Biomes

Biomes in Minecraft are a big deal, they decide how any of the natural elements in your surroundings look. Biomes control the grass, leaves, trees, animals, and terrain that naturally appears in the area. Each biome has a different feel about the place. 

The taiga is my favorite kind of biome and is usually cold and is mostly covered with snow and pine trees, everything there has a very blue-ish green tint and is a very wintery kind of place. Mountains are my second favorite kind of biome and are have very interesting landscapes that let you have very high vantage points and the color scheme is very close to that of the taiga. 

Forests make everything a very beautiful dark green and are filled with many oaks and flowers. Plains are flat and and filled with flowers and horses and rivers that cut through the landscape. 

The jungle has the brightest green of all the other biomes and has rare temple that might spawn inside it, while the desert gives everything an brown and dead feel. There are 61 different biomes in Minecraft and some of them are variants of each other, but these are the major ones you will find in your travels.

For a more in depth look I left some links.

The wiki: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Mega_Taiga#Mega_Taiga

Minecraft Custom Maps intro bit

Minecraft custom maps are a very popular thing to do in Minecraft. There are many different kinds of map and they are split into different genres. The main genres are adventure, puzzle, parkour, simulations or any combination of them. There are many different maps, but there are only a handful of very popular and successful ones.

Adventure maps are the most like modern video games. This type of maps that tell a story. The most popular one are made by Hypixel. Hypixel is famous for making complex and beautiful maps with challenging enemies and a deep story line. With the new updates people can add custom sound files into Minecraft and it allows custom map makers to record them talking and let them communicate directly with the player.

Puzzle maps have you solve many difficult challenges that require lots of thinking. The most popular ones require you to have a friend to play with. Great examples would be 241 or it's better together. The multiplayer maps require a lot of teamwork and a deep understanding of the mechanics of Minecraft. As the puzzles get more frustrating the puzzles take longer and longer, but you get a rewarding feeling when you finish the game.

Parkour maps require a lot of skill and timing. They seem simple on the surface because your only objective is to get from point A to point B. The most infamous of them are TPC and T3C parkour, each of them having a hundred frustrating stages for you to jump, duck, and dive through. You need to time your jumps and aim your landing with precision. The harder ones usually have moving elements and special powers that you normally don't get while playing the game. These maps are more fun to play with friends, so when you fall off a platform your friend is there to save you.

The simulation maps are different from the previous ones, but may have some of their qualities. Some of the stranger ones let you play Minecraft in Minecraft by building redstone computers, but they can also be as simple as putting connect four in Minecraft. There are also custom maps that imitate other games, like League of Legends. Race for wool maps are maps that let you compete against your friends with two teams that compete on two mirrored strips of land.

Many YouTubers play these games and have gotten famous and rich off doing playthroughs of these maps. Yogscast and Captain Sparkles have a full time job playing games just posting them on Youtube. I'll link some of the maps I mentioned above.

When you're finding custom maps from minecraft download at your own risk
The more reputable site is the Minecraft Forums otherwise you risk getting viruses.
These all require you to own minecraft to play. You can always look up playthroughs on YouTube.

The most revered map maker Hypixel's website: hypixel.net
Infamous T3C map: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/344309-142parkour-t3c-tetrix1993s-3rd-obstacle-course-ver-311/

I just realized how lengthy this was. I might have to shorten it.

Building Stuff

Building things that look awesome is a really hard thing to do in minecraft. Everything is made of cubes save for a very few blocks. This makes it difficult to create amazing looking things in the game. Building castles with circular towers is very difficult due to the fact that it takes a lot of room to make circles with squares. Here is a chart showing you all the blocks needed for a circle:

This takes a lot of blocks and is still hard to copy without messing up unless you have a lot of practice.

The second thing that you need to make something look cool is depth, depth lets you show a layer of complexity inside the walls of your building. This may force you to have very little living space inside the house because the walls have to take up more space than before. You should always take wall thickness into account before doing a large scale project in minecraft.

The little details and functionality of a house is very important too. If it's something as large as a hidden laboratory that has full control of the entire house or something as small as retractable tables and seating, functionality just makes every build much more interesting and adds a personal touch. Functionality can usually be brought in by the form of redstone. You can have traps, hidden swimming pool, or storage area all hidden away into a small house if you are really good at redstone.

The most important part about building is creativity, everyone builds everything differently and the most important part is to be creative and create a house that you like. Building in minecraft can be hard even when you have everything in the entire game. Just remember to make something that you find amazing because the possibilities are infinite.

Links
Video this Sunday.
Someone built the entire game of thrones set in minecraft: http://westeroscraft.com/
Someone did build a 1:1 scale of the Enterprise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn2-d5a3r94
Insert Something Amazing HERE --->

Redstone

One major aspect of minecraft is the redstone. People that redstone are coined by the community as "Redstoners" and can create something as simple as a far or something as complex as another game. Redstone is most similar to electricity to us, but a lot simpler. It can be run through gates and comparators to either completely negate the power or just reduce it. In this way you can get a simpler version of binary and create some simple things. If a signal is on, then you can activate a functional block on the other end. 

