Vanilla Minecraft basics
Not everything in the valley is a plugin. This section answers everyday Minecraft questions in plain words: how to build things, how game rules work, and where to find the good stuff. Every answer was checked against the Minecraft Wiki, and where phones and tablets (Bedrock) play differently from Java, the answer says so.
The in-game Valley Guide answers from this same knowledge, so anything here can also be asked in game chat with /ask or by starting a message with "Guide,".
How do I make an iron golem?
Build a T shape from 4 blocks of iron: two standing up, one on each side at the top for arms. Put a carved pumpkin (or a jack o'lantern) on top in the middle, and place the pumpkin LAST: the golem springs to life the moment it lands. Tip: place a plain pumpkin and shear it in place to carve it.
The spaces beside the arms must be empty air, with no grass or plants in the way, or the golem will not form. One you build yourself never attacks you or other players; it patrols and fights monsters. If it gets cracked in a fight, use an iron ingot on it to repair it.
Villages can spawn their own golems too. On Bedrock a village needs at least 20 beds and 10 villagers.
How do I make a copper golem?
Place 1 block of copper (any color stage works), then put a carved pumpkin or jack o'lantern on top of it, placed LAST. The copper block turns into a copper chest and the copper golem pops out.
The copper golem is a little robot sorter: it takes items out of copper chests and sorts them into nearby wooden or trapped chests that are empty or already hold the same item. It has 12 HP and never fights.
Left unwaxed, a copper golem slowly oxidizes and eventually freezes into a statue. Use honeycomb on it to wax it and stop the change, or use an axe to scrape oxidation off, which also wakes a statue back up.
How do I make a snow golem?
Stack 2 snow blocks, then put a carved pumpkin or jack o'lantern on top, placed LAST. The golem forms the moment the pumpkin lands. It works upright, sideways, or upside down.
A snow golem follows along and throws snowballs at monsters from up to 10 blocks away. Snowballs deal no damage, except 3 HP to blazes, but the knockback sends monsters chasing the golem instead of you. It has only 4 HP, so it is a helper, not a guard.
Careful: snow golems melt. Rain, touching water, and hot biomes slowly hurt them, so keep yours somewhere cool and dry, or give it Fire Resistance. Shear a snow golem to take its pumpkin off and see its real face.
How does enchanting work?
Craft an enchanting table from 1 book, 2 diamonds, and 4 obsidian. Put the item you want to enchant in the enchanting table with lapis lazuli: each enchantment costs 1 to 3 lapis plus some of your XP levels. You can enchant a sword, armor, tools, and books this way.
The table offers three random enchantments, and you need the stated level to pick one, but you only pay a few levels: the strongest option asks you to HAVE 30 levels and charges just 3 levels and 3 lapis.
To unlock those level 30 options, surround the table with 15 bookshelves, with exactly one block of air between the table and each shelf. Even a torch in that gap breaks the link, so keep the ring clear. Level 30 is the maximum the table offers. How many bookshelves is enough? All 15 bookshelves, no fewer: with fewer bookshelves the top option drops below level 30 and the best enchants never appear. If your enchantments look weak, the fix is more bookshelves and more levels: the good enchantments live at level 30. Good enchantments take the full ring, and good gear is worth it: no shortcuts.
What does an anvil do?
Craft an anvil from 3 blocks of iron across the top of the grid and 4 iron ingots (three across the bottom, one in the center): 31 iron ingots in total. An anvil repairs gear (a worn sword, tool, or armor piece) while keeping its enchantments, applies enchanted books, and renames items, all for XP levels.
To repair, add the item's own material (iron ingots for an iron sword, for example): each piece restores 25% durability, and you repair the sword without losing any enchantments. Or repair by combining two worn items of the same kind into one better one.
Watch the cost: every repair job on an item makes the next anvil job on that same item more expensive, and a job priced over 39 levels is refused as Too Expensive. The anvil itself also wears out with use, turning chipped, then damaged, then breaking.
