Bought the game about a week ago, and its far more merciless than i expected. I thought it was supposed to be a casual game?
The biggest problem I'm having is creepers. They're by far the most common spawn in the game, which I wasn't expecting. They also permanently delete 2/3 of the blocks they blow up. This has made it nigh impossible to build for me. I literally keep running out of dirt to fill in holes. DIRT. Inevitably, time and time again, I just abandon a map due to the creepers pretty much desroying the entire surface level. The only exception was this one game where I fell into the lava in the nether, losing everything. I had diamond armor, and absolutely could not find more, so I had to start a new world yet again just so I could find more diamonds.
My last time, my fifth world, ended dramatically. I have no idea how much room I need in my house. One game, I ended up building a mansion but only really used 2 of the rooms. I was building this house here:
I've literally spent a week building this house, and never finished it. It was just that hard to get the resources I needed. I was starting to get sick of mining wood. I was even having trouble finding enough stone, despite spawning near a hill made entirely of it, seriously. Yeah, a landscape made of stone and dirt, and I struggle to find enough. I got the first two levels done, minus the enchanting area because I was struggling to get enough papyrus. I've been having to build parts of the house completely out of order just for the resources, such as cows for leather, the pond for papyrus, the farms for the cows, you get the idea.
Anyway, I noticed the thing had a massive empty space underneath it. I already dug a mine outside the house for resources (mostly iron), so I saw no reason to put another one down there as the video suggested. So I thought; its dark in there, so why not put a bunch of boats in there and use it to farm mobs? I was needing bonemeal anyway, and I figured it would be easier to just cure a zombie villager than try to haul one across the map. Besides, they never stay unless you box them in anyway.
So I did this, removed all the torches down there and placed a bunch of boats. A day or two later, I heard zombie noises down there so decided to check it. Open the door, the 2 or 3 dozen boats I had placed in there were filled with nothing but creepers. I hadn't built the boats near the door, to make sure I didn't trigger an explosion if this happened. However, a creeper near the corner for some reason went off, setting off all the creepers too, reducing my house save for the third floor/roof to a giant crater. Days of work, annihilated. I sat there in disbelief at the giant crater that had replaced the house I had just spent nearly a week building. Even gathering up the resources, I of course didn't have nearly enough to rebuild the thing. I didn't even have enough dirt to fill things in. My map was already looking like superflat by that point.
Playing the game, I've started thinking that building isn't actually possible in survival. No matter what you do, the damned creepers will level everything. You can throw down as many torches as you want, but all it takes is one far int he distance to spawn, come along, blow up, to cause irreversible damage. Inevitably, they will level the whole map, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. I did try to get a cat, but after feeding it literally multiple stacks of fish, it still wouldn't follow me. Didn't help that I had to chase it half way across my continent to give it all these stupid fish.
Creepers are broken as ****. Who ever thought it was a good idea to put a silent enemy in the game that deletes your world one crater at a time? I already want to mod the game either to remove those stupid things or at least make them not delete blocks permanently.
Besides, I am having other issues besides that. Finding appropriate building materials is nearly impossible, because the biomes are so stinking huge. I've literally had to sail for HOURS to find a biome different from the ones around me. I had to that this time for bamboo, and cherry blossom trees. I was only able to find my way back by using f3 to lead me to spawn. I'm really sick of getting lost and wondering for literal in-life days just to find my home again. Why are loadstones so deep into the game? Seriously?
My experiences in the past five worlds has only taught me one thing; the world itself isn't worth fighting for. Don't build anything, don't bother with chests. Just let the creepers level your world. Don't bother trying to settle in one place because you'll struggle to find that place again. If you want to complete this game, you need to play it like minecraft manhunt; keep everything in your inventory, never die, that's the only way you can play. You die once, you're back at square one but you've already mined all the ores i your area, and maybe set up a portal so now that one portal is the only portal at xy 0,0. You go into the nether, you need to bring enough obsidian to just build another portal because you'll never find your way back to the one you entered through.
If you want to build, you need to play in creative mode. Peaceful denies you resources, and the other two difficulties spawn creepers which will level anything you try to build no matter what you do. I've thought about building a water moat around my house just to stop creepers from leveling it. Wouldn't have helped that time in the fifth world though. What could I have done? All i did was open a door and a creeper way in the back, probably 20 or 30 blocks away from me, went off for no reason the instant I did that. What could I have done to prevent that? What could I have even done to trigger that? Screw mob farms. How people on youtube make this game look so easy is beyond me. Its obvious the empire smp plays on easy; they can kill mobs twice as fast as I can with the same gear. They also seem to have a far easier time running around without armor. All build videos are obviously in creative mode. Only manhunt seems to be playing on the default difficulty.
So, am I wrong somehow and there is a way to build in this game? There doesn't seem to be. You're helpless against creepers, you have to travel far and wide to find more than one material to build with. There doesn't even seem to be enough dirt and stone in the world, despite most of its volume comprising these. How does that even make sense? Besides, large flat areas like you see on youtube seem ultra rare; every map I've made has been nothing but mountains towering into the sky. There's never a flat area more than 20 or so blocks across. What, do I need to completely mine down all these mountains so I can build? A while back, I was thinking I needed to stick to towers just because I couldn't find nearly that much space! As for that house I was just building, it was pretty much built on a single layer of floating dirt. I didn't have enough for more than that; and in fact I never even finished the platform! The entire area around me was essentially just ocean, gravel, and copper ore I didn't feel like mining up. This is so stupid. Yeah, I could turn down the difficulty, but what good would that do? It won't stop creepers from leveling my world, it won't fix worldgen so I have areas to build and all the resources I need. Really, the mobs are the least of my worries. I don't fear creepers because they might kill me; I have yet to die to one actually. They just keep destroying anything I try to build. What's the point in even having this mechanic in the game when its literally impossible to build anything ?
