It’s a half-workweek in Sweden this week, so there’s no snapshot to get excited about. But that doesn’t mean I’ve got nothing for this week’s Minecrafting column. Au contraire, monsieur/madame/madamoiselle.
Below you’ll find new blocks, building guides, awesome mods, amazing constructions and a weird way to make lettering using anvils. What? You’ll find out what. Let’s do this.
There is one small bit of official news. Jeb has been working on the oceans, which is a good sign considering how barren and squid-filled they are right now. Two new blocks are in the works – one called Prismarine and one called Sea Lantern. Your guess is as good as mine as to what they entail, but hopefully sea lanterns might brighten up the depths a little.
The best thing I saw this week was this comprehensive guide to interiors, created by Kaephis – the same person who put together that fantastic ‘How to Build’ guide the other week which focused on exteriors. It’s essentially an answer to the pressing question of how to fill a house. If you, like me, always end up with empty rooms that have a single bed or furnace in, then this is the guide you’re looking for. The tips on lighting are particularly good.
Perhaps your granny plays bingo. Perhaps your father plays bingo. Perhaps your entire family plays bingo and until now you’ve been shunned at family gatherings. Well now you can play bingo too – in Minecraft of course. A chap called Brian has put together a bingo mod where you run around a vanilla survival map looking for items to collect in the hope of lining up a row, column or diagonal. It uses much smaller biomes than normal, and there are extra dungeons, so you should be able to fill up your sheet pretty quickly. Oh, and the latest version supports teams, so you can play in co-op or as team versus team. BINGO! One small note – you’ll need snapshot 14w20b at least to run it.
Anvil lettering has started popping up a lot lately – a technique where you use grey wool and anvils to create pleasant lettering. You can see it in action here, thanks to Minecraft redditor Aakash. A small prize* goes to the person who can write the longest word in anvil lettering and still have it legible. (*there is no small prize).
The most awesome builds I spotted this week include a water-filled ballroom, a beautifully atmospheric abandoned quarry, a floating horse-racing track, and the various nifty structures in samiux’s single-player survival world. Definitely have a click on that last one if you’re looking for some inspiration for your own creations.
Two more things before I go. First, did you know you can put cobwebs in plant pots? Second, here is an actual working rocket ship that flies into the sky. There are no words.
That’ll do for this week. If you’ve seen anything in the Minecraft community that you think I should be highlighting, tell me about it by dropping me an email. I’ll be back with another roundup this time next week.