Grindstone: how do I remove enchantments from an item?
Craft a grindstone from 2 sticks, 1 stone slab, and 2 planks. A grindstone removes enchantments: put an enchanted item in the top slot and it takes ALL of the item's enchantments off and gives you some XP back. The item comes back clean, with every enchantment removed. Only curses stay; a grindstone cannot remove a curse.
It also repairs: put two worn items of the same kind in together and you get one repaired item back, unenchanted. As a bonus, repairing this way resets the item's anvil repair cost, bringing its cost back down, so future anvil work on it is cheap again.
The grindstone is also the weaponsmith villager's job block: place one near an unemployed villager to make a weaponsmith.
How do I build a nether portal to go to the Nether?
To go to the Nether, build a frame of obsidian at least 4 blocks wide and 5 blocks tall (outside measure). The four corners are optional, so the cheapest working portal uses just 10 obsidian. Then light the inside with flint and steel or a fire charge, placed last, and the purple portal opens.
A nether portal only accepts regular obsidian: crying obsidian does NOT work in a nether portal frame, no matter how much of it you have.
Step through the purple fire and you go to the Nether; step through again to come back. Portals matter for travel: 1 block walked in the Nether equals 8 blocks in the Overworld, so a portal pair is the fastest way to cross the valley. Portals can be built up to 23 by 23 if you want a grand entrance.
How do I make a beacon work?
Craft a beacon from 5 glass, 1 nether star, and 3 obsidian. The nether star is the hard part: it drops from the Wither. Place the beacon on top of a pyramid built from iron, gold, emerald, diamond, or netherite blocks (mixing is fine), and give it a clear view of the sky.
A 1-level pyramid takes 9 blocks; a full 4-level pyramid takes 164 blocks and reaches 50 blocks in every direction. Feed the beacon 1 iron ingot, gold ingot, emerald, diamond, or netherite ingot to switch its power on: Speed, Haste, Resistance, Jump Boost, or Strength.
A full pyramid also lets you pick a second power, or raise the first power to level II. Everyone near the beacon shares the effect while they stay in range.
How does a conduit work?
Craft a conduit from 8 nautilus shells around 1 heart of the sea. The heart comes from buried treasure; nautilus shells come from fishing, drowned, and wandering traders.
Place the conduit underwater and build a frame ring around it from prismarine, dark prismarine, prismarine bricks, or sea lanterns. The frame needs at least 16 blocks to switch on, giving a 32-block range; a complete 42-block frame reaches 96 blocks.
While it is on, swimmers in range get Conduit Power: breathe underwater for as long as you stay in range (in effect, breathe underwater forever), see clearly, and mine at full speed. A complete frame also zaps hostile sea mobs that wander within 8 blocks of the conduit.
Villager trades: how do villagers level up?
Villagers trade for emeralds. An unemployed villager takes a job by claiming a job block nearby: a lectern makes a librarian, a blast furnace an armorer, a composter a farmer, and so on for every profession. No job block, no job: a villager with no job site stays unemployed. In short, you give a villager a job by putting the right job block next to it.
Villagers level up when you trade with them: a villager starts as a Novice, then climbs to Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, and Master as you keep trading. The more you trade, the faster the villager levels up. Higher levels unlock better trades, and master librarians and armorers sell some of the best gear and books in the game.
Trades sell out after a few uses. The villager restocks by working at its job block, up to twice a day; on Bedrock the villager also needs to be linked to a bed to restock. One warning: after you trade with a villager even once, its job and trades lock in forever.
How do I cure a zombie villager?
Step 1: trap the zombie villager somewhere safe where it cannot reach you or wander off. Step 2: throw a splash potion of weakness at it (a weakness arrow works too). Step 3: while it is weak, use a golden apple on it.
The villager shakes while it cures, which takes 3 to 5 minutes, then turns back into a normal villager. Putting iron bars or a bed inside the pen speeds the cure up a little.