You can certainly build in survival. It simply takes more time and effort.
The game can also definitely be forgiving, but it takes knowledge and/or familiarity with it. You're new, so don't get discouraged. It can seem harsh when you're new, but it's actually incredibly forgiving with how many options it gives you. The good thing about that is if you fail, it can be taken as a learning experience to get better. Usually "better" means "playing safer" so you don't need a lot of skill excel well in this game. You just need the right approach and awareness of your surroundings.
I'm not all that skilled in the game, and yet I think I have a fairly decent track record in hardcore mode of all things. I've started three worlds in hardcore. I thrived at first in the first and accomplished a lot until I died due to my own mistake and lack of skill (jumped into a very deep hole and failed to glide), I gave up on the second early since I started a third, and I've yet to fail in that one.
Again, I'm not skilled, and in fact, I'm playing with rules I've imposed on myself to make it more challenging. I just (try to) be careful with my approach and aware of my surroundings, but I also have around a dozen years of familiarity with the game.
What I'm saying is, don't discredit yourself. We all have silly deaths. There's nothing wrong with throwing yourself out there, failing, and trying again. Unless you're playing in hardcore, you can always recover. I find the setbacks to be forgiving because you drop your items and respawn and your last spawn point. The absolute worst that happens, and this isn't always what happens, is that you lose everything you had on you and some damage occurred if a creeper explosion happened. If you accumulated something once, you can again. And creeper holds are minor and will become more rare as you get better. A respawned player is a player that is one extra death of experience and knowledge gained. And ultimately, there's also nothing wrong with changing the difficulty or playing in creative to learn the game. You can also change game rules (like keeping your inventory on death) if you so choose. Nothing's stopping you from playing it as you wish.
The real irritation of mine isn't even creepers, but enderman. Creepers usually (there's a relatively uncommon exception) won't do their thing unless you've interacted with them. Enderman though? They just do it! So over time, the landscape ends up looking "mothed up". I use a datapack to disable their block grabbing abilities. It doesn't change any difficulty or gameplay dynamic to have it happen and is merely iconic for its own sake at the cost of terrain over the long term, so I disable it.
Then give me an answer to creepers. They sneak up on you, they're the most common spawn by far, they delete blocks, cats won't follow you no matter how much fish you give them, water isn't always available, there simply isn't enough dirt or stone in the world to replace what holes they do make, bows only work if you can actually spot them in time and you aren't in a tiny little space.
Granted, I learned my lesson with that mob spawner; no more of those ever again. Still, you're utterly helpless against them. What, am I supposed to build entirely out of obsidian over the ocean? After all I've tried, I sincerely doubt even that would work! Like I said, you need to just play as a vagabond. Carry everything with you, never settle down, never care if you can't find the same spot again. Its the only way to play.
If creepers can be dealt with, then say how? I've done everything i can, but they still leveled my entire house anyway. And yes, my area is drained of resources; I absolutely could not find another diamond to save my life, or iron, or redstone, or lapis, or anything other than gravel and blackstone. The creepers will always win. No matter what you do, they will slowly delete your world a few blocks at a time. You play long enough, they will reduce your entire world to bedrock. Not like they need to do the entire world; a continent is enough. Who builds on the sea floor?
Creepers are not the most common mob by far, they have the same chance of spawning as the other common mobs (skeletons, spiders, zombies) and zombies have a much higher aggro range; sure these stats are a bit skewed by being only a single play session each and not including creepers that blew up but it certainly isn't so many as to make them more common than zombies (NB: modern versions have official statistics for each type of mob you killed, this is just from my own mod that tracks them per session. Spiders will also be more common in flat open areas due to requiring a bigger footprint, while creepers, skeletons, and zombies are the same):
Also, it is very easy to keep mobs out of an area - they only spawn in complete darkness (block light only, meaning torches, glowstone, etc), a single torch will prevent mobs from spawning up to 13 blocks away (by taxicab distance); you'll probably place them or other light sources more often for visibility; for example, how I place them while caving, which is not to prevent mobs from spawning (in fact, you'll encounter a lot less mobs if you just go in with Night Vision since the more space they have to spawn the more spread out they will be) but so I can clearly see, and even if you only place the next torch past the range of the last the light level in between will be much higher:
Example of torch light propagation; the third row is the resulting light level when they are placed in the first block with a light level of 0 from the previous; even this is almost enough in older versions, where mobs can spawn in a light level of 7 or less (now only 0):
Also, you can completely skip the entire night by sleeping as soon as the sun starts to set, or put a fence around the area you are building in (which must be lit up well enough). As for dealing with them, I find Knockback to be invaluable; they can't explode if knocked out of range (which is IMO too excessive, 7 blocks; my own mod reduced it to 5, and also allowed them to keep moving while counting down, so they will always deal damage to their target when they explode, when watching others play many don't even try to kill them when caving, they just let them explode, usually far enough away they never take any damage and/or because of the incredibly OP item called a shield (the version I play in only has sword blocking, which only negates half the damage, being near the edge of the explosion radius also only deals 1 damage and blocks like tall grass and snow layer likewise block all but 1 damage, but do not reduce block damage).
