[HN Gopher] The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft ___________________________________________________________________ The Rocks and Minerals of Minecraft Author : colinprince Score : 235 points Date : 2021-08-09 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.mindat.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.mindat.org) | bombcar wrote: | Vanilla Minecraft has a decent smattering of ores (they just | added copper) - but if you want the rabbit hole you head into | something like GregTech: New Horizons and the massive ore | dictionary it has. | | However, it's not entirely realistic as the only way to get | titanium is from the Moon ... | willis936 wrote: | GT:NH does hit a lot of good points, but overshoots by quite a | bit. My best experience in minecraft was from making my own | GT5U kitchen sink pack with GT-based modified recipes. | Akronymus wrote: | I think gregblock could be to your liking. Altough it is greg | lite. Same with omnifactory, sadly. | | Still quite enjoyable packs. | willis936 wrote: | I've tried it. GTCE's dev is on a power trip and completely | misses the enjoyable aspects of gregtech. It's like if | someone pissed in a wine you like then insisted that it's | better and anyone who thinks otherwise is out of their | depth. GTCE isn't even in need of a fork because all of the | work has been shoddy from the beginning. It's a failed | project. | ilaksh wrote: | copper wow.. what can you do with it? make wires? | detaro wrote: | a spyglas (=lets you zoom in) and lightning rods (catch | lightning that would have struck in a radius around it | otherwise). And the blocks look nice, and slowly oxidize and | turn to green copper (which you can stop at any stage by | waxing the block with bees wax) | Hayarotle wrote: | I like how unfocused article feels. With the videos, comments and | interesting facts, it manages to replicate the experience of | reading an article at the same time you're randomly browsing the | internet and talking about it with your friends in a group chat. | I wonder if it's deliberate? | AnotherNotch wrote: | I think the 'rocks and minerals' follow Notch'es psyche, he's | insane, so, it's just a game! | lordnacho wrote: | For a while I would work as a coder during the day, and in the | evening I would work in the mines, for my son. | | "Dad we need more iron ore. Dad, make sure the furnaces have coal | in them." | | Eventually my kid worked out that you can build generators, | effectively coding it in MC bricks and providing infinite | resources. Probably the first time he's coded something, he just | doesn't know it. | | This made my evenings a bit less monotonous to start with, but | then I was managing a factory instead of hacking out blocks | underground. | | One thing I never understood about the game was how TNT and | minecarts are supposed to work, economically. It seems you need | to kill creepers to get TNT? That takes time, even if you make a | farm. And then when it blows up, it doesn't really blow up enough | blocks to make it worth the time, surely? Same with the tracks | for minecarts. How does the investment pay off? You need a huge | amount of iron to make the tracks, and all it lets you do is | transport stuff about as fast as riding a horse. | tialaramex wrote: | To be fair as a video game it doesn't need to have working | economics. It's OK if something is _cool_ and doesn 't make | economic sense. | | I rarely play Vanilla, but I _thought_ it had some type of | powered minecarts allowing primitive automation? Maybe some | types of rails that get a redstone signal speed up carts or | something like that? | | In modded I take the same attitude as in programming: Don't | Repeat Yourself. If I have to actually mine more than a few | blocks of iron, I'm done. One of my favourite innovations of | the past few years has been Hopping Bonsai Pots and subsequent | iterations on that idea. Miniature tree (of whatever species) | grows in the pot, when it reaches full size it is harvested and | gets hoppered into a container below, then grows again. | Awesome. But, not at all Vanilla. | dannytatom wrote: | you can make a creeper farm to automate gunpowder, that part is | easy. the hard part is that sand isn't renewable. a lot of tech | servers (scicraft being the biggest) just use tnt duping to do | it until mojang makes sand renewable. i think that's the only | "cheating" they do and it's kinda understandable cause | otherwise it's impossible to get a lot of tnt. | zimpenfish wrote: | > the hard part is that sand isn't renewable | | If you've opened The End, there's a way to use the End Portal | to duplicate sand. In one of my worlds, I have that feeding | into a 32 furnace super smelter with a tree farm nearby for | fuel (although I could build a carpet duper for that, | actually.) | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfeGyXJOCBw | kunagi7 wrote: | If you dupe carpet you can use it as fuel (3 carpets per | smelt item) so it's quite inefficient. Still, as an | unlimited item... As long you can supply the super smelter | quick enough with fuel efficiency isn't that important. | handrous wrote: | They rebalanced