EN VISION Create, modify, play, survive, share and conquer!
How to build an XP Farm and get to level 30 within 10 minutes!
Learn how to survive your first night and become the conqueror of your world!
The hoax behind Herobrine Texturepack of the month
And much, MUCH more!
Your monthly magazine entirely about Minecraft!
Table of contents
Welcome to Minecraft 1. Prologue
Page 3
2. The story of Minecraft
Page 6
3. Surviving the first night
Page 7
4. The hoax behind Herobrine
Page 13
5. Texturepack of the month
Page 15
6. Redstone how to: XP farm
Page 17
7. 10 Facts you might not know about Minecraft
Page 21
8. Mod of the month
Page 23
9. The Latest updates
Page 25
10. Colofon
Page 26
Image: 9minecraft.net
"W an ith ot R he ed r g sto am ne e yo in u si c de an M re in c ec re ra ate ft its el f"
1. Prologue
3
I
n March 2010 I began playing Minecraft. A friend showed it to me. The game mechanics immediately intrigued me. There was only one problem, I didn’t know anything about crafting or building let alone Redstone engineering. The Minecraft wiki became a huge help for me but I still needed to learn almost everything on my own. That is why I decided to make this monthly magazine. It will guide you to eventually become one of the most skilled and knowledgeable Minecrafters there are. Minecraft is a game where you must find resources to create weapons, armor or other things. To find these resources you probably have to investigate the vast underground cave system. Your only obstacle is that there are monsters in those naturally spawned caves so you have to play it smart. There is a day cycle and a night cycle. In the day, the monsters can’t catch you because they cannot survive in direct sunlight, but it’s a whole other story in the night... Minecraft has had a huge amount of updates since it began in 2009. A new update is implemented every week and a main update once in 2 or 3 months. It might be hard to keep up with these developments so I will place all the most recent updates at the end of the magazine. Redstone is like an electric system. You can build almost everything with it. Computers, automated farms, clocks and self-repairing houses. With redstone you can recreate another game inside Minecraft like The Legend of Zelda. That is why redstone is such a huge aspect of the game. It almost doesn’t have borders for your creativity. Minecraft has been a community driven game since the beginning. Because it is written in Java coding it enables all programmers to edit the game to their wishes. These game edits are called mods. There are mods that greatly increase the looks of the game with dynamic shadows called shaders and mods that will let you enter a whole new dimension. The range between the possibilities with mods is almost as borderless in creativity as Minecraft itself. For people who aren’t as good with coding (like me) there are other options to change the game on your own. You can easily edit or download a texture pack. A texture pack is a image full of other images which gives Minecraft it’s standard look. If you want, you could easily make the grass red or purple in Microsoft Paint. Over the course of this magazine I will try to cover everything you as a player might want to know. If you’re not a player and just interested in this “Minecraft thing” I will do my best to show you that you are missing out on one of the greatest experiences of your life.
4
Image: Reddit.com
Text: Minecraft.net
2. The story of Minecraft
J
une 1st, 2009. Stockholm. Markus Persson quits his job at an established games developer to create his own game. Unemployed, but enthusiastic, Markus was looking for inspiration, and it came from indie game development blog, Tigsource. Thanks to the resource, the man you probably know as "Notch" ended up playing Zachtronic Industries' Infiniminer: an innovative indie which tasked players with collecting resources while cutting into a randomly generated landscape. It was a simple game at heart, but Markus realised potential for something great. He began work on a new project a few weeks after Infiniminer was discontinued.
"I saw the ALU and I wet myself, seriously! I got a hose and I wet myself. With pee." Though Markus’ original idea wasn’t as fully featured as the Minecraft you’ll play today, "Cave Game" was created from the same DNA. This was a game about placing and breaking blocks in a 3D world. The primary motivation was to create an experience where each individual component felt fun. A game that could be both accessible and emergent. The next step was to include a multiplayer mode so players could dig together, then a "Survival mode" to make the world feel dangerous. Things begun to escalate. A mention on the official Team Fortress 2 blog and a PC Gamer interview in July, 2010 introduced Minecraft to a wider audience. The Minecraft train was accelerating. But maybe it gathered too much pace. In September 2010, the Minecraft webserver crashed due to the sheer amount of players signing up. Markus made the game free to compensate, causing yet another spike in downloads. And things were just getting started. A video showing off one man’s dedication to create a 1:1 replica of the Starship Enterprise went viral, churning up YouTube views. Minecraft was getting harder to ignore. And why would you want to?