You've mined all the resources from even a relatively small local area? Not even possible:
Diamond ore generation occurs in four batches:
7 blobs of 1-5 ores per chunk, from Y=14 to Y=-63. There is a 50% chance to not generate an ore block if it is next to air.
1 blob of 1-23 ores every 1⁄9 chunks, from Y=14 to Y=-63. There is a 70% chance to not generate an ore block if it is next to air.
4 blobs of 1-10 ores per chunk, from Y=14 to Y=-63. Ore blocks do not generate if they are next to air.
2 blobs of 1-10 ores per chunk, from Y=-4 to Y=-63. There is a 50% chance to not generate an ore block if it is next to air.
That's within just a single chunk (16x16 blocks), averaging perhaps a third of that, even in older versions, where it was far rarer, only about 3 per chunk (a single deposit of 1-10 ores per chunk, presumably the same as the last two batches listed, and the average amount actually placed would be higher if so much of it didn't try generating in bedrock), there is no way you'll use it up in any reasonable amount of time, or, did you just go caving to extract ores from the walls? Only a few percent of all diamond is exposed (in older versions) and probably even less in modern due to the reduced air exposure rule (it does generate over a much wider range though, I've seen somebody show me how many resources they collected by caving and while most of it was far less than what I collect in a similar time the opposite was true of diamond). You can also buy diamond gear from villagers, making it renewable, as well as farm most other resources.
Also, while this may be seen as a cheat you can set the game rule mobGriefing to false to prevent blocks from being destroyed (this can be change din existing worlds with cheats disabled by opening to LAN, which can temporarily enable cheats, with any changes to game rules being retained after reloading the world). This will however affect many other game mechanics:
Whether creepers, zombies, endermen, ghasts, withers, ender dragons, rabbits, sheep, villagers, silverfish, snow golems, and end crystals[BE only] should be able to change blocks, and whether mobs can pick up items. When mobGriefing is disabled, piglins do not pick up gold ingots, but a player can still barter with them by using the item on the mob. Similarly, villagers do not pick up food items but can still breed until they run out of any food already in their inventory. This also affects the capability of zombie-like creatures like zombified piglins and drowned to pathfind to turtle eggs.
You can also use use commands / command blocks / data packs to disable mobGriefing when a creeper is about to explode, otherwise leaving it enabled (example. I'd change the distance from 5 to 7 though since that is the actual maximum distance their countdown continues; even better if their fuse time could be checked, disabling mobGriefing if it is counting down, then it won't be disabled just because you are close to one, e.g. on the other side of a wall).
They're clearly the most common mob; why would all my boats that were under my house be almost nothing but creepers if that wasn't true? I didn't see a single zombie among the dozen or so boats I could see. One or two spiders spawned before hand, but that was it. Even in the overworld, looking out over a field of mobs, creepers always comprise at least half of all mobs. It feels like zombies and skeletons are rare, which is rather annoying when I need arrows or bones.
There's clearly no point in building in this game, even though the world itself was designed with this in mind. You play like manhunt or you don't. Place as many torches as you want, feed as much fish to cats as you want, its never ever enough. I've done both these things and more, and my entire house was deleted in an instant. Fighting against them is futile. The only safe chest is you; at least you can survive an explosion. Keep everything in your inventory. Rush the nether, get shulker boxes so you can carry more. That is all you can do. No idea how you can get enchanted gear without villagers, but oh well.
It's a SURVIVAL game. Play on peaceful if you don't want to deal with hostiles. And I would believe what TheMasterCaver says. They do know their stuff about this game.
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"Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together." -Carl Zwanzig
Put fences around your builds and light the area with torches and you won't have problems with creepers or zombies, and not much trouble from other mobs.
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They're clearly the most common mob; why would all my boats that were under my house be almost nothing but creepers if that wasn't true?
I can't verify from the source code (I only have access to up to 1.12, via GitHub repositories, 1.12 is the last version that MCP supported), but the Wiki claims that they still have the same spawn weights as they have had sine 1.7 (except zombies are now split into normal zombies and zombie villagers, with a total weight that is the same as before); for example, these are the weights they show for Plains, with most biomes being similar (mainly differing due to special biome-specific variants like husks and strays, and these still add up to 100 for e.g. Desert):
(slimes can be ignored due to only spawning underground in most areas, and even then only in 1/10 of chunks so their effective weight is much lower)
This still applies even if you are somehow playing in an incredibly ancient version:
This is from the source for Beta 1.1, there were no weights, the game just randomly chooses a mob with equal probability:
r = (new Class[] { net.minecraft.server.EntitySpider.class, net.minecraft.server.EntityZombie.class, net.minecraft.server.EntitySkeleton.class, net.minecraft.server.EntityCreeper.class });
This is from the source for 1.6.4, which uses the more modern system, except the weights are 1/10 the values given in the Wiki (all that actually matters is the relative weights; they multiplied them by 10 in 1.7 to enable adding witches with a weight of 5 since only whole numbers are allowed):
These are of course all for vanilla but you should have mentioned using any mods, including data packs, if you used them, and they are the only way such behavior could happen (some would say to reinstall the game but it is impossible for it to become corrupt in such a way, the game wouldn't even launch with corrupt files). They should also not be spawning in well-lit and fenced-in areas (are you playing a current version? Mobs only spawn in total darkness, excluding moonlight, only since 1.18, older versions require a light level of at least 8).