The basic blocks of redstone include the the torch, repeater, comparator, redstone block, and the piston. A torch is a source of power and can be deactivated by powering the block it is attached to with strong power. After redstone extends 15 blocks past its source the power stops, the power must be renewed at this point with a repeater which delays the energy from going through by 1-4 ticks depending on its setting. Multiple repeaters can be used to make a clock which outputs redstone signal at regular intervals. Comparators compare the signal strength of two different lines of redstone, the main one is either decreased by the power of the secondary or just shut off depending on the settings of the block. A redstone block is another source of power that cannot be shut off, but can be shoved by pistons. Pistons come in one of two varieties, sticky and normal and push up to 15 blocks in one direction with the exception of a few blocks. The sticky pistons can also retract block while the normal one only push, these can be used to create hidden doors that can be hidden within walls or the floor.

Gates and structures of redstone can be a bit complicated to explain, so I have made a video that can help you with some useful tutorials even for experienced players. All of this is done in creative mode, but normally you would find redstone deep beneath the earth.I might even leave a link to one of the most impressive thing of all time. Most of the crafting recipes can be found on the wiki which I will leave a link to.

Link to redstone page: http://www.minecraft.gamepedia.com/Redstone

My video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG5WmZ9t1LQ

Survival of the Well Informed.

Minecraft is one of the most successful sandbox games that has ever been created and has an enormous lot of copycats that try to trail off it's success. Minecraft has an infinite number of ways to play them, but have decided to stick to just a few. This year we are going to post mini-games, adventure maps, and guides. There are many custom maps in the community of Minecraft and they are all unique in their own way, but before you can start to explore the many facets of this game, you must start at the very beginning and learn how to craft items.

There are many different tools and items in this game that you must have in order to play the game. The crafting system in this game is a little complicated and involves a lot of trial and error or you could just Google the recipes. The first item that you should get in the game is wood, which can be obtained by chopping down trees. Once you have chopped down some trees you have to put it in a two by two square and make a crafting bench. Then, you have to create a pickaxe which is mad by putting two sticks below a row of three wood, from there you can mine stone and get the next rank of items. You have to experiment the different ways to craft things, but the way you make things is just to make the shape of the thing you are trying to make. There are four tiers of items the starting being wood and stone. The better ones are diamonds and gold. This is a very crucial part of the game and cannot be played without it. I hope this brief introduction to crafting has helped you start your adventure.

These are the basics of crafting in minecraft and hopefully you have learned something. This game is a large and complicated one, but some of the basics of the game must be understood before we start to mess around with other things. All of the stuff that you could possibly need is on the Minecraft Wiki. This and next week Tycho and I will both be doing separate videos.

YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7Fxcv04bns&feature=youtu.be

Link to the wiki: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com

How it all began

When I first saw minecraft in 2011 I thought it wouldn't be much fun and the graphics were horrible, but I got to play it once and I was pretty into it. It wasn't long after that I started watching videos and meeting others online that shared my addiction of punching trees and slaying evil. I then met Tycho in my 8th grade science class and we started playing online and I had to teach him the basics because he had just started getting into the game. After he got the hang of it the first thing that we started to do was to play mini games, we sifted though a whole bunch and settled on cluster chunk. This is still our go to game today when we want some player vs. player action.

The reason I think this blog is needed is because we all need some fun in our lives and I think that posting this blog and YouTube videos about minecraft can be entertaining to everybody. I have also wanted to record minecraft videos to post on my YouTube channel for a long time, but had no motivation to do it. I hope this finally motivates me to upload more and get some subscribers on my channel.

The basis of cluster chunk is the survival setting of minecraft, but with everything you need in a organized place that you have to figure out how to use. The goal of the game is to eliminate the other person and prevent him from spawning back at his bed. The map is mirrored on both sides so that neither player has a terrain advantage. On the center of each side there is a giant octahedron or cluster with three much smaller ones containing more powerful weapons or tools to gain the advantage over the other player. The small satellites are distanced 30 blocks away from your starting cluster, with the other player's clusters 36 blocks away. The main cluster is the biggest, but most of the useful items must be collected from the walls and sides of the base, while the other satellites contain their items in chests guarded by spawners that create a large number of monsters that gaurd the chests. You have to build your own bridges to the satilites and avoid a barrage of arrows from the other player to prevent yourself from falling off to your doom.

I've always wanted to create a series of YouTube videos about minecraft and now I finially get the chance to start regular posting. This is my first attempt at recording with Tycho playing cluster chunk, maybe next week we'll try doing a beginner's tutorial to the game.

The link to my perspective: http://youtube.com/watch?v=oXxCO-qewWM&list=HL1379983005&feature=mh_lolz

This is Tycho's perspective: http://youtu.be/aUp8GEN-9HI