"Minecrafts potential was being realised by it's community of creatives." Next came a 16-bit computer, prompting Markus to vent his excitement via his now notorious Twitter feed: "I saw the ALU and I wet myself," he wrote. "Seriously! I got a hose and I wet myself. With pee." RMS Titanic, a marriage proposal from a Bioware developer, and a spookily accurate representation of BioShock’s Rapture all popped up: Minecraft’s potential was being realised by its community of creatives. YouTube made it easy to
appreciate, even if you didn’t actually play. Markus began work on a Halloween update that brought a chunk of new blocks to the game including pumpkins, fish and working clocks. But just ten days before release, disgruntled users launched 85,000 bots at the Minecraft servers, crashing it again. Despite the inconvenience, the Halloween update launched on October 30th, bringing the ability to create a portal to The Nether: Minecraft’s fiery inferno ruled by burning beasts and smothered in lava. On December 20 2010 it was announced that Minecraft was officially in beta. Noteblocks were introduced, allowing players to create music in Minecraft, and sparking a whole new breed of Minecraft videos: the musical parody. Soon after, the awards began to roll in. An Indie Game of the Year award from IndieDB and numerous accolades from GDC. In February 2011, beds got introduced. Minecraft’s central protagonist, Steve, named by Markus on a whim in an interview, got to enjoy a well-deserved snooze (even though he kept his clothes on and slept over the sheets). In June, the unforgiving Adventure Update was released. It introduced a hunger meter, advanced combat mechanics, and the terrifying Endermen. Minecraft got ported to smaller, open-sourcier Android devices in October, and sleeker, more expensive, iOS ones in November. People started building things on planes, trains and automobiles. Minecraft had gone mobile.
"Minecraft Xbox 360: sold a staggering amount of four million copies in just five months." Minecraft was officially released on November 18th at the MineCon 2011 keynote. On November 19th 2011, Jens Bergensten, who you might know as Jeb, took over creative control of Minecraft so Markus could concentrate on other projects They’d been working together for over a year so Markus wasn’t concerned about handing over the reins. Jeb has been in control since, updating Minecraft with Weekly Snapshots. Tameable animals, maps, pistons, elephantine NPCs, and The End followed. And it’s still evolving. Minecraft Xbox 360 edition was released in May 2012, giving console players opportunity to experience Minecraft for themselves. It broke more records, selling a staggering four million copies in just five months. 4J Studios are responsible for the port, and are dedicating their time to create the most fully featured experience possible. You can track the updates on all forms of Minecraft by following the team on twitter, or by checking mojang. com, where we regularly post about recent happenings. The rest is in the future! And there’s a lot more to come.
6
3. Surviving the first night
T
o those who are not familiar with Minecraft, there is a day and a night sequence (both 10 minutes each). In the day, normal monsters like cows will spawn and the harmful monsters will only spawn in the caves. In the night monsters will spawn everywhere in the world. To prevent you from dying you need to protect yourself from these monsters. You can build walls to prevent them from entering your hideout or place torches all around you to prevent them from spawning. There are multiple ways for staying alive and I'll teach you how with this step by step survival guide for the first night.
The first time you log in the game will make a completely random world. No world is the same in Minecraft. This means that you could spawn everywhere. If you can't find trees, you should keep walking in different directions. You'll eventually will find some. The first thing you do is finding some trees to harvest wood. Walk up to one and keep pressing the left mouse button while pointing at the tree. Once a tree block is broken you can pick it up. When you have got around 15 pieces of wood, you've got by far enough to survive your first day. When destroying trees the leaves will have a chance to drop saplings. These items are basicly young trees you use to regrow trees for more wood.
The next thing you need to do is finding some animals. They spawn everywhere around the place and drop uncooked food. If you select the food in your hotbar by scrolling with your middle mouse button and keep pressing the right mouse button your character will begin eating the food. (Only if your hungerbar is getting low). You can also sprint in Minecraft bij double tapping "W". This will empty your hungerbar very quickly so use this feature with caution! Once your hungerbar is empty you'll slowly starve to death. You must try to always have food with you, collecting it will become easier later.