Otherwise, there is one other explanation for what you are seeing - zombies and skeletons burn in sunlight but creepers do not, nor do they become neutral like spiders, making them the biggest threat after sunrise (I've seen them persist for quite a long time; go out past midday and there is still a creeper wandering around, with no cave or dark area it could have come from, since mobs only despawn if more than 32 blocks away for at least 30 seconds). It may also be useful to post screenshots showing that most mobs are creepers, or mobs are spawning in supposedly safe areas.
There is an option to make mob blasts give back 100% of blocks under world options as of 1.20 and up.
You can also incorporate fence gates, ditches and moats, lava/berry/pointed dripstone etc as traps...
Creepers are unable to go against running water and can be blown up on the spot where you choose using a flint and steel. Their explosions do not break blocks when they are in water, only entities and mobs.
As for resources, your starting house is really big and time consuming. Go for something modest and expand it as you go. Use the blocks you get while you mine and craft them into smooth or refined variants, or replace them as you get more. Barrels are more space effective than chests and cost marginally less when built in bulk.
If you must have lots of wood and stone, find spruce jungle or dark oak saplings and grow giant trees, or plant oak trees in 2 deep holes and bonemeal them so they grow into giant oaks. For stone, use lava on top of a water pool to make an infinite generator and mine it with a faster pickaxe.
If you have silverfish (i.e. are mining in a hill or mountain based biome), these can also make mining for ores faster by hitting them or breaking their trap blocks open while out of sight and out of reach. They will constantly leave and reenter stone, creating channels and exposing the ores that they cannot infest.
Finally, cats are annoying and take effort to chase, but you need to walk slowly and be patient at a distance. The fish thing is luck at a 1/3 chance, it seems you got very unlucky.
One more recommendation: build your structures to go with the flow of the land instead of against it. Prop up rooms based on the average elevation of a plateau and another room on a different elevation and connect them by stairs, steps, ladders, water elevators, magma/soul-sand water elevators, vines etc.
Build some rooms into the earth directly and replace natural boundaries as you see fit, and expand along with the inside of a hill or so on, with perhaps windows poking out of the dirt.
Reinforce the outside with fencing and stone walls, the undesriable trap blocks as mentioned and things like cobwebs, and you should be fine.
Wooden doors are also not the best entryway as most humanoid mobs can open them or bash them down. Copper doors are cheap and only open to human players. Iron doors and redstone work too, or wood/copper/iron trapdoors, fence gates as mentioned, piston-and-redstone entryways on timers...
Swimming to get out of your base, or crawling out via forcing your character to crawl, makes most mobs unable to get inside even with an open space, except babies, bugs, and ghostly enemies. You can force crawl by speed swimming into a short airspace, using a trapdoor on your head while under it, exiting a boat or minecart with the water or rail under a tree, throwing an ender pearl inside the space, and a few other ways.
Note that in order to speed swim, you need at least 1.6 blocks of water to stand in to enter sprint mode underwater.
Maybe the main difference between mobs is that creepers don't burn in daylight - so they hang around a bit longer. But either way, if they are 'creeping' up on your house / base, you just need the buffer zone a bit wider. I have no particular protections around my house except for a bit of lighting (no gates or fancy entrances), just wooden front doors, and have had exactly 1 creeper explode near my front door in hundreds of hours of gameplay. I replaced the hole with cobblestone - won't be a hole in that spot again.
Another thing perhaps though - if I see creeper outside my build, I'm usually able to destroy it before it goes off - and this takes practice to kill quickly enough with a sword or bow before it explodes. If you are new to MC / building and if your gear isn't enchanted, you may not have time.
Nice tip with copper doors though - I'll def be using a lot more of those.
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Playing since Jan 2018. Survival; PC - Bedrock Ed.
I don't know how to build a house. I used to play Terraria before the disgusting 1.4 update upped the difficulty and made me unable to play it at all. I used to build in that, but nothing from that transfers here. You don't have furniture items to decorate your house with. Also, building in 2d is completely different from 3d. I was always annoyed with working in 2d, but 3d is literally unfathomable to me. I built this house because I thought it was a starter home. Yes, I have no clue what I'm doing. I have no idea how much room I need. Also, this house is far more modest than my dark oak mansion was. I just can't get an idea of what I need to do. Besides, what point is there in it if the creepers keep blowing up everything? I did try to continue my fifth world anyway, and rebuild, but I literally couldn't even farm trees to rebuild the damned thing due to the excessive number of creepers spawning. I barely even have enough dirt now to grow trees. **** this world.
Its obvious this game is NOT about building. You don't have anything to build with, and what little you do have is spread far and wide and doesn't seem to spawn in every world anyway. Creepers will annihilate everything you build no matter what you do. You play like minecraft manhunt, or you do not. I have no idea how I'm even going to upload videos to youtube about this game if that's how you have to play.
And yes, I bought this game for money. I've long thought about uploading videos of my gaming to generate some extra cash, but I never did like the idea of turning my games into my job. So I bought this, a game I never felt inclined to play and that I clearly have no emotional attachment to. I'm not trying to play this game because I like it; I actually hate it. I'M JUST PLAYING THIS GAME FOR SOME PETTY CASH. I feel obligated to do it now that I splurged $30 on it (and yes, that's a lot of money to me, especially with how stupid expensive groceries are now).