Your reward: the cured villager gives YOU a permanent discount on its trades, and that discount does not stack if you cure it again. Nearby villagers within about 16 blocks offer smaller discounts too. A weakness potion is brewed with a fermented spider eye straight into a water bottle, no nether wart needed.
How do I breed animals?
To make baby animals, feed two adults of the same kind their favorite food. Hearts appear, they come together, and a baby is born. The parents then rest about 5 minutes before they can breed again, and babies grow up in about 20 minutes (feeding a baby speeds it up). For example, feed two cows wheat and they make a baby cow.
Favorite foods: cows, sheep, goats, and mooshrooms eat wheat. Pigs eat carrots, potatoes, or beetroots. Chickens eat any seeds. Tamed wolves eat meat, and both wolves must be at full health. Tamed cats eat raw cod or raw salmon. Tamed horses and donkeys eat golden apples or golden carrots. Rabbits eat carrots, golden carrots, or dandelions. Turtles eat seagrass, frogs eat slimeballs, bees eat flowers, and axolotls eat buckets of tropical fish.
Villagers breed differently: give them spare beds and food (3 bread each, or 12 carrots, potatoes, or beetroots) and a new villager arrives on its own.
How do sugar cane and bamboo grow?
Sugar cane: plant it on dirt, grass, or sand directly beside water. It grows up to 3 blocks tall, needs no light, and pops out of the ground if its water is removed. Harvest by breaking the middle block: the top falls as items and the bottom block regrows. Bedrock difference: on phones and consoles one bone meal grows sugar cane straight to full height; on Java, bone meal does not work on sugar cane at all.
Bamboo: plant a bamboo shoot on dirt, grass, sand, or gravel. Bamboo needs NO water, but its top needs light level 9 or better to grow. It is the fastest-growing plant in the game and climbs 12 to 16 blocks tall.
Bone meal makes bamboo jump 1 to 2 blocks instantly. Break one bamboo stalk block and everything above it comes down too, so harvest from the second block up and leave the bottom shoot to regrow.
How does kelp grow?
Kelp is the tall green seaweed that grows underwater: plant it on a solid block under the water and it grows upward toward the surface. Each plant stops at its own random height, anywhere from a couple of blocks to about 26. Kelp needs no light at all, and bone meal grows it 1 block per use.
To harvest, break the stalk low: everything above the break drops and floats up to the surface for easy collecting, and the stump regrows.
Smelt kelp in a furnace to make dried kelp, the classic seaweed snack. Craft 9 dried kelp together into a dried kelp block, which is one of the strongest furnace fuels for its cost.
Where do I find elytra wings?
Elytra are never crafted. You find them hanging in an item frame in the treasure room of an End ship, the floating ships that appear beside some End cities. A shulker guards the room, so bring a shield and a way back down.
Wear the elytra in your chestplate slot, then press jump while falling to glide. Firework rockets boost you while gliding, but ONLY plain rockets: a rocket crafted with a firework star explodes and hurts you instead.
Gliding uses up durability: a full pair lasts about 7 minutes of flight, and at the end the wings stop working but never fully break. Repair them on an anvil with phantom membranes (each membrane restores a quarter of the bar), or add Mending by anvil. Enchanting tables cannot enchant elytra.
How do I get a shulker box?
Craft a shulker box from 2 shulker shells and 1 chest: one shell in the top middle of the grid, the chest in the center, one shell in the bottom middle. Shulker shells drop from shulkers, the box-shaped guards at End cities.
A shulker box holds 27 stacks like a chest, but when you break it, everything stays inside the box. It is a portable backpack: fill it, break it, carry it, place it anywhere.
One firm rule: a shulker box can never be placed inside another shulker box. You can dye a shulker box any color, and renaming your boxes at an anvil keeps kits and loot easy to tell apart.
How does an ender chest work?