7
Now we are going to start crafting. By pressing "E" you open your inventory. This is the place where all your resources will be. Place half of your collected wood in one of those squares in the right upper corner. You'll see planks popping up with a number. That means that one woodblock is worth 4 wooden planks. Pick those planks up and put one of them in each of the four squares. You will now see an item called the crafting table. Place it somewhere. When you right-click this, you'll see a crafting grid of 3x3 squares. Place 2 wooden planks above eachother and a few sticks pop up. Now, place everything just like the image right from this except for the double plank in the top-middle. If you want to know the recipe for the shovel or sword you can search on the minecraft wiki. A sword speaks for itself.
Now it's time for shelter, it could already become dark (You can see the time by the location of the sun). If you can, you must find a wall of stone. You can break grass until you reach stone but that will cost time if you don't have a shovel yet. If you found a wall (and possibly some blocks with black dots in it nearby) you have found the perfect hideout for the first night. With your pickaxe you are now able to break stone blocks. They'll drop cobblestone. You can use the same recipe as the wooden pickaxe to create a stone pickaxe just remember to replace the wooden planks with the cobblestone. Break some blocks and cover the opening with dirt, this way nothing can come in. Remember to take the Crafting Table with you!
Now it's time for the Furnace. Right-click the crafting table again. You need to have 8 cobblestone in your inventory. Place them like the picture. If you mine a little bit around you there will be a high possibility you'll find a few black dotted blocks. Mine them and put them in the bottom square of the furnace. You now have coal. If you place uncooked food in the square above and it will get cooked. This will increase the effect of the food. If you put a stick in one of the squares on the bottom of the crafting table and a coal block above it you'll get a torch. With this you can light the place up and prevent monsters from spawning. This will also make you see better in the dark.
8
There is just one thing left for you to safely survive every night until the end of time. A bed. The bed will allow you to sleep through the night and prevent your surroundings from teeming with monsters everytime you go outside. If you look at the picture to the right you can see the recipe for the bed. Place it two blocks from a wall and right-click it in the night to go to bed. Don't forget to keep your room light and close every opening for monsters to enter. If you leave an opening you might be woken up in the night by one. You also need to kill all nearby monsters to enable sleeping. When you right click on your bed, it will tell you if monsters are nearby.
Creeper: There are a lot of different monsters in Minecraft to find. They all have their own unique technique to kill you. I will now shortly explain how to survive the most common monsters. The monster you can see in this picture is a Creeper. They are silent suicide bombers. They try to get close to you and explode. If you come close to one and they begin flickering and you also begin hearing a "ssss". RUN! Run at least 12 blocks away from it to not be affected by the explosion. If you want to kill one, you just have hit it from a distance and immediately run away. When the Creeper calms down you can repeat this step until it's dead. It can also survive the sunlight. They drop gunpowder from which you can craft tnt.
Zombie: The next monster is our friendly neighbourhood Zombie. These guys harm you when you get close to them. When you hit something it will bounce back a little bit so just keep hitting the zombie to kill it. It's not that difficult. When they are in direct sunlight they'll die from burning. They tend to spawn in groups and they have the ability to break down doors you made to keep them out. They drop Rotten Flesh and bones. You can use those bones to tame wolves and the rotten flesh to fill your hungerbar. There's a 80% chance you'll get sick from it and your hungerbar will empty twice as fast for a limited time. I would only use Rotten Flesh when you don't have any other kind of food left and you can't get more fast enough.
9
3. Surviving the first night
Spider: This monster is called a Spider. You might have known that one. They are known to be annoying buggers. They can climb walls thus rendering straight walls useless. They also survive in the day but when you come close to one when it's day they stay neutral. When you hit them they'll become agressive. The spiders who were already following you even when it became day won't leave you until they're dead. They drop string and spider eyes. These can be used for brewing potions and Redstone contraptions
Slime: This is a Slime. They only spawn in Swamp biomes. They differentiate from size and they'll multiply in numbers when you kill one. Each time you kill one they'll become smaller so you will be able to kill one eventually. They drop slime balls which you can use for Redstone contraptions.