tracks at some point, and you get IIRC 3 or 4 | each time you build some now, instead of (again, IIRC) just one | like you used to. Back then, tracks were _really_ expensive. | Now, between the resource cost change and salvaging them from | abandoned mines, they 're a cheapish way to connect places that | are too close to bother with gates (or put them in the Nether | between very distant gates for _super_ fast transportation). | worldsayshi wrote: | > I never understood about the game was how TNT and minecarts | are supposed to work | | I haven't played for a long time but yeah it doesn't really | make sense given that you have such a large inventory. If they | added some extra difficulty level where the inventory is | miniscule it might make more sense. Maybe they need to make | mining slower and more rewarding per ore block as well. | | Has to be a mod for this? | zanderwohl wrote: | I've played on custom taller maps and they become more useful | when exploring expansive cave systems. You walked all the way | down for the resources but have too much to carry. So | minecarts become useful for the very tall stairs you have to | climb up and down a lot. | | I think they'll become way more useful with the 64 more | blocks' height underground. | tialaramex wrote: | There are mods that make the game much harder, including by | cutting your inventory and limits on weight, but in my | experience people are drawn to increasing the horizon rather | than restricting how far you can reach. | | So e.g. rather than forcing you to move more slowly (e.g. | realistic walking pace, limited sprint, burden by weight) | let's add _moon rockets_ so you can go further. In fact, why | stop at the moon (albeit that is where the Rats went because | it 's made of cheese -- in some continuities, I should really | go beat that part of the pack one day)? Add space stations, | ferry rockets, and eventually an interstellar drive so you | can visit other solar systems. | | If I put an aerial with unlimited range upgrade on the | outside of a Compact Machine on the moon, and then I run the | network inside that Compact Machine over a wireless link to | another Compact Machine on Mars, then I can use machines on | the surface of Mars, wirelessly, while stood on the | (notional) far side of the Moon. Unlike the real world, | Minecraft doesn't know that the latency ought to be | incredibly annoying when I do that :D | | "There's no wrong way to enjoy yourself". But on the whole | the instinct to make it harder hasn't been as popular. | 8note wrote: | With skulk sensors doing sound based communications from a | distance(next Minecraft release), you should be able to see | that communication latency | lukego wrote: | I'm in the opposite situation. I setup a Minecraft server and | outsourced the hard work to my kids. They are toiling away for | a couple of hours most days building all kinds of elaborate | structures. I just drop in to say a few words of appreciation | and go mining in search of diamonds. | | They do cajole me into hunting food for them sometimes though. | silicon2401 wrote: | Really prepping them for office life and working as an | individual contributor with this approach | KineticLensman wrote: | i sense an opportunity for "My first timesheet". | TchoBeer wrote: | You've recreated child labor in Minecraft lol | gmemstr wrote: | At some point you start to learn how mobs (creepers, zombies | etc) spawn and their various behaviors, which you can exploit | to set up farms to automatically harvest their loot. Some farms | are incredibly simple, and others very complex, but the end | result is roughly the same. Some can be adapted to also let you | farm experience for enchanting. Admittedly it can break | progression a bit when you have enough of them but generally | one or two well optimized setups can produce a fair amount of | resources. | tkahnoski wrote: | I joked with my wife that I was being a parent in Minecraft. | Which is sort of true... I kept building shelters, providing | food, and other supplies. | | Now I try to strike a balance in being helpful as I'd expect a | friend to be and letting him do some of the work. Regardless it | still did wonders for getting our normally quiet kid to talk. | Granted the signal to noise is about 15 minutes of Minecraft | talk and 5 minutes of actual what happened in the day. | shkkmo wrote: | Rails are cheap if you setup an iron golem farm. | | There is a dupe mechanic with TnT that allows you to build | machines that explode stuff without consuming TnT. | bovermyer wrote: | Minecarts get to be more useful when you want to travel long | distances without having to touch the controls. | | TNT... personally, I've never found a use for it. | cout wrote: | When I used to play I found it more convenient to travel long | distances using nether portals. | josephorjoe wrote: | > Minecarts get to be more useful when you want to travel | long distances without having to touch the controls. | | This and you can (and should) build roller coasters. | grawprog wrote: | >This and you can (and should) build roller coasters. | | Last time I really played minecraft years ago, me an my old | roommate would