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While seasoned players might be well aware of some of these tricks, secrets, and special features, those who play more casually or who have just begun their deep dive into Minecraft might be less familiar with them. Next time you load up a new world, why not give some of these a shot?
Updated on July 29th, 2021 by Anastasia Maillot: Given how big Minecraft is as a game and how much it tends to grow with every update on both Bedrock and Java Edition, it’s no surprise there’s still a lot that remains unknown among most fans of Minecraft. From secrets to cheats to locations players may have never found, the game is just an endless ocean of details that keeps on giving.
With that, there’s five additional little lesser-known details about the game that can be both useful and interesting to discover, especially for newer players not as well acquainted with the game.
15 Boats Can Be Named
Anvils were a great addition to Minecraft, as they allowed players to attach enchantments and even give names to their armor and weapons. However, what most players don’t know, is that in the Bedrock Edition of Minecraft, anvils can actually be used to name boats as well. Place a boat in the first square in the anvil UI and type a name for it.
So, forget about naming farm animals and mobs with name tags or naming gear. By naming boats, players can build their own little fleet of special boats. It’s not the most useful feature, but it’s definitely something Java Edition players need just for the fun and giggles.
14 Mobs Can Be Trapped Using Rails
Trapping mobs is a classic struggle every Minecraft player has to deal with at some point. With passive mobs the task tends to be a bit easier, but who’s to say players can’t also trap hostile mobs and put a name tag on them to have a permanent evil friend as their prisoner?
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While the classic way is to use boats, mobs can also be trapped in locations using rails. Surround a hostile mob with rails from all sides. This works because mobs don’t always know how to path across rails, so by closing them off into a corner surrounded by rails, their AI gets confused. Don’t rely on this for too long, however, since some reports state that eventually, mobs will be able to escape this trap.
13 Water Bottles Can Be Used In The Nether To Extinguish Fires
The Nether is an immensely dangerous place, and burning alive is a reality that many Minecraft players come face to face with pretty quickly. With water not functioning in the Nether, the only plausible solution is to make Fire Resistance potions. That is, unless one happens to be playing on Bedrock Edition.
By using a splash water bottle, players can actually extinguish themselves while in the Nether. Throw the splash water bottle down to your feet and the fire will disappear instantly. If only this existed on Java Edition as well.
12 Pink Wool Can Be Found Naturally
Most sheep in the overworld of Minecraft come in natural colors of white, black, grey, and brown. Using dye, it’s possible to change the color of any sheep on the go. There is, however, one very special type of sheep that spawns once in a blue moon if one is lucky enough.
The pink sheep has a legendary status among rare Minecraft mobs. A pink sheep has a 0.1% chance of spawning, making it one of the rarest mobs in the entire game. Its baby version is even rarer, with a spawn chance of roughly 0.0082%.
11 The Color Of The Fog Underground Tells The Time Of The Day
Especially early on in survival Minecraft, knowing the time of the day is crucial. For the sake of efficiency, most players will spend their first nights awake mining underground. However, it can be difficult to know exactly when to come back up and wander the overworld again.
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Those with fog on have a small advantage, actually. Underground, the color of the fog depends on the time of the day above. Dark fog means it’s nighttime, while greyish fog signifies it’s daytime again. Keep an eye out for that fog next time, since it might save you time and effort.
10 Clone Entire Buildings
There are generally two different types of Minecraft players: those who love building houses and spend all their time in creative mode making elaborate builds and villages, and those who much prefer the survival RPG experience. If you’re part of the former, there’s a cheat that massively improves the quality of life in creative.
When building large cities or towns, or when you just want to make two of the same quickly without having to place down blocks, the clone command cheat is your best friend. In the chat, type in the /clone (BEGIN) (END) (DESTINATION). The beginning and end are the coordinate values of your original build.
9 Make Your Crops Grow Faster
Alright survival players, listen up. It’s time to stop building those wheat-only farms right off the bat, especially if you happen to have some other crops like carrots and potatoes. Rather than making neat separate farms for all of them, mix them together by putting them into alternating rows (or just placing them randomly).
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This actually makes the crops go faster in the game. At the beginning of the game, where you just want to get food fast, this is a huge help. After a while, you can just go back to building organized separate plots for each crop, but while there’s a rush for food, who cares about organization?
