Quit being a baby and make another pick and get new stuff. We've all lost riches to lava. It's part of being a Minecrafter.
Cheating the stuff back in? Might as well just cheat yourself invulnerable too. Once you start cheating around things, it's always easier to justify it again.
I used to be a Stone Tools man, since I thought I was being frugal and practical with my precious iron and diamonds.
But then I read something that stuck with me. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something like "Use iron tools. A common n00b mistake is to use stone tools out of a sense of practicality, but there's SO much iron in an average MC world as to be, for all intents and purposes, unlimited. Your TIME, however, is not."
I've found this to be true. An average branch mine should yield you several stacks of iron very quickly, and with a good set of iron tools you'll find enough iron ore to replace what you use to make your tools and still have extra left over.
I keep a diamond pick-axe on me too, but I rarely use it. It's for playing around with obsidian mining (one of my least favorite chores in the game) and for the odd time when I chew through my last iron pick.
I respect the effort and idea behind this, but it's information that's pretty easy to get in other places (eg. the wiki), and the information you provide isn't very robust or expansive. Truthfully, one episode of just about any average 'Let's Play Minecraft' series is going to provide all the information you've got here, plus has the advantage of providing a visual example of what you're talking about.
You've got to get something into your book that differentiates it from the dozens and dozens of "Minecraft Basics" posts and YouTube videos that are out there. There's very little personality in your book, very little engagement of the reader, and very little practical applications of the things you describe. (For example, what are the differences between charcoal and coal? Is one preferable to the other? Why or why not?)
I think my best advice to you would be "More!" There's plenty of places for a rookie to get the very very basics of Minecraft, think about what you can add to a new player's experience over and above a very brief overview of the game interface.
The advice I give you would be that everyone feels like you do sooner or later. We've all had insecurity and doubts as we look at someone's amazing world or staggering build. But realize this: most of those worlds and builds didn't happen overnight, and they went through *dozens* of revisions and changes before they got to the final product.
The best way to get better at building is to build, and not be afraid to build something ugly. Build ten homes in a row, just as a challenge. Try to make each one different. Between the ten, there's bound to be a few new ideas or structures you stumble across. Build ten towers, see if you can make THEM all different. Make five surface homes and five underground homes, see what you like.
Sooner or later you're going to have enough experience under you belt that you'll approach building in an entirely different way, and know what you want to achieve before you start out.
Don't be afraid to mess up and do things wrong! Don't be afraid of ugly structures! This is a necessary part of the learning process. Knowing what to move away from can be as important as knowing what you want to move towards.
I think maps, as they are now, are almost useless. They strike me as one of those abandoned development items that Notch lost interest in two weeks after he implemented them. Kinda like wolves.
A trail of torches serves the player far far better in returning to an area from the wilderness, and there's the advantage of being able to actually see if there's any danger coming AND be able to respond to it.
Practice. Patience. And lots of ugly, failed designs that nobody sees but you. For every awesome build you see, there are a dozen frustrating failures that you don't. Don't be intimidated. Part of the beauty of sandbox games is that as you become more comfortable with the in-game physics and mechanics, you find yourself trying and learning new things.
Also, remember that skill level is a spectrum, not an absolute. You have your complete n00bs at one side and your grand-master architects on the other, and everyone falls somewhere on that spectrum. You look at people more advanced than you and say "Man, I totally suck," but what you're missing is that there's always someone lower on the spectrum than you looking at YOUR builds and saying the same thing.
You'll get there, and sooner rather than later you'll be posting in the Screenshots forum and making other people feel the same way you feel now.
Once you start making mob traps, it's too late. Sooner or later you start to design The Really Big Trap, and your life disappears into an endless run for cobble and coal, waiting for the day when the beast is built so you can finally turn it on.
The best long-term solution is to increase the size of the room so that you have canals 8 blocks long that fit the water streams surrounding your spawning pads and leading into your grinder. There are tricks with signs, stairs and half-blocks that you can use if your canals aren't that long, and Ethos probably has the best in terms of no dead spots in the water flow, but for my money, designing the room to accommodate the 8-block water flow is the best solution.
As far as grinders go, my personal favorite are gravity drops, but that's because I like to watch the mobs fall to their deaths. It's also faster than lava and you don't lose drops, although any decent mob trap is going to quickly yield so many drops you won't care about some lost string.
Given that your trap is already on level 10, you could either use a mobavator to bring your farmed mobs up to a great height and drop them (gravity trap), you could set up a lava blade and have your mob collection canals lead into it (a classic lava blade trap), or use a small mobavator to direct mobs into a chamber full of water so they drown.
