It used to be an 8-to-1 ratio between normal world (overland) and Nether distances. Did that change?
Portals within 1024 blocks of each other in overland will be linked to a single portal in the Nether that will exit back to the first overland portal that was created.
The way Nether portals are used as warp points is to allow you to travel 1/8 the distance to move to a far away overland area. There is no way to shorten the distance you travel in the Nether, though. The best you could do is make a tunnel with rail tracks to shorten travel time.
They used to only spawn at very deep levels, but now they spawn up higher too (mid 30s, near 40 even), which is a pain if you want to relax mining in open spaces at midlevels but useful if you want to harvest slimeballs.
I make a boat and go out away from shore, far enough that mobs won't aggro. If I see a small island with no mobs, I land and plant a torch or two and huddle there. This has the advantage over a hole that I can see while pulling back into shore whether anything is waiting to greet me.
That is only a last resort if I happen to start near or after sunset. It only requires harvesting trees prior to enacting if you opt for no torches and just stay in the boat or on an island so small that your presence disallows hostile spawns. If I have much of any daylight to work with, I gather some wood, then dig into a hillside (accumulating enough stone for a stove and some better tools as I do so). I setup a stove and cook some charcoal, then make and place a door while that's taking place. If I got enough wood to make plenty of charcoal, I'll start a mine by digging down and further into the hill, so I don't waste all the time until sunrise.
At least a couple people mentioned F3 and the coordinate system. If you know how to use that and you know how the sun/moon and clouds move, you won't need any materials to find your way back home. Even in the rain, coordinates never fail. As someone else mentioned, make it easier on yourself by only exploring in one cardinal direction at a time.
Step by step:
1. At your home, hit F3 and write down the coordinates (X and Z).
2. Move in any cardinal direction (NSEW) and then hit F3 again and note which number changed. Now you know which is the NS number and which is the EW number.
3. Explore in any of those four directions, confident that you now have all the knowledge you need to get back home.
Theyre not rare because theres too many mineshafts.
Yep, that's half the problem - too many mines all over the place. Once you get in a mine, cave spiders aren't that rare. I've encountered them just tunneling through mines without even venturing down the shafts and passages.
I like ravines and abandoned mines, but they need to be toned down in two regards. They are somewhat too big (more so mines than ravines). Also, they are far too numerous. If you use a mod like the dynamic map and look at the underground view, the mines and caves and ravines combined completely overwhelm the regular areas, as opposed to before when caves were a sporadic surprise. Now, you can't dig much at all without hitting a mine or a ravine or a cave. It's like a million dwarves went to town then suddenly vanished. I feel less like a miner or builder or adventurer and more like an archaeologist. It would be great if the mines were slightly less rare than the villages, so coming across one would be something of note, instead of something guaranteed to be hit after digging for 10 minutes in pretty much any downward direction from any location.
i did this by making the tunnel first with dirt then surround the dirt with glass then just go to the begining and dig out all the dirt. Used this method for the tunnel to atlantis i made
Yes, this is what I was going to suggest. Don't start off with a hollow tunnel. Make a solid core, add on the outside shell, then bore out the core. That way you never have to deal with a water-filled tube that you have to dry out. The same goes for underwater buildings - build a hill in the shape of your intended building, then cover it and hollow it out, using signs or doors or reeds to keep water from coming in the entrance. A variant is using flammable blocks for the filler, then lighting it on fire to burn it all out quickly.
I'd like to see the poison potency knocked down to about half what it is now, so they'd still be challenging but not so out of line with other monsters. As it is, they're the only monster I fear other than creepers that catch me in a corner. Or maybe that fear is just what was intended. Perhaps poison potency could vary with the difficulty level like bite damage does, so Hard is the current potency and Normal is about 50% of that (preferably half the duration, so you are knocked to half health instead of near-death).
For ultimate simplicity, just look at the tops; if the tops of the wheat are brown, they're ready for harvest. Every previous stage of development, the tops are green. (Note that this applies to the default texture pack and may not apply to other packs.)