Craft an ender chest from 8 obsidian around 1 eye of ender. It has 27 slots, but they are YOUR slots: every ender chest you open, anywhere in any dimension, shows the same personal storage, and no other player can see or take your things.
Your items stay inside the ender chest network even if you die, and even if the chest block itself is destroyed. To pick an ender chest back up, mine it with a Silk Touch pickaxe; without Silk Touch it drops 8 obsidian instead (your stored items are still safe).
Ender chest or shulker box? The ender chest is a private vault you reach from a placed block; a shulker box is a backpack you physically carry. Experienced players fill their ender chest with full shulker boxes for the best of both.
Where do tridents come from, and how do I get one?
Tridents cannot be crafted. Tridents come from drowned: find a drowned (an underwater zombie) that is holding one and defeat it: on Bedrock it drops the trident about 1 time in 4, on Java about 8.5% of the time. The Looting enchantment raises your chances. All tridents come from drowned, never from crafting.
Trident enchantments: Loyalty makes a thrown trident fly back to you, and higher levels return faster. Riptide does the opposite: instead of throwing, it launches YOU forward, and it only works while you are in water or standing in rain (level III throws you 21 blocks). Loyalty and Riptide can never share one trident, so most players keep two.
Channeling summons a lightning strike when your thrown trident hits a mob during a thunderstorm. One difference to know: on Bedrock a Loyalty trident returns even from the void, but on Java a trident thrown into the void is destroyed. Repair a worn trident by combining it with another trident on an anvil.
How do I make and load a crossbow?
Craft a crossbow from 3 sticks, 2 string, 1 iron ingot, and 1 tripwire hook. Hold the use button to load it, then release to finish: unlike a bow, a crossbow STAYS loaded until you fire it, so you can load one ahead of time and swap it into your hand when trouble starts. You can even store loaded crossbows ready to go.
A crossbow fires arrows, tipped and spectral arrows, and firework rockets. To load a rocket, hold the rocket in your offhand while you load (plain rockets only, unless you enjoy explosions at close range).
Crossbow-only enchantments: Quick Charge (up to III, cutting load time from 1.25 seconds to half a second), Multishot (fires 3 arrows while using only 1), and Piercing (arrows pass through mobs and shields and can be picked back up). Multishot and Piercing cannot be combined on one crossbow.
How do I use a smithing table to upgrade to netherite gear?
Use a smithing table (craft one from 2 iron ingots and 4 planks). Put a Netherite Upgrade smithing template in the left slot, your diamond item in the middle, and 1 netherite ingot in the right slot. Out comes the netherite version. Upgrading works on any diamond tool, weapon, or armor piece.
Upgrading costs NO XP and does not raise the item's anvil repair cost. Upgrading never removes your enchantments: the upgraded item keeps its enchantments, its custom name, and even its remaining durability, so enchant your diamond gear first and upgrade it after.
Netherite ingots are crafted from 4 netherite scrap plus 4 gold ingots. The scrap comes from smelting ancient debris, the rare Nether ore. The smithing table also applies armor trims, and it is the toolsmith villager's job block.
Where do I find the netherite upgrade template?
The Netherite Upgrade smithing template is found only in bastion remnants in the Nether. The treasure bastion's treasure chest ALWAYS holds one (a 100% chance); bridge, hoglin stable, and generic bastion chests each hold one about 10% of the time.
Important: upgrading uses the template up. So copy it first: craft the template together with 1 netherrack and 7 diamonds and you get 2 templates back. Make more upgrade templates this way whenever you need them: one saved template can copy itself forever.
Keep one copy safe at base forever, and spend the duplicates. That way the family never has to raid a second bastion just for upgrades.
Where do I find ancient debris for netherite scrap?
Ancient debris is a rare ore hidden in the Nether, most common around Y level 15 to 16. It never appears out in the open: it always spawns buried inside netherrack, basalt, or blackstone, so you have to dig or blast to expose it. It is the only source of netherite scrap.