If you want something dorfier, you could try setting up a sticky piston so it extends a solid block into your mob collection area at head height and suffocate the mobs. Something I plan on trying once I finish my mob tower is a crushing trap, where two sticky pistons crush mobs between them. I'd recommend this approach, but I don't know if it works yet. :smile.gif:
That's a pretty sizable mob spawning area, but have you made sure you've lit up any surrounding caves? Also, mobs won't spawn within 24 blocks of you, so unless you've specifically built an observation chamber at that distance or further, you can't hang out in your mob trap to watch it go.
The water flows from left to right, the lava flows from right to left, and the sign holds the water back from the collection chute. The sign ALSO holds the lava up so mobs are transported right into the lava blade.
I know it's not the drowning trap you wanted, but the truth of the matter is that any spider trap is going to quickly yield you more string than you could ever use, even with the occasional lost drop.
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I folded it yesterday." - S. Wright.
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Also: your subject tense and your verb tense are in disagreement.
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Cheating the stuff back in? Might as well just cheat yourself invulnerable too. Once you start cheating around things, it's always easier to justify it again.
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But then I read something that stuck with me. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something like "Use iron tools. A common n00b mistake is to use stone tools out of a sense of practicality, but there's SO much iron in an average MC world as to be, for all intents and purposes, unlimited. Your TIME, however, is not."
I've found this to be true. An average branch mine should yield you several stacks of iron very quickly, and with a good set of iron tools you'll find enough iron ore to replace what you use to make your tools and still have extra left over.
I keep a diamond pick-axe on me too, but I rarely use it. It's for playing around with obsidian mining (one of my least favorite chores in the game) and for the odd time when I chew through my last iron pick.
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You've got to get something into your book that differentiates it from the dozens and dozens of "Minecraft Basics" posts and YouTube videos that are out there. There's very little personality in your book, very little engagement of the reader, and very little practical applications of the things you describe. (For example, what are the differences between charcoal and coal? Is one preferable to the other? Why or why not?)
I think my best advice to you would be "More!" There's plenty of places for a rookie to get the very very basics of Minecraft, think about what you can add to a new player's experience over and above a very brief overview of the game interface.
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The best way to get better at building is to build, and not be afraid to build something ugly. Build ten homes in a row, just as a challenge. Try to make each one different. Between the ten, there's bound to be a few new ideas or structures you stumble across. Build ten towers, see if you can make THEM all different. Make five surface homes and five underground homes, see what you like.
Sooner or later you're going to have enough experience under you belt that you'll approach building in an entirely different way, and know what you want to achieve before you start out.
Don't be afraid to mess up and do things wrong! Don't be afraid of ugly structures! This is a necessary part of the learning process. Knowing what to move away from can be as important as knowing what you want to move towards.
0
A trail of torches serves the player far far better in returning to an area from the wilderness, and there's the advantage of being able to actually see if there's any danger coming AND be able to respond to it.
0
Also, remember that skill level is a spectrum, not an absolute. You have your complete n00bs at one side and your grand-master architects on the other, and everyone falls somewhere on that spectrum. You look at people more advanced than you and say "Man, I totally suck," but what you're missing is that there's always someone lower on the spectrum than you looking at YOUR builds and saying the same thing.
You'll get there, and sooner rather than later you'll be posting in the Screenshots forum and making other people feel the same way you feel now.
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Good luck! And awesome first trap!
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Of course, I prefer throwing zombies in lava instead.
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As far as grinders go, my personal favorite are gravity drops, but that's because I like to watch the mobs fall to their deaths. It's also faster than lava and you don't lose drops, although any decent mob trap is going to quickly yield so many drops you won't care about some lost string.
Given that your trap is already on level 10, you could either use a mobavator to bring your farmed mobs up to a great height and drop them (gravity trap), you could set up a lava blade and have your mob collection canals lead into it (a classic lava blade trap), or use a small mobavator to direct mobs into a chamber full of water so they drown.
If you want something dorfier, you could try setting up a sticky piston so it extends a solid block into your mob collection area at head height and suffocate the mobs. Something I plan on trying once I finish my mob tower is a crushing trap, where two sticky pistons crush mobs between them. I'd recommend this approach, but I don't know if it works yet. :smile.gif:
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Here's a basic side view of a dungeon trap.
The water flows from left to right, the lava flows from right to left, and the sign holds the water back from the collection chute. The sign ALSO holds the lava up so mobs are transported right into the lava blade.
I know it's not the drowning trap you wanted, but the truth of the matter is that any spider trap is going to quickly yield you more string than you could ever use, even with the occasional lost drop.
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