Enderman: This is an Enderman. One of the strongest monsters in the game. It has the ability to teleport wherever it wants and pick up/place blocks. It will only become agressive when you look at it. Once it's agressive it will be very difficult to kill it without armor and good weaponry. It will teleport al over the place and try to attack you from all possible angles. It is very important that if provoked, you keep looking 360 degrees around you to spot him. He drops Enderpearls which you can combine with other items to activate a portal to their dimension with the dragon.
10
4. The hoax behind Herobrine
Adventurers Journal “I had recently spawned a new world in single-player Minecraft. Everything was normal at first as I began chopping down trees and crafting a workbench. I noticed something move amongst the dense fog (I have a very slow computer so I have to play with a tiny render distance). I thought it was a cow, so I pursued it, hoping to grab some hides for armor.” “It wasn’t a cow though. Looking back at me was another character with the default skin, but his eyes were empty. I saw no name pop up, and I doublechecked to make sure I wasn’t in multiplayer mode. He didn’t stay long, he looked at me and quickly ran into the fog. I purused out of curiousity, but he was gone.” “I continued on with the game, not sure what to think. As I expanded to world I saw things that seemed out of place for the random map generator to make; 2x2 tunnels in the rocks, small perfect pyramids made of sand in the ocean, and groves of trees with all their leaves cut off. I would constantly think I saw the other “player” in the deep fog, but I never got a better look at him. I tried increasing my render distance to far whenever I thought I saw him, but to no avail.” “I saved the map and went on the forums to see if anyone else had found the pseudo-player. There were none. I created my own topic telling of the man and asking if anyone had a similar experience. The post was deleted within five minutes. I tried again, and the topic was deleted even faster. I received a PM from username ‘Herobrine’ containing one word: ‘Stop.’ When I went to look at Herobrine’s profile, the page 404'd.” “I received an email from another forum user. He claimed the mods can read the forum user messages, so we were safer using email. The emailer claimed that he had seen the mystery player too, and had a small ‘directory’ of other users who had seen him as well. Their worlds were littered with obviously man-made features as well, and described their mystery player to have no pupils.” “About a month passed until I heard from my informant again. Some of the people who had encountered the mystery man had looked into the name Herobrine and found that name to be frequently used by a swedish gamer. After some further information gathering, it was revealed to be the brother of Notch, the game’s developer. I personally emailed Notch, and asked him if he had a brother. It took him a while, but he emailed me back a very short message.” “I did, but he is no longer with us.” -Notch
13
F
rom the original creepy-pasta, Herobrine creates random constructions, such as pyramids and long 2-block-high tunnels. He also burns down, or cuts off leaves from trees, and creates cobblestone-complexes underground, much like dungeons, lit with redstone torches. Herobrine first appeared in a single image detailing an encounter. It was posted on the 4chan’s /v/ board, and gained very little attention. It stated how Herobrine had appeared in someone’s single-player game, littering the map with various pyramids and tunnels. It is the first media to name him as Herobrine. It was only later that Herobrine grew in popularity, when the Brocraft streamer “Copeland” photoshopped Herobrine into several screenshots to show to his chat. He had recently taken a liking to the story, and wished to be a part of it. After getting largely good reactions, he decided to stage a hoax. Copeland had played through the world as a normal lets-player would, deliberately avoiding the work-in-progress room he had set up for the hoax. Herobrine was introduced to the stream. He is confirmed to be a retextured painting. Copeland then screamed and ran out of the room, promptly ending the stream. Copeland pretended to be shaken up in the chat, and later posted a message onto the forums, linking to the video to spread it around, in the hope to get similar reactions. After a while, Copeland removed the painting and reverted to normal textures. He proceeded to stream further, pretending to be scared. He announced that he would delete the world to never meet Herobrine again. Later on, Patimuss made a video showing Herobrine in a user-made lava field. This Herobrine was free-standing, unlike the previous video. Due to this, it is likely he was a retextured door. The livestream went down after Patimuss ran away and saved his game, only to resume ten minutes later, where Hero
brine had disappeared. Later on, during the second stream, Patimuss can be heard talking to his wife, stating he was trolling. This flooded the livestream chat with outrage. He then faked a game crash. Copeland disliked that Patimuss outed Herobrine as a fake. It is unknown when exactly it happened in relation to Patimuss’s video, but Copeland then posted links in chat, leading to http://ghostinthestream.net/ him.html. This is likely where the nickname “Him” originated from. The page features Steve’s face, but with real, frantically rolling eyes in the place of his block eyes, modified to be completely black. Below the face, there are a jumble of characters and letters. after removing all non-alphabet characters, the following message is revealed: “It has been reported that some victims of torture, during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from which they could not WAKE UP. In this catatonic state, the victim lived in a world just like their normal one, except they weren’t being tortured. The only way that they realized they needed to WAKE UP was a note they found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about their condition, and tell them to WAKE UP. Even then, it would often take months until they were ready to discard their fantasy world and PLEASE WAKE UP.” The message keeps telling the viewer to “wake up”, implying they’re living in a fantasy world, and this text hidden in the page is their “note”. The above text is from another creepypasta, entitled “Wake Up”. The stream proceeded later with no further Herobrine sightings. Copeland continued to adamantly state Herobrine was real for about a year onwards. Since the stream, there has been a huge increase in his popularity, propelling Herobrine to meme status, and making him an icon of the community. There are several mods, animations, pieces of artwork and constructions of Herobrine that have been created.
