- Introducing the HUD
- Avoiding Getting Lost
- Improving Your Tools
- Chests: Safely Stashing Your Stuff
- Avoiding Monsters
- Hunger Management
- Your Mission: Food, Resources, and Reconnaissance
- A Resourceful Guide to the Creative Mode Inventory
- The Bottom Line
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
A Resourceful Guide to the Creative Mode Inventory
Minecraft resources fall into several primary categories. Some of them are a natural early focus as you improve your position from those gathered for first-night survival; others come into more focus as you get further through the game, gear up for your exploration of The Nether and The End regions, and start to become more creative with all that Minecraft has to offer. Here’s a quick summary of the categories. You can view all the possible tools and resources by opening a game in Creative mode and pressing 
, as shown in Figure 3.10. The categories that follow correspond to the tabs running across the upper and lower sections of the Creative mode inventory. Scroll the inventory with 
and 
for tabs, and then within the inventory using 
.
)
FIGURE 3.10 Creative mode inventory provides access to the full set of resources and tools.
- Building Blocks—Building blocks are used, as you might expect, for construction, including housing and almost anything else. Build a bridge for your redstone rail. Construct a dam. Elevate a farm above a level that won’t get trampled by mobs, or put up a fence. Build a skyscraper or reconstruct a monument. Minecraft provides a large number of primary blocks—cobblestone, gravel, wood, dirt, and so on—that can be harvested directly, but things definitely become more interesting when you start creating secondary types of blocks from primary materials. You can store many items more efficiently (for example, by converting nine gold ingots into a single gold block) and climb more efficiently by crafting stairs instead of jumping up and down blocks on well-travelled routes. These blocks are, without being too punny, the building blocks of creativity.
- Decorations—Decorations are something of a catchall category. Generally, they are things you can use to make your constructions more interesting. Some of those are just visual, such as the various mob heads, whereas others such as item frames and bookcases also serve functional purposes.
- Redstone and Transportation—Redstone is an almost magical resource. You can use it to build powered circuits, quite complex ones, and then activate pistons to automatically harvest a farm plot, set up traps, open and close doors, and a huge amount more. The limits are set only by your imagination. Redstone is also used to craft powered rail tracks and a range of other useful items such as compasses and clocks. This category also includes other items used for transportation such as the various types of minecarts and boats. See Chapter 9, “Redstone, Rails, and More,” for more information. There are enough options here to enable you to build everything from massive transportation systems to incredible rollercoasters.
- Materials—Materials is a catchall category, composed of items derived from another action. For example, killing a chicken can drop feathers, and you’ll need those for the fletching on arrows unless you gather arrows directly from slain skeletons.
- Food—Food contains the full range of edibles, including the enchanted form of the golden apple, the rarest edible in the game. Take a few of these with you the next time you think you’ll be in a tight spot, and you might just be able to make it through that moaning zombie horde.
- Tools, Weapons, and Armor—Tools can be wielded as weapons, but not very effectively. They are, however, great at digging, chopping, hoeing, and setting a Nether Portal on fire with the flint and steel. You’ll also find shears for stripping the wool from sheep, a fishing rod, and the full set of armor and tools.
- Brewing—The Brewing tab contains all possible potions and a number of the rarer ingredients required that don’t fit into other categories. Potions are incredibly handy, delivering such useful effects as protection from fire—something of an advantage when traveling to The Nether. You can learn more about brewing in Chapter 10. Use
in this tab to cycle through the potions of various strengths. - Miscellaneous—Miscellaneous contains a range of useful and obscure items. You’ll find the buckets quite handy for setting up new water and lava sources, and you can use the eggs to spawn most of the mobs, populating a farm and more.
Use 
to take individual items or 
to take the full permissible stack. Get rid of a single stack from your Hotbar by picking it up, dragging it off the side of the inventory screen, and pressing once more to drop it. You can also replace items by dropping the new one on top of the old.