Mine it ONLY with a diamond or netherite pickaxe. Any weaker tool breaks the block and drops nothing.
Its blast resistance is enormous, so blast mining works beautifully: set off beds or TNT in a tunnel at that depth and the debris survives while everything around it blows away. Loose debris even floats on lava and never burns. Smelt ancient debris in a furnace to get netherite scrap: 4 netherite scrap plus 4 gold ingots make 1 netherite ingot.
How do I brew potions?
Craft a brewing stand from 1 blaze rod and 3 cobblestone. A brewing stand needs blaze powder to run: one powder fuels 20 brews. You need glass bottles too: fill them with water, put up to 3 bottles in the stand, and brew one step at a time, about 20 seconds per step.
Almost every potion starts the same way: brew nether wart into water bottles to make Awkward Potions, the base for nearly all effect potions. Then add one effect ingredient: sugar makes Speed, glistering melon slice makes Instant Health, magma cream makes Fire Resistance, golden carrot makes Night Vision, ghast tear makes Regeneration, pufferfish makes Water Breathing, blaze powder makes Strength, phantom membrane makes Slow Falling.
Then tune it: redstone makes the effect last longer, glowstone dust makes it stronger (level II), and a potion can never be both. Gunpowder makes a splash potion you can throw; dragon's breath turns a splash potion into a lingering one. One exception worth knowing: the Potion of Weakness needs NO nether wart, just a fermented spider eye straight into a water bottle, and it is the potion that cures zombie villagers.
How does fishing work, and can I catch treasure?
Craft a fishing rod from 3 sticks and 2 string, cast it into any water, and wait: after 5 to 30 seconds the bobber dips and splashes, and that is your moment to reel in. A plain rod catches about 85% fish, 10% junk, and 5% treasure.
Treasure catches include enchanted books, name tags, saddles, nautilus shells, and enchanted bows and fishing rods. Name tags from fishing are a lucky catch: a name tag saves a trip into a dungeon, and fishing is one of the only ways to get name tags without exploring. Luck of the Sea raises treasure odds (to about 11% at level III) and Lure makes fish bite sooner. Rain speeds up bites by about 20% too.
One Java-only rule: on Java, treasure requires open water, a clear area of about 5 by 4 by 5 blocks around the bobber. Bedrock has no open-water rule: any pond or river on your phone can give treasure.
What does a composter do?
A composter makes bone meal from plant scraps. Craft a composter from 7 wooden slabs arranged in a U. Feed it plant scraps: each item has a chance to add a layer, and when the composter reaches 7 layers, use it once more and out pops 1 bone meal.
Weak fillers like seeds and leaves add a layer only about 30% of the time; crops and flowers are middling; bread is strong; and cake or pumpkin pie always add a layer. Some things never compost: bamboo, meat, fish, and bones do nothing at all.
A composter is also the farmer villager's job block. Place one near an unemployed villager to make a farmer, and your crop scraps turn into both bone meal and a trading partner.
How do bees, honey, and beehives work?
Bees live in bee nests (found on oak and birch trees near flowers) or in beehives. To make a beehive, craft 6 planks with 3 honeycomb. One home holds up to 3 bees. Bees visit flowers, come home, and the hive's honey level rises; at level 5 the hive looks full and drippy.
Harvest at level 5: use shears on the hive for honeycomb, or an empty glass bottle for a honey bottle. First light a campfire under the hive (within 5 blocks below): the smoke calms the bees so they do not swarm you while you harvest.
Good to know: bees flying over your crops pollinate them, bumping them a growth stage like bone meal. A bee that stings loses its stinger and dies, so never hit one. To move a nest with bees inside, break it with a Silk Touch tool; without Silk Touch the bees spill out angry.
Where do axolotls live, and what do they do?
Axolotls spawn underwater in lush caves, where there is clay within a few blocks below them. Scoop one up with a water bucket to carry it home: a bucketed axolotl never despawns, so you can keep your pet axolotl forever.
A pet axolