Simple Block Guide

And when I say block I mean naturally occurring materials generated by the map generation. THIS IS NOT INCLUDING ORES. Ores will come at a later date, in a different thread. With the exception of Obsidian, because it is not really an ore, so much a block. So without further a due:




Dirt is probably the first block you will be faced with in the game. Its incredibly common, and is everywhere. Its fairly weak though so it does not serve as a very good building material. However, due to how common it is, and how easy it is to move, it makes a very good material for making towers, and scaffolding for building taller and bigger objects out of more suitable materials. If you place a dirt block next to a block with grass growing on top of it, and expose it to sunlight, then eventually the block will also turn into a grass covered one. The timing of this event has no pattern and is unpredictable. Snow used to be able to grow on dirt, but with the removal of snow environments, snow will only exist in snow biomes, and once mined, will not come back. Mining snow does not effect the dirt underneath, but mining the dirt will cause whats on top to disappear.

Recommended uses:

• Expendable blocks
• Scaffolding/towers for building
• Building stairways
• Flooring for outdoors

Sand will probably be the second block type you see in the game, if not the first, as players will always spawn on top of sand in Single player. Its a little less common than dirt, but is by no means rare, or even hard to find. It is most commonly found on beaches, or in the newer desert biome. Pretty much any body of water besides underground springs will have sand near them, especially next to the ocean, though lakes tend to have it as well.

Sand is one of the two blocks that is effected by gravity, gravel being the only other. This means that if a sand block is placed, and nothing is underneath it, it will fall until it hits something. While this can be immensely irritating while digging under lakes, this can also be abused to help you. Such as descending large cliffs, or huge drops in the Nether. Simply get a stack of sand, hover slightly over the edge, and place sand on the side of the block you are standing on. The sand will drop down, and if you keep doing this, the tower of sand will eventually reach you. Simply use your hands or a shovel and stand on top of the tower, digging straight down until you get to the bottom.

Sand has been known to be generated floating by the map generator. To make it fall, simply destroy one of the sand blocks, or place another block touching them. All floating sand blocks will then fall, giving some interesting effects if its above caves or large holes.

Recommended uses:

• Expendable blocks
• Descending large cliff sides
• Stoppers/release valves (dirt will work the same, but sand is easier to destroy by hand
• Filling in water/lava pools to travel across them.

Smooth stone is a naturally occurring rock. Mining it will drop pieces of cobblestone, so in order to use Smooth Stone, you need to first run some cobblestone through a furnace, which will convert it back to Smooth Stone. It makes for an excellent building material, due to it being fairly resistant to creepers, and it also looks better than dirt. Due to stone being the most common item on the map, building large structures out of it is not as difficult as other materials. A good amount of Charcoal will be needed to convert the cobblestone back to Smooth Stone however. 11 minutes is the time needed to convert a full stack of cobblestone to Smooth Stone, so it would probably be more productive to use a bucket of lava if you are converting a large amount of cobblestone, as the lava bucket will last 17 minutes in the furnace.


Recommended uses:

• Buildings/houses
• Support structures
• Decorative structures
• Any kind of building material

Cobblestone is probably one of the most common block type you will have in the game, especially if you do any amount of cave exploring, or underground construction. Which is a very good thing considering that it is a very durable material, and is great for building homes, castles, monuments, and pretty much any other kind of construction.

Because of how common, and easy it is to get cobblestone, it is one of the few blocks I would not say do not throw away if you have too much. Filling up an entire full sized chest with 64 block stacks will take almost no time at all, and even if you are having trouble with mining it underground, a simple generator will give you infinite amounts of cobblestone.

With that being said, as always, I would not reccomend throwing anything away at the begining of the game, especially when you do not have an abundance of tools to mine more. Even the generator requires tools for (efficient) mining, but it would be self sustaining after all, with cobblestone generators making cobblestone to make pickaxes to mine the generator with.

Another thing that is useful about cobblestone, is that Ghast fireballs do no damage to cobblestone. This means that upon entering the nether, it would be good to build a small room around your portal, to protect it from Ghasts if you ever need to escape, or just dont want them messing with you when you are spawning/leaving.

Recommended uses:

• Any kind of building material for houses, and large structures
• More permanent forms of scaffolding, bridges, and stairs
• Guarding you portals in the Nether.

Clay is thought to be one of the rarest block types in the game. Even more so than Gold and Diamond. This is not because it it particularly hard to find, but because it is generated in such a tiny quantity on a map. Before the Halloween Update (a1.2) it was even more so, with an entire world having less than 50 blocks of clay in the entire place. Though with recent updates clay is becoming less and less rare, and it is not hard to find upwards of 200 clay without any serious exploring.

Clay is usually generated right along the coasts, almost always in some sand. Its most common levels are at, or just above/below sea level. (Level 60-65) This means that if you are looking to find a lot of clay, it will be almost necessary to have a boat to travel the coast.

The good thing about actually finding a piece of clay, is that once you find one, you have surely found a very large chunk. Clay is almost always generated in pretty large chunks, meaning that you can easily get 30+ clay from one chunk. (~8 blocks * 4 pieces of clay each)

Recommended uses:

• Making brick

Gravel is essentially the underground version of sand. It is found underground at any height, though it seems more common if you dig down at least 5-10 layers. Gravel is also found in The Nether, in the walls in two block high strips.

Though due to the fact that gravel obeys the laws of gravity, it is much easier to suffocate yourself accidentally with it. When traveling underground there is no way of telling what is behind the next block you destroy, meaning if you are tunneling deep underground, and break a block above you, there is a chance that a large stack of gravel is going to fall on you. If this ever happens, just back out to where you came from. If for some reason you can not back out, look straight up and stat breaking the ones above you. You should not have to mine through more than 5 blocks to reach fresh air again.

Another interesting element of gravel is that it has a possiblity to drop an item when destroyed, unlike any other item. (Other items will either drop an ore/resource, or will mine themselves to be picked up, not have a possibility to do either) Flint is used to make Arrows, or Flint and Steel (fire starter) There is a 10% chance that gravel will drop a piece of flint when mined. Unfortunately, you must mine the gravel with either a tool or your hands in order for it to drop flint. Dropping gravel on top of torches will NOT give gravel.

Speaking of dropping gravel on torches, a good way to get rid of large chunks of gravel is to dig underneath the block supporting the gravel, and place a torch. Then destroy the supporting block and all the gravel will fall onto the torch, destroying itself.

Recommended uses:

• Expendable blocks
• Descending large cliff sides
• Stoppers/release valves (dirt will work the same, but sand is easier to destroy by hand
• Filling in water/lava pools to travel across them.
• Making large towers and destroying them to get flint.

Obsidian is the second strongest material in the game, second only to Bedrock, which is unbreakable. Effectively making the strongest obtainable block in the game. Although it takes a long time to mine, it is still very worth it when making impermeable structures. Being the only material that really stands up against creepers, it is recommended that you use this to your advantage. Building an entire house out of it may take time, and diligence, but in the end, with an impermeable house, it will be worth it.

While obsidian does not occur naturally in the generation, I added it in simply because it didnt really class as an ore either. Obsidian is made when water touches a source block of lava. It MUST be a source block, otherwise it will just make cobblestone. It also requires a diamond pickaxe to mine. Anything else will just be slower (>15seconds) and not wield any dropping.

Obsidian is needed to build portals to the nether. Portals must be 2 blocks wide, and 3 high, sealed in on all sides. Only 10 is needed for a portal, if you cut the sides out. This leads to an interesting glitch that I will cover in the farming section.

Recommended uses:

• Formidable structures
• Things you want guarded safely
• Portals

What I am attaching is a small little world that I built some basic cobblestone generators on. It shows a step by step of how to build the more common generator, as well as some others. It doesnt include all of them, just some of my favorites.

Scans----
Virustotal 0/41
Jotti 0/20



That concludes my full block guide for basic naturally occurring materials in Minecraft. This guide was written entirely by me. Not C+P from somewhere else, not copied then reworded, not changed around at all. The majority of the actual info however, came from Both the minepedia (mainly statistics and pictures) and personal experience. This guide took about a solid week to write, though it took a month or more due to moving and other things in between. I do plan on writing a guide for ores, like diamond and coal, but it will take longer due to the amount of time it will take to write out the different methods of finding them. Be sure to let me know if you see any major mistakes or the like. I will address them and fix them. So until next time.