8 Boats Are Basically Overpowered
The humble wooden boat might not seem like a lot, but it’s capable of doing much more than most players can even imagine. Boats are able to not only act as mob traps for hostile and passive tameable mobs, but they’re also fantastic for never ever taking any fall damage, no matter how high you fall from.
Plus, boats move extra fast on packed ice. It’s a big favorite among players to build packed ice walkways and then travel across them using boats. The speed is even greater than when using an Elytra, so next time, don’t underestimate the utility of your humble boat.
7 Switching To LAN Enables Cheats
If you’ve ever started a new world and realized that you actually much preferred to build in this Minecraft seed or use cheats to help yourself out (we’re not judging by the way!), then don’t worry because that can be done easily by opening the world to LAN in the game menu. Go into the Game Menu and select Open to LAN. Select Allow Cheats: On.
This also allows you to tweak the difficulty of the game easily and without restarting it all over. It’s a nice little safety net to fall back to if everything goes wrong in the world and you feel like you’d prefer to play on Peaceful or rather bump up the difficulty to Hard instead.
6 Give Item Cheat
Another essential command that comes in handy for players who don’t mind cheating in their worlds or just want to troll their friends is the /give command. Depending on the item, you can even change the details of an item, such as enchanting a sword or a pickaxe.
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Simply type in /give (PLAYER NAME) (ITEM NAME) (AMOUNT) and then any additional information on the type of item you’d like to give to the player in question. Gifting your friend with 64 golden shovels that they’ll do absolutely nothing with is always a good time.
5 Hidden Second Chest In Jungle Temples
Jungle temples are just one of the many structures you can find while exploring your Minecraft world. Typically found in the jungle forest biome, it has a hallway downstairs that leads past several tripwires to a chest in the back with varying loot. However, there’s also a second chest hidden within the temple.
Mine the wall right next to the levers by the stairs and you should find a second chest hidden by the mechanism. Don’t forget to pick up this double loot next time you stumble by a desert temple, because you never know what kinds of treasures are hidden in the second chest as well.
4 Special Name Tags
Name tags are a fun way to give some character to your favorite hostile and passive mobs. There’s also a bunch of names that act as easter eggs. For instance, naming a Vindicator as Johnny will make him hostile towards absolutely everyone and everything, even passive mobs like cows, sheep, or fellow hostile mobs.
The name “Dinnerbone” will put a mob upside down, while naming a sheep as “jeb_” makes the sheep’s wool cycle through all the different wool color options. Finally, if you find a rabbit, try naming it “Toast,” which will unlock a new appearance for it made in memory of Toast, the pet of a Minecraft fan’s girlfriend on Reddit.
3 Charged Creepers And Mob Heads
You haven’t known real terror until you’ve come across something as horrifying as the charged creeper. This rare variation of the regular creeper has a small chance of spawning during a thunderstorm when a creeper is hit by a lightning strike.
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If any hostile mob is killed by the charged creeper’s explosion, the mob will drop its head. Keep an eye out on these charged creepers during thunderstorms if you’d like to grab a zombie, skeleton, or regular creeper head to show off on an item frame.
2 Igloo Basements
Snow biomes might not be a favorite among players due to how difficult it is to grow crops and find animals. Forests are usually decent locations, but snowy plains biomes are often devoid of any life and make survival particularly hard. However, there is a chance you might find an igloo.
Igloos at first glance might just seem like regular little homes with a bed to sleep in, but some of these igloos hide a dark secret. If you remove the carpet and find a set of ladders leading downstairs, you’ll be able to unlock an achievement in the game: turning a zombie villager into a regular villager.
1 The Nether Roof
When it comes to game-breaking features, the Nether roof is a great example. This area is basically a flat area on top of the entire Nether world, its outer layer. Nothing spawns here, and it’s absolutely ideal for making mob farms in the Nether since controlling spawning is so easy. Moreover, it’s also fantastic for traveling and making an extensive Nether portal network.
To start off, dig straight up in the Nether to an elevation of Y=121, and you should start seeing bedrock spawn among netherrack. Press F3 and on the right-hand side check the “Targeted Block” coordinates. You want to find a piece of bedrock that has 127 as its second number. Create a ladder up to this piece of bedrock and aim an ender pearl through it and an adjacent piece of bedrock, which should send you to the roof. Just make sure you have what’s needed to make a portal to get out of here, since otherwise you’ll be stuck.
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