compete to see who could make the most epic | ridiculous minecart rollercoaster track. | | It was pretty fun, we'd turn entire mountains into a giant | roller coaster or build floating islands or have it go down | to the center of a lava cave or something. | kunagi7 wrote: | With piston bolts [0] travelling long distances got even | faster. They push the minecart forward at redstone tick | speeds and are server side so they're really efficient. | | But there was a faster way with a machine called "ender pearl | cannon" [1]. I don't know if they still work though. They're | quite complex to build but allowed to travel tens of | thousands blocks very precisely in less than a minute. | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGcGU9ay9io [1] | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eOIVPQYOt8 | trutannus wrote: | You can make overly expensive unguided bombs by using TNT | minecarts. They can be very effective for saturation bombing | of areas. You can effectively eliminate the risk of Pillager | outposts with a few of those configured around it. When they | respawn you can trigger the system and have an on-demand air- | raid. There's not much the mobs can do against an aerial | bombardment. | | You can also create land-mines with pressure plates. | anthony_r wrote: | Step 1: install Baritone | | Step 2: type "#mine iron_ore" | | https://github.com/cabaletta/baritone | | https://youtu.be/CZkLXWo4Fg4?t=80 | | I always wonder why so few people know about Baritone. It can | do so much: move the player, clear areas, mine ores and other | blocks, construct simple surfaces such as roads or even paste | complicated Schematicas layer by layer. Perhaps it takes away | too much of the fun. | charcircuit wrote: | Step 1: /give @p iron_ore 64 | | If you are going to cheat, you might as well be efficient | anthony_r wrote: | If you want to play creative - sure. About survival - I | mean, would you think using Google Maps for driving | instructions is cheating? What about those cheater self- | driving cars, damn them! Back in my day we used to walk | uphill both ways, etc. | | Besides, it's mostly for multi-player. Playing this game | single-player is only the beginning. | IntrepidWorm wrote: | Tnt is useful for it's efficiency. Gunpowder can be | automatically farmed through relatively simple means, while | sand (for instance) is not so easily automated. With a few well | placed blocks of tnt, entire inventories full of sand can be | collected in moments compared to digging it block by block. | | Minecarts and their tracks are useful for automation of | resource transmission- while faster modes of player | transportation exist, it's difficult to transport thousands of | items by hand- with a line of tracks and some simple | automation, this becomes trivial. | weeeeelp wrote: | >One thing I never understood about the game was how TNT and | minecarts are supposed to work, economically | | They're not, really. Both function as a "fun" kind of item, TNT | gets more useful in player-vs-player as an item to destroy | other's bases, if you're into that sorta thing. | eric__cartman wrote: | or blast villages out of the map when playing in creative | mode :) | anon_cow1111 wrote: | I think the ideal way to use TNT is place it in the center of a | 3x3x3 block room, suspended on dirt or something with low blast | resist. It'll expand the room to roughly 5x5x5. You can do this | again to expand to 7x7x7 So basically you're getting ~250 | blocks removed per 2 TNT. A mob spawner/farm can produce 100 or | more gunpowder in 10 minutes. Rails are more easily found in | mine shafts than crafted. Dump water instead of pickaxing them. | | This is from personal experience, I'm not sure what the ideal | strategies are in newer versions of the game. | yreg wrote: | I always thought the intended ideal way to use TNT is to put | it under a pressure plate in your friends home. | Nition wrote: | You might be looking for a kind of deliberate planned game | design that just isn't really there in Minecraft. | | The world is destructible so why not have a block to blow it | up? TNT takes gunpowder to create because why wouldn't it? | Gunpowder comes from creepers because they're around and they | explode. | | Minecarts are for riding in, but the first thing Notch | demonstrated for them was a rollercoaster. Horses weren't added | until some time later. You can still craft a Minecart With | Furnace even though powered rails made them obsolete. | 8note wrote: | Hopper minecarts pickup items really quickly, and hoppers can | pull stuff out of them | | For tnt, there's a duplication glitch that lets them rain down | nightpool wrote: | Along with the technical uses that Hesinde outlines below, | minecarts see a lot of use on casual multiplayer servers | because they provide a method of AFK-able transportation. | Powered minecart rails in the Nether can travel about 325k | (Overworld) blocks per hour, so if you want to visit some far- | flung territory you can set your character in a minecart, go | get a snack, and come back 10 or 20 minutes later. This is | slower than many other transportation methods (for example, | boats on ice can