If I'm going to 'play' this game, I need to just stick to creative mode and never bother trying to actually beat the game. I'm clearly not good enough to do that, and I'm only getting worse as I age. Guess that explains why virtually no one uploading videos plays in survival mode. I don't even know what blocks are available honestly. What, should I just watch a bunch of youtube videos to see what I have access to? Its not like I can survive the game long enough to find out for my self. I hate this game...
As mentioned before, can you post screenshots of what is happening?
(of course, I now highly doubt the OP is actually describing a real situation; "no dirt left to grow trees", so the entire world, or as far as you can see, is literally just bare stone now?)
If you really want a creeper-proof house, you should find diamonds and get some obsidian. It's not explodable by creepers. But 2 layers of cobblestone would also work. As mentioned before you could use torches to light up the surrounding areas. One other option is to build walls with water separating them, it will destroy the first layer but the water will protect the interior. You could also build with waterlogged blocks.
Bought the game about a week ago, and its far more merciless than i expected. I thought it was supposed to be a casual game?
The biggest problem I'm having is creepers. They're by far the most common spawn in the game, which I wasn't expecting. They also permanently delete 2/3 of the blocks they blow up. This has made it nigh impossible to build for me. I literally keep running out of dirt to fill in holes. DIRT. Inevitably, time and time again, I just abandon a map due to the creepers pretty much desroying the entire surface level. The only exception was this one game where I fell into the lava in the nether, losing everything. I had diamond armor, and absolutely could not find more, so I had to start a new world yet again just so I could find more diamonds.
My last time, my fifth world, ended dramatically. I have no idea how much room I need in my house. One game, I ended up building a mansion but only really used 2 of the rooms. I was building this house here:
I've literally spent a week building this house, and never finished it. It was just that hard to get the resources I needed. I was starting to get sick of mining wood. I was even having trouble finding enough stone, despite spawning near a hill made entirely of it, seriously. Yeah, a landscape made of stone and dirt, and I struggle to find enough. I got the first two levels done, minus the enchanting area because I was struggling to get enough papyrus. I've been having to build parts of the house completely out of order just for the resources, such as cows for leather, the pond for papyrus, the farms for the cows, you get the idea.
Anyway, I noticed the thing had a massive empty space underneath it. I already dug a mine outside the house for resources (mostly iron), so I saw no reason to put another one down there as the video suggested. So I thought; its dark in there, so why not put a bunch of boats in there and use it to farm mobs? I was needing bonemeal anyway, and I figured it would be easier to just cure a zombie villager than try to haul one across the map. Besides, they never stay unless you box them in anyway.
So I did this, removed all the torches down there and placed a bunch of boats. A day or two later, I heard zombie noises down there so decided to check it. Open the door, the 2 or 3 dozen boats I had placed in there were filled with nothing but creepers. I hadn't built the boats near the door, to make sure I didn't trigger an explosion if this happened. However, a creeper near the corner for some reason went off, setting off all the creepers too, reducing my house save for the third floor/roof to a giant crater. Days of work, annihilated. I sat there in disbelief at the giant crater that had replaced the house I had just spent nearly a week building. Even gathering up the resources, I of course didn't have nearly enough to rebuild the thing. I didn't even have enough dirt to fill things in. My map was already looking like superflat by that point.
Playing the game, I've started thinking that building isn't actually possible in survival. No matter what you do, the damned creepers will level everything. You can throw down as many torches as you want, but all it takes is one far int he distance to spawn, come along, blow up, to cause irreversible damage. Inevitably, they will level the whole map, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. I did try to get a cat, but after feeding it literally multiple stacks of fish, it still wouldn't follow me. Didn't help that I had to chase it half way across my continent to give it all these stupid fish.
Creepers are broken as ****. Who ever thought it was a good idea to put a silent enemy in the game that deletes your world one crater at a time? I already want to mod the game either to remove those stupid things or at least make them not delete blocks permanently.
Besides, I am having other issues besides that. Finding appropriate building materials is nearly impossible, because the biomes are so stinking huge. I've literally had to sail for HOURS to find a biome different from the ones around me. I had to that this time for bamboo, and cherry blossom trees. I was only able to find my way back by using f3 to lead me to spawn. I'm really sick of getting lost and wondering for literal in-life days just to find my home again. Why are loadstones so deep into the game? Seriously?
My experiences in the past five worlds has only taught me one thing; the world itself isn't worth fighting for. Don't build anything, don't bother with chests. Just let the creepers level your world. Don't bother trying to settle in one place because you'll struggle to find that place again. If you want to complete this game, you need to play it like minecraft manhunt; keep everything in your inventory, never die, that's the only way you can play. You die once, you're back at square one but you've already mined all the ores i your area, and maybe set up a portal so now that one portal is the only portal at xy 0,0. You go into the nether, you need to bring enough obsidian to just build another portal because you'll never find your way back to the one you entered through.
If you want to build, you need to play in creative mode. Peaceful denies you resources, and the other two difficulties spawn creepers which will level anything you try to build no matter what you do. I've thought about building a water moat around my house just to stop creepers from leveling it. Wouldn't have helped that time in the fifth world though. What could I have done? All i did was open a door and a creeper way in the back, probably 20 or 30 blocks away from me, went off for no reason the instant I did that. What could I have done to prevent that? What could I have even done to trigger that? Screw mob farms. How people on youtube make this game look so easy is beyond me. Its obvious the empire smp plays on easy; they can kill mobs twice as fast as I can with the same gear. They also seem to have a far easier time running around without armor. All build videos are obviously in creative mode. Only manhunt seems to be playing on the default difficulty.