14
15
5. Texturepack of the month
SPHAX PUREBDCRAFT "The SpaxPureBDCraft’s theme is simply based on a cartoon look."
I
t is extremely difficult to find the right texturepack. It really depends on the taste of the one searching. Texture packs are all designed in their own way. It is completely up to the artist about how detailed the texture pack will be, what he/she has decided its theme will be based on. For example, an artist may put an amazing amount of detail into his/her texture pack, however the packs theme is a strange mixture of medieval and modern, 2 out of 3 people who looked over this kind of texture pack would turn it down. A theme should really be based around one genre. The SpaxPureBDCraft’s theme is simply based on a cartoon look. However, the artist has worked on this texturepack with an intense amount of effort and time, making it amazingly detailed. The detail of a texturepack must fit in with its designated look, which a lot of texturepack artists fail to do. With this in the back of my head I now present you the texturepack of the month!
16
6. How to: XP farm
T
here are many different kinds of armor, weapons and tools in Minecraft. What if you could enchant them so that they become better? Well, there's an enchantment table for that. As you kill monsters or mine precious ores you will get experience points (also known as "XP") If you get enough XP you'll level up. Once you have enough levels, you can enchant your tools, armor or weapons. Those enchantments cost levels so you have to keep leveling throughout the game. You can give your armor a better blast resistance or you can make your shovel superfast. It's all up to you. The max level enchantment is level 30, but it's not that easy to get to that level. That's why I will show you one of the easiest and most efficient XP farms there is. If a monster dies he won't drop any XP. Only when you kill it. That's why this design will make your monster have only half a heart left. They will drop down a long chute but won't die. To gain a lot of XP, you'll just have to wait a few minutes in the designated area and the amount of monsters will increase. Then, you can just spam your left mouse button and you'll kill all of them with one click each.
How does it work?
Well, it's actually a really simple design which uses some standard minecraft rules. We start at the red block. This is a spawner. It spawns monsters when you get close enough. Because there are two waterblocks placed at the corners a steady waterflow is created and it will guide the monsters to the shaft. Signs are the only items in Minecraft which can stop water from flowing but enable monsters from going through them. This will keep the water where it is supposed to be. When monsters get in water they automatically try to swim to the top to reach air. Because of this the monsters will keep swimming until they're at the top of the farm. With another waterflow the monsters will be guided to the other side and they will drop down the chute. When they fall
17
to the ground they won't die but won't have much health left either. In the opening they won't be able to hit you but you will be able to kill them. If you happen to have a health potion splash potion of healing you can kill all of them immediately. Because zombies and skeletons are already dead they will die when you use a healing potion.
Building it:
To build this farm you need to find a dungeon. Dungeons spawn naturally in the world. Only zombie and skeleton spawners work for this design. Next build the design in this illustration but remember to fill the blocks that I have left out for a better visibility. You have to remove every torch in the room where the spawner is, the monsters won't spawn otherwise. The spawner is located in the center of the room. This particular XP farm will let you achieve level 30 within 10 minutes which otherwise would have taken multiple hours.