travel 144k blocks per hour, or 1.1M Overworld | blocks if traveling in the Nether), but requires much less | active user involvement. | xmprt wrote: | If you want to take the game to the next level there are many | different mods that you can add that would add another layer of | complexity to the game with new challenges and problems to | solve. It could be great if you feel like the vanilla game is | getting a little stale or too straightforward. | Hesinde wrote: | Minecraft provides surprisingly many opportunities for | automation. Most of them are pretty unintuitive though. A good | source on how things can be automated are technical Minecraft | Youtubers like ilmango. | | TNT is used in farm designs, which generate blocks needing | breaking, e.g. wood farms, cobble stone farms, dirt farms. | There are two ways to get a lot of TNT for this: a) duping b) | building a farm yielding gun powder (generic mob farm, creeper | farm, witch farm) and duping or gathering sand | | Hopper minecarts can collect items from below a magma block, | which allows for easy killing zones in mob farms. Normal | minecarts are sometimes used as gondolas for slime block | bouncing lifts as the position of a player in a minecart is | more accurate on servers. Minecarts can also be used to kill | creatures via entity cramming. If there are more than 24 | entitities within a block, creatures receive damage until the | entity count drops. Once you have an iron farm, the minecarts | and tracks become cheap. | bombcar wrote: | Minecarts are usable as part of red stone computers and other | automation, too. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3RLNCpS6YY | conradev wrote: | I thought you could use Obsidian to construct an explosion- | proof farm, but my information might be out of date | kunagi7 wrote: | For most cases that's true. Still, Wither explosions and the | Ender Dragon can destroy obsidian. That's why most people | kill the Wither using the Bedrock located on the Nether roof. | | Still, no material is free from destruction using glitches | and some technical users remove entire chunks of | obsidian/bedrock to make their farms more efficient. | 8note wrote: | Things that explode in water don't do environment damage iirc | Darmody wrote: | A good creeper farm can provide thousands of powder very | quickly. You just need to "code" it the right way to break the | mob cap. | | Iron is probably the easiest mineral to get. Even a small iron | farm on the starting chunks, will get you hundreds of bars per | hour, as it never stops working there, even if you're away. | Carts are great to distribute materials around or to collect | them, not to just carry them around. | jandrese wrote: | Once you have a good Creeper farm you suddenly have the | problem of there not being any kind of sand farm in the base | game AFAIK. You can dig up a desert to get a big supply, but | even that will get consumed by a constantly running TNT | factory. | Darmody wrote: | But there are enough deserts. With a couple efficiency 5 | shovels you can fill a full inventory of shulkers in less | than 10 min. | Miner49er wrote: | Or use TNT. Running around with TNT and a flint and | steel, in a desert, is a very quick way of getting sound. | [deleted] | nitwit005 wrote: | You can find a ton of minecart tracks in old mines if you look | around for them. | | TNT is probably intentionally a bit difficult to get as it's a | performance problem. The work the game has to do to simulate | the explosion grows exponentially as long as there is more TNT | to consume. | Chazifraz wrote: | If you're using minecarts to move yourself around in Minecraft, | it's certainly a terrible investment. However, when used as a | tool, they are incredibly useful and an excellent investment. | Minecarts can do two things that no other setup can: transport | items between inventories consistently without the player's | involvement, and move entities like villagers around the map. | This makes minecarts a really useful tool in the later stages | of the game, when you might want to use them to distribute | items across an array of furnaces to be smelted or to move | villagers to a central location to make trading easier. | | TNT is sometimes worth the time it takes to make. Every block | in Minecraft has a blast resistance, so if you're using TNT | underground, you're running into stone blocks that will shrink | your blast radius. On the other hand, TNT can be used on the | surface of the desert to get sand quickly and profitably. It | can also be used at the lower levels of the nether to blow up a | bunch of blocks in the search for netherite scrap. | bonzini wrote: | Minecarts really are useful only to transport creatures around, | and to distribute stuff from and to furnaces. | lordnacho wrote: | Right but you can find these abandoned mines with nicely laid | out track along the whole length. The game sort of suggests | that you should do that too? | | But basically if you don't find enough iron in a given length | of cave, you can't have tracks all the way. | outworlder wrote: | You can decomission the track when it is no longer useful | and build it somewhere else. As you find more iron, the | distance you can go increases. | | There are some mods with excavators that can also lay | tracks. Those were great fun. | munk-a wrote: | The iron to track conversion ratio is pretty efficient | though - so I don't know how often you'll find an area | devoid enough of iron to be building at a loss... That all | said if you're laying a continuous path while spelunking | you'll probably manage it. | marpayne wrote: | It's probably amazing to incorporate what we can do in Minecraft | and convert it into a real-world object. Given that we will only | use it for good purposes. It will drastically transform our world | and imagine the countless possibility of the creative minds can | do. | ilaksh wrote: | Not sure what you mean and honestly in English that doesn't | come across as fully coherent. But it is a really fascinating | idea.[ | | How would we manifest Minecraft things? You mean like a | Microsoft Hololens demo or something? | bovermyer wrote: | Since you've got a pretty new account, here's a tip: Hacker | News is not Reddit. This community takes a very dim view of | sarcastic dismissiveness. | | You're welcome to dislike anything you want, but generally | speaking, let those of us that are more playful enjoy our | whimsy. | | Or, to borrow a phrase that's long out of favor - don't harsh | the mellow, man. | scollet wrote: | I am surprised you got any information out of gp. I have no | idea what that comment is supposed to be saying. | ilaksh wrote: | I am not sure either but I have a feeling English is not | their first language. | | Regardless, most interesting comment in the thread in my | opinion. | cratermoon wrote: | Geology lesson! | eloeffler wrote: | Strike the Earth! | Sharlin wrote: | Like almost everything else, Dwarf Fortress's geology is in a | class of its own. There are about two dozen stone types that | form layers, divided quasi-realistically into sedimentary, | igneous intrusive, igneous extrusive, and metamorphic [1]. Then | there are forty other types of stone that occur as veins and | pockets [2]... and _then_ there are about twenty types of metal | ore and _130_ different types of gem! | | [1] | http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Stone#Stones_f... | | [2] | http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Stone#Other_St... | treeman79 wrote: | My daughters love to play Minecraft with me. | | My youngest one collects Pets. To the point I had to ban them | from the house as 7 wolfs and a dozen cats in the room is a bit | much. She has many stables around the house for them. | | I have hitting turned off to reduce drama. So same one will leash | a bunch of wolves and walk in front of older sister. Causing an | accidental hit and wolves then proceed to eat the sister. | | The older one loves diamonds. She follows along my mining and | rushes to grab them ahead everyone else. We are working on | sharing. | | She also loves to produce fancy houses, better then I can do. | | It's quite heart warming when I log And a new chest is there with | a sign "for Dad" and it will have whatever oddball crafted items | they want to leave for me; Last was a telescope. | ilaksh wrote: | To me hitting should maybe be on for kids because its a way for | them to learn. | | Although after being hit a few times by my nephew when he was | younger, I understand turning it off. I have not had kids, but | I get the impression that most kids are just prone to certain | tendencies at a young age. Like, they are kids. Maybe there are | a rare few that act less like kids, but I think there may be | limitations on training especially for the young ones. | | But anyway I was happy to find the last time that I was in with | my nephew, I had no fear of being accidentally attacked with a | sword. | Darmody wrote: | That's wholesome. | | I used to play a lot with my niece. I can't wait to have my own | children to play with them. It's so full of possibilities. Not | many games are this entertaining and educational at the same | time. Even though it depends very much on how you play it. | charliea0 wrote: | The process of going from rocks to manufactured goods is | fascinating, and probably part of the interest in Minecraft. | | Obligatory link to a video showing the home refinement of iron | metal from minerals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBBt7IhHOFQ | jvanderbot wrote: | The best ref on _primitive_ Iron production I've seen is | acoup.blog ... also textiles, food, etc | [deleted] | Cycl0ps wrote: | I went on a game hiatus in June just to see if I'd even miss them | or if they were nothing but a time sink. So far there's only two | games I'd really like to play, Battlefield 2042 (which hasn't | released yet) and Minecraft. To my mind it is a perfect sandbox | game. Solid core loop, various secondary objectives you can set, | high replayability, and deep customization. There is an | impressively deep level of interaction between different objects | in the game, combined with the redstone logic system there's no | real limit to what can be designed. It's the Lego of the digital | age. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-09 23:00 UTC)