So, am I wrong somehow and there is a way to build in this game? There doesn't seem to be. You're helpless against creepers, you have to travel far and wide to find more than one material to build with. There doesn't even seem to be enough dirt and stone in the world, despite most of its volume comprising these. How does that even make sense? Besides, large flat areas like you see on youtube seem ultra rare; every map I've made has been nothing but mountains towering into the sky. There's never a flat area more than 20 or so blocks across. What, do I need to completely mine down all these mountains so I can build? A while back, I was thinking I needed to stick to towers just because I couldn't find nearly that much space! As for that house I was just building, it was pretty much built on a single layer of floating dirt. I didn't have enough for more than that; and in fact I never even finished the platform! The entire area around me was essentially just ocean, gravel, and copper ore I didn't feel like mining up. This is so stupid. Yeah, I could turn down the difficulty, but what good would that do? It won't stop creepers from leveling my world, it won't fix worldgen so I have areas to build and all the resources I need. Really, the mobs are the least of my worries. I don't fear creepers because they might kill me; I have yet to die to one actually. They just keep destroying anything I try to build. What's the point in even having this mechanic in the game when its literally impossible to build anything ?
You can certainly build in survival. It simply takes more time and effort.
The game can also definitely be forgiving, but it takes knowledge and/or familiarity with it. You're new, so don't get discouraged. It can seem harsh when you're new, but it's actually incredibly forgiving with how many options it gives you. The good thing about that is if you fail, it can be taken as a learning experience to get better. Usually "better" means "playing safer" so you don't need a lot of skill excel well in this game. You just need the right approach and awareness of your surroundings.
I'm not all that skilled in the game, and yet I think I have a fairly decent track record in hardcore mode of all things. I've started three worlds in hardcore. I thrived at first in the first and accomplished a lot until I died due to my own mistake and lack of skill (jumped into a very deep hole and failed to glide), I gave up on the second early since I started a third, and I've yet to fail in that one.
Again, I'm not skilled, and in fact, I'm playing with rules I've imposed on myself to make it more challenging. I just (try to) be careful with my approach and aware of my surroundings, but I also have around a dozen years of familiarity with the game.
What I'm saying is, don't discredit yourself. We all have silly deaths. There's nothing wrong with throwing yourself out there, failing, and trying again. Unless you're playing in hardcore, you can always recover. I find the setbacks to be forgiving because you drop your items and respawn and your last spawn point. The absolute worst that happens, and this isn't always what happens, is that you lose everything you had on you and some damage occurred if a creeper explosion happened. If you accumulated something once, you can again. And creeper holds are minor and will become more rare as you get better. A respawned player is a player that is one extra death of experience and knowledge gained. And ultimately, there's also nothing wrong with changing the difficulty or playing in creative to learn the game. You can also change game rules (like keeping your inventory on death) if you so choose. Nothing's stopping you from playing it as you wish.
The real irritation of mine isn't even creepers, but enderman. Creepers usually (there's a relatively uncommon exception) won't do their thing unless you've interacted with them. Enderman though? They just do it! So over time, the landscape ends up looking "mothed up". I use a datapack to disable their block grabbing abilities. It doesn't change any difficulty or gameplay dynamic to have it happen and is merely iconic for its own sake at the cost of terrain over the long term, so I disable it.
Then give me an answer to creepers. They sneak up on you, they're the most common spawn by far, they delete blocks, cats won't follow you no matter how much fish you give them, water isn't always available, there simply isn't enough dirt or stone in the world to replace what holes they do make, bows only work if you can actually spot them in time and you aren't in a tiny little space.
Granted, I learned my lesson with that mob spawner; no more of those ever again. Still, you're utterly helpless against them. What, am I supposed to build entirely out of obsidian over the ocean? After all I've tried, I sincerely doubt even that would work! Like I said, you need to just play as a vagabond. Carry everything with you, never settle down, never care if you can't find the same spot again. Its the only way to play.
If creepers can be dealt with, then say how? I've done everything i can, but they still leveled my entire house anyway. And yes, my area is drained of resources; I absolutely could not find another diamond to save my life, or iron, or redstone, or lapis, or anything other than gravel and blackstone. The creepers will always win. No matter what you do, they will slowly delete your world a few blocks at a time. You play long enough, they will reduce your entire world to bedrock. Not like they need to do the entire world; a continent is enough. Who builds on the sea floor?
Creepers are not the most common mob by far, they have the same chance of spawning as the other common mobs (skeletons, spiders, zombies) and zombies have a much higher aggro range; sure these stats are a bit skewed by being only a single play session each and not including creepers that blew up but it certainly isn't so many as to make them more common than zombies (NB: modern versions have official statistics for each type of mob you killed, this is just from my own mod that tracks them per session. Spiders will also be more common in flat open areas due to requiring a bigger footprint, while creepers, skeletons, and zombies are the same):
Also, it is very easy to keep mobs out of an area - they only spawn in complete darkness (block light only, meaning torches, glowstone, etc), a single torch will prevent mobs from spawning up to 13 blocks away (by taxicab distance); you'll probably place them or other light sources more often for visibility; for example, how I place them while caving, which is not to prevent mobs from spawning (in fact, you'll encounter a lot less mobs if you just go in with Night Vision since the more space they have to spawn the more spread out they will be) but so I can clearly see, and even if you only place the next torch past the range of the last the light level in between will be much higher:
Example of torch light propagation; the third row is the resulting light level when they are placed in the first block with a light level of 0 from the previous; even this is almost enough in older versions, where mobs can spawn in a light level of 7 or less (now only 0):
Also, you can completely skip the entire night by sleeping as soon as the sun starts to set, or put a fence around the area you are building in (which must be lit up well enough). As for dealing with them, I find Knockback to be invaluable; they can't explode if knocked out of range (which is IMO too excessive, 7 blocks; my own mod reduced it to 5, and also allowed them to keep moving while counting down, so they will always deal damage to their target when they explode, when watching others play many don't even try to kill them when caving, they just let them explode, usually far enough away they never take any damage and/or because of the incredibly OP item called a shield (the version I play in only has sword blocking, which only negates half the damage, being near the edge of the explosion radius also only deals 1 damage and blocks like tall grass and snow layer likewise block all but 1 damage, but do not reduce block damage).