Free Mods make DLC completely pointless. Why waste your money on DLC when you can get 100x the content with all the mods already in existence. Notch shouldn't even waste his time making expansions, the modders are doing a better job than he ever could. Notch just needs to focus on optimizing the main engine and making it more stable.
And possibly figure out out a way to finally add anti-aliasing and mip-mapping.
Just leave the new content to the modders.
I wholeheartedly agree. Mods are what let me construct without worrying about griefers. Mods are what let me see where I am on a dynamic map. Those two things are worth much more to me than rain and wolves and most of the recent official additions (except for beds, which I like). I'd much rather look to a bustling mod community for added content than the necessarily more limited imagination of a single person or small group.
I went down into one of my deep areas not long after slimes were added back in (or at least had their probability increased) and I saw two huge slimes heading my way. I stood there until one came up and hit me, because I wasn't sure if it would cause damage. As soon as I realized how much they hurt, I tried to run, but the second of the two blocked my way out and they quickly killed me. It was almost too uncanny how the second one moved to my side and precisely blocked my path to the several-blocks-wide stairway.
I have nothing against the concept of weather in Minecraft in general, but I wish rain didn't lower the light level so much. When I'm heavy into building outdoors, it already feels like daylight is in short supply. Rain also is annoying when I'm out exploring and suddenly have to worry about mobs even though it's high noon; it makes it hard to plan trips properly.
Caves do not reach further down that layer 12 I think. The lava-pools on layer 12 can reach to bedrock though.
I think the mechanism is that upon generation of a sector, any caves below a certain level (which may indeed be 12) get filled with either lava or water.
Just wandering and not building seems to me to be wasting too much of the potential of Minecraft. It can be fun for a temporary diversion, but if exploration is the be-all, end-all, perhaps Minecraft is the wrong venue. Granted it has near-endless geographic extensibility, but so does a lifetime subscription to National Geographic or an obsession with Google Maps.
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Portals within 1024 blocks of each other in overland will be linked to a single portal in the Nether that will exit back to the first overland portal that was created.
The way Nether portals are used as warp points is to allow you to travel 1/8 the distance to move to a far away overland area. There is no way to shorten the distance you travel in the Nether, though. The best you could do is make a tunnel with rail tracks to shorten travel time.
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That is only a last resort if I happen to start near or after sunset. It only requires harvesting trees prior to enacting if you opt for no torches and just stay in the boat or on an island so small that your presence disallows hostile spawns. If I have much of any daylight to work with, I gather some wood, then dig into a hillside (accumulating enough stone for a stove and some better tools as I do so). I setup a stove and cook some charcoal, then make and place a door while that's taking place. If I got enough wood to make plenty of charcoal, I'll start a mine by digging down and further into the hill, so I don't waste all the time until sunrise.
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Step by step:
1. At your home, hit F3 and write down the coordinates (X and Z).
2. Move in any cardinal direction (NSEW) and then hit F3 again and note which number changed. Now you know which is the NS number and which is the EW number.
3. Explore in any of those four directions, confident that you now have all the knowledge you need to get back home.
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Yep, that's half the problem - too many mines all over the place. Once you get in a mine, cave spiders aren't that rare. I've encountered them just tunneling through mines without even venturing down the shafts and passages.
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Yes, this is what I was going to suggest. Don't start off with a hollow tunnel. Make a solid core, add on the outside shell, then bore out the core. That way you never have to deal with a water-filled tube that you have to dry out. The same goes for underwater buildings - build a hill in the shape of your intended building, then cover it and hollow it out, using signs or doors or reeds to keep water from coming in the entrance. A variant is using flammable blocks for the filler, then lighting it on fire to burn it all out quickly.
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I wholeheartedly agree. Mods are what let me construct without worrying about griefers. Mods are what let me see where I am on a dynamic map. Those two things are worth much more to me than rain and wolves and most of the recent official additions (except for beds, which I like). I'd much rather look to a bustling mod community for added content than the necessarily more limited imagination of a single person or small group.
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I think the mechanism is that upon generation of a sector, any caves below a certain level (which may indeed be 12) get filled with either lava or water.
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