Love Yogscast? Then this is the book for you! Learn everything there is to know about the crew and what they get up to at Yogstower. www.amzn.to/1ZOVy60

Not got enough of Stampy yet? Then you might want to pick up some of his novelised adventures. Great for young readers. www.amzn.to/1W1TdWb

BARGAIN BUY!

BEBOP VOX VOXFORCE JUMPER £19.99 Show your appreciation for the host of Minecraft Mondays by wearing this epic jumper. It’s also great if you want to show your love of Minecraft in public, but don’t want to be dressed as a Creeper like everyone else out there… www.bit.ly/1LFINVi

BARGAIN BUY!

SIPSCO MUG £7.99 Love dirt? Love Yogscast? Then join Sips’s famous dirt supplier by brandishing this mug at your desk. Only the cool will understand. www.bit.ly/1M0wFjF

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£5.00 Q 13 issues per year delivered to your door Q First 3 issues for £5. Then just £26.50 every six months after.

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For all your multiformat needs – including even more Minecraft! – try 3 issues of GamesMaster for just £5.

Q There’ll be free gifts every issue!

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MINECRAFT MASTERCLASS GamesMaster features epic builds and elite tips in Minecraft Master – our monthly section dedicated to the Mojang classic!

SUBSCRIBE ONLINE TODAY… myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/GM3for5

Terms & Conditions: You will be charged just £5 for your first 3 issues. After your first 3 issues you will be charged £26.50 every 6 months for the print edition or £33.50 every 6 months for the print + digital bundle. Savings compared to buying 13 full priced issues from UK newsstand. This offer is for new UK print subscribers (paying by Direct Debit) only. You will receive 13 issues in a year. Full details of the Direct Debit guarantee are available upon request. If you are dissatisfied in any way you can call us to cancel your subscription at any time and we will refund you for all unmailed issues. Prices correct at point of print and subject to change. For full terms and conditions please visit: myfavm.ag/magterms

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THE END

The End is one of the most hostile places in the whole game. To avoid endermen hassle, equip a pumpkin head to cover up your crosshair, and avoid looking at them.

T

he ultimate challenge for vanilla Minecraft survivalists, The End biome is as hard to reach as it is to survive… almost.

To get there you’ll need to search out a stronghold in the overworld. This is best done by flinging an eye of ender into the air and following its airborne trajectory. Once you find a stronghold and the ender portal that resides within, you have to activate it with 12 more eyes of ender to reach The End. There’s no day/night cycle here, and aside from a massive increase in enderman spawns, you also have the small matter of an Ender Dragon to contend with.

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The End is a floating island made up of end stone. This durable building material can’t be pinched by endermen, making it ideal house-building material.

KNOW YOUR BIOMES

The Ender Dragon’s health bar, visible as soon as you enter The End, replenishes whenever it flies by these things. Best take them out before tackling the scaly main course.

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Next time...

GamesMaster Presents The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Volume 10 ON SALE 9 MARCH 2016

SHINY NEW YEAR SPECIAL!

BUMPER BUILDING GUIDES!

MISTAKES TO AVOID

BUILDS TO TRY

AUTOMATED FARMING

ULTIMATE MINECRAFT BUCKET LIST

9001

EXPAND YOUR GAME!

ESSENTIAL TIPS TO CHANGE YOUR GAME

CRAFTING BONANZA!

SURVIVAL ISLANDS

MARIO IN MINECRAFT

REDSTONE GUIDES

POP-UP CARDS

15 MINECRAFT MAPS YOU HAVE TO PLAY

SPIDER CAKES

MAKE YOUR OWN MINECRAFT PIÑATA

KNOW YOUR BIOMES! Essential Minecraft environments explored!

9000

PLUS: WII U RELEASE, MERCH GUIDE, LOOT CRATES AND MORE!