You've mined all the resources from even a relatively small local area? Not even possible:
That's within just a single chunk (16x16 blocks), averaging perhaps a third of that, even in older versions, where it was far rarer, only about 3 per chunk (a single deposit of 1-10 ores per chunk, presumably the same as the last two batches listed, and the average amount actually placed would be higher if so much of it didn't try generating in bedrock), there is no way you'll use it up in any reasonable amount of time, or, did you just go caving to extract ores from the walls? Only a few percent of all diamond is exposed (in older versions) and probably even less in modern due to the reduced air exposure rule (it does generate over a much wider range though, I've seen somebody show me how many resources they collected by caving and while most of it was far less than what I collect in a similar time the opposite was true of diamond). You can also buy diamond gear from villagers, making it renewable, as well as farm most other resources.
Also, while this may be seen as a cheat you can set the game rule mobGriefing to false to prevent blocks from being destroyed (this can be change din existing worlds with cheats disabled by opening to LAN, which can temporarily enable cheats, with any changes to game rules being retained after reloading the world). This will however affect many other game mechanics:
You can also use use commands / command blocks / data packs to disable mobGriefing when a creeper is about to explode, otherwise leaving it enabled (example. I'd change the distance from 5 to 7 though since that is the actual maximum distance their countdown continues; even better if their fuse time could be checked, disabling mobGriefing if it is counting down, then it won't be disabled just because you are close to one, e.g. on the other side of a wall).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
They're clearly the most common mob; why would all my boats that were under my house be almost nothing but creepers if that wasn't true? I didn't see a single zombie among the dozen or so boats I could see. One or two spiders spawned before hand, but that was it. Even in the overworld, looking out over a field of mobs, creepers always comprise at least half of all mobs. It feels like zombies and skeletons are rare, which is rather annoying when I need arrows or bones.
There's clearly no point in building in this game, even though the world itself was designed with this in mind. You play like manhunt or you don't. Place as many torches as you want, feed as much fish to cats as you want, its never ever enough. I've done both these things and more, and my entire house was deleted in an instant. Fighting against them is futile. The only safe chest is you; at least you can survive an explosion. Keep everything in your inventory. Rush the nether, get shulker boxes so you can carry more. That is all you can do. No idea how you can get enchanted gear without villagers, but oh well.
It's a SURVIVAL game. Play on peaceful if you don't want to deal with hostiles. And I would believe what TheMasterCaver says. They do know their stuff about this game.
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Curse PremiumPut fences around your builds and light the area with torches and you won't have problems with creepers or zombies, and not much trouble from other mobs.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I can't verify from the source code (I only have access to up to 1.12, via GitHub repositories, 1.12 is the last version that MCP supported), but the Wiki claims that they still have the same spawn weights as they have had sine 1.7 (except zombies are now split into normal zombies and zombie villagers, with a total weight that is the same as before); for example, these are the weights they show for Plains, with most biomes being similar (mainly differing due to special biome-specific variants like husks and strays, and these still add up to 100 for e.g. Desert):
(slimes can be ignored due to only spawning underground in most areas, and even then only in 1/10 of chunks so their effective weight is much lower)
This still applies even if you are somehow playing in an incredibly ancient version:
These are of course all for vanilla but you should have mentioned using any mods, including data packs, if you used them, and they are the only way such behavior could happen (some would say to reinstall the game but it is impossible for it to become corrupt in such a way, the game wouldn't even launch with corrupt files). They should also not be spawning in well-lit and fenced-in areas (are you playing a current version? Mobs only spawn in total darkness, excluding moonlight, only since 1.18, older versions require a light level of at least 8).
Otherwise, there is one other explanation for what you are seeing - zombies and skeletons burn in sunlight but creepers do not, nor do they become neutral like spiders, making them the biggest threat after sunrise (I've seen them persist for quite a long time; go out past midday and there is still a creeper wandering around, with no cave or dark area it could have come from, since mobs only despawn if more than 32 blocks away for at least 30 seconds). It may also be useful to post screenshots showing that most mobs are creepers, or mobs are spawning in supposedly safe areas.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
There is an option to make mob blasts give back 100% of blocks under world options as of 1.20 and up.
You can also incorporate fence gates, ditches and moats, lava/berry/pointed dripstone etc as traps...
Creepers are unable to go against running water and can be blown up on the spot where you choose using a flint and steel. Their explosions do not break blocks when they are in water, only entities and mobs.
As for resources, your starting house is really big and time consuming. Go for something modest and expand it as you go. Use the blocks you get while you mine and craft them into smooth or refined variants, or replace them as you get more. Barrels are more space effective than chests and cost marginally less when built in bulk.
If you must have lots of wood and stone, find spruce jungle or dark oak saplings and grow giant trees, or plant oak trees in 2 deep holes and bonemeal them so they grow into giant oaks. For stone, use lava on top of a water pool to make an infinite generator and mine it with a faster pickaxe.
If you have silverfish (i.e. are mining in a hill or mountain based biome), these can also make mining for ores faster by hitting them or breaking their trap blocks open while out of sight and out of reach. They will constantly leave and reenter stone, creating channels and exposing the ores that they cannot infest.
Finally, cats are annoying and take effort to chase, but you need to walk slowly and be patient at a distance. The fish thing is luck at a 1/3 chance, it seems you got very unlucky.
One more recommendation: build your structures to go with the flow of the land instead of against it. Prop up rooms based on the average elevation of a plateau and another room on a different elevation and connect them by stairs, steps, ladders, water elevators, magma/soul-sand water elevators, vines etc.
Build some rooms into the earth directly and replace natural boundaries as you see fit, and expand along with the inside of a hill or so on, with perhaps windows poking out of the dirt.
Reinforce the outside with fencing and stone walls, the undesriable trap blocks as mentioned and things like cobwebs, and you should be fine.
Wooden doors are also not the best entryway as most humanoid mobs can open them or bash them down. Copper doors are cheap and only open to human players. Iron doors and redstone work too, or wood/copper/iron trapdoors, fence gates as mentioned, piston-and-redstone entryways on timers...
Swimming to get out of your base, or crawling out via forcing your character to crawl, makes most mobs unable to get inside even with an open space, except babies, bugs, and ghostly enemies. You can force crawl by speed swimming into a short airspace, using a trapdoor on your head while under it, exiting a boat or minecart with the water or rail under a tree, throwing an ender pearl inside the space, and a few other ways.
Note that in order to speed swim, you need at least 1.6 blocks of water to stand in to enter sprint mode underwater.
Maybe the main difference between mobs is that creepers don't burn in daylight - so they hang around a bit longer. But either way, if they are 'creeping' up on your house / base, you just need the buffer zone a bit wider. I have no particular protections around my house except for a bit of lighting (no gates or fancy entrances), just wooden front doors, and have had exactly 1 creeper explode near my front door in hundreds of hours of gameplay. I replaced the hole with cobblestone - won't be a hole in that spot again.
Another thing perhaps though - if I see creeper outside my build, I'm usually able to destroy it before it goes off - and this takes practice to kill quickly enough with a sword or bow before it explodes. If you are new to MC / building and if your gear isn't enchanted, you may not have time.
Nice tip with copper doors though - I'll def be using a lot more of those.
Playing since Jan 2018. Survival; PC - Bedrock Ed.
I don't know how to build a house. I used to play Terraria before the disgusting 1.4 update upped the difficulty and made me unable to play it at all. I used to build in that, but nothing from that transfers here. You don't have furniture items to decorate your house with. Also, building in 2d is completely different from 3d. I was always annoyed with working in 2d, but 3d is literally unfathomable to me. I built this house because I thought it was a starter home. Yes, I have no clue what I'm doing. I have no idea how much room I need. Also, this house is far more modest than my dark oak mansion was. I just can't get an idea of what I need to do. Besides, what point is there in it if the creepers keep blowing up everything? I did try to continue my fifth world anyway, and rebuild, but I literally couldn't even farm trees to rebuild the damned thing due to the excessive number of creepers spawning. I barely even have enough dirt now to grow trees. **** this world.
Its obvious this game is NOT about building. You don't have anything to build with, and what little you do have is spread far and wide and doesn't seem to spawn in every world anyway. Creepers will annihilate everything you build no matter what you do. You play like minecraft manhunt, or you do not. I have no idea how I'm even going to upload videos to youtube about this game if that's how you have to play.
And yes, I bought this game for money. I've long thought about uploading videos of my gaming to generate some extra cash, but I never did like the idea of turning my games into my job. So I bought this, a game I never felt inclined to play and that I clearly have no emotional attachment to. I'm not trying to play this game because I like it; I actually hate it. I'M JUST PLAYING THIS GAME FOR SOME PETTY CASH. I feel obligated to do it now that I splurged $30 on it (and yes, that's a lot of money to me, especially with how stupid expensive groceries are now).
If I'm going to 'play' this game, I need to just stick to creative mode and never bother trying to actually beat the game. I'm clearly not good enough to do that, and I'm only getting worse as I age. Guess that explains why virtually no one uploading videos plays in survival mode. I don't even know what blocks are available honestly. What, should I just watch a bunch of youtube videos to see what I have access to? Its not like I can survive the game long enough to find out for my self. I hate this game...
As mentioned before, can you post screenshots of what is happening?
(of course, I now highly doubt the OP is actually describing a real situation; "no dirt left to grow trees", so the entire world, or as far as you can see, is literally just bare stone now?)
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumTry some of the suggestions before continuing to complain. "Build a fence around it" is easy. "Sleep through the night in a bed" is even easier.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
If you really want a creeper-proof house, you should find diamonds and get some obsidian. It's not explodable by creepers. But 2 layers of cobblestone would also work. As mentioned before you could use torches to light up the surrounding areas. One other option is to build walls with water separating them, it will destroy the first layer but the water will protect the interior. You could also build with waterlogged blocks.
peace, out