Water Mob Spawner You Sign
18
7. 10 facts you might not know about Minecraft
1. You cannot hit an Endermen with arrows or other projectile weapons!
2. If you put two of the same weapons/tools in your crafting grid, you can repair them!
3. If you click with your right mouse button on the dragon egg, it will teleport!
4. Cacti destroys items which is useful for a safer incinerator!
5. If you jump while killing a monster, it will become a critical hit!
21
6. Monsters won't spawn on a mushroom biome!
7. You can stack snow layers on top of each other!
8. If you jump while sprinting you'll be faster!
9. All fully drawn bows are considered critical!
10. If you wear a pumpkin on your head, the endermen won't become aggresive!
22
8. Mod of the month
THE AETHER MOD W
ith a huge amount of new crafting recipes, monsters, friends and adventures this mod is our mod of the month! The Aether creates an entire new dimension for you to explore in. With flying pigs, Dungeons, monster bosses and flying whales you'll never become bored with this one!
23
O
ne of the biggest projects in Minecraft Modding history is now completed. Five very well-known and talented modders (Kingbdogz, Kodaichi, Shockah, Flan and 303) have joined forces to develop the Aether, a celestial realm found in outer limits of the atmosphere. The Aether is what you could call the "antipole" of the Nether. The Nether is a network of desolate, fiery caverns filled with bloodstained Cobblestone and sticky Soulsand; it lies beneath the very soil of our Minecraft world. The Aether, on the other hand, is a collection of floating plains and islands, all connected together to create a breathtaking dimension of the skies. Even during the night, the Aether is still quite peaceful, and a normal day in the Aether is the equivalent of three days on the surface.
"The Aether isn't always fun and games though; elaborate dungeons are protected by powerful Guardians and sleeping sentries which await watchfully." Aerwhales, the gentle giants of the Aether, can be found floating in the horizon, munching on Golden Oaks and strips of Blue Aerclouds as the sun climbs higher in the sky. When the sun falls, Cockatrices crawl away from their well-hidden nests, ready to attack. Peaceful as they may seem, these deadly birds shoot poisonous needles at you when provoked. They are one of the few hostile mobs in the Aether. The Aether isn't always fun and games though; elaborate dungeons are protected by powerful Guardians and sleeping sentries which await watchfully. They can be found in the sides of massive floating islands, containing locked loot chests with otherwise unobtainable singular items and blocks worth the effort of slaying their key bearing protectors. Dungeons have three levels of difficulty. Bronze, Silver and Gold; Bronze being the easiest, and Gold being the hardest. This means that the Bronze Dungeon will be easier to handle, but the Dungeon will only yield "good" items. Silver Dungeons are slightly harder, and reward you with much better unique items. Gold Dungeons are extremely hard, but you will be rewarded with incredibly powerful items. These unique rewards CANNOT be obtained any other way. Flying Pigs can also be found wandering around the Aether, and occasionally flying freely through the air. These creatures can be saddled with a Saddle, and flown around without having to deal with a taming process. This allows players to quickly hop into the action. However, Flying Pigs can only jump once, and do not have the privilege of mid-air jumps like the powerful flying Moas.
24
Minecraft 1.5 + Added Redstone Comparator (used in Redstone logic) + Added Hopper (collects items and moves them to containers) + Added Dropper (similar to Dispensers, but always drops the item) + Added Activator Rail (activates TNT Minecarts) + Added Daylight Sensor + Added Trapped Chest + Added Weighed Pressure Plate + Added Block of Redstone + Added Nether Brick (item) + Added Nether Quartz and ore + Added Block of Quartz, with half blocks and chiseled variants + New command: /scoreboard + New command: /effect + Containers and mobs can have custom names * Inventory management has been changed, for example you can drag-place items over slots * Texture packs now have separate images for each block and item, and can have animations * Nether Quartz Ore now spawns in the Nether * Smooth lighting now has three settings (none, minimal, maximum) * More detailed death messages * Some hostile mobs now are harder in Hard difficulty * Many, many, bug fixes - Removed Herobrine
25
Illustrations: Reddit.com Minecraft.net Minecraftforum.net 9Minecraft.com Minecraft (Game) Text: Minecraft.net Minecraftforum.net Nativisions (Youtube) KaspersMC (Youtube) All rights reserved to their respective owners. Published by JD. Enterprises. 2013
26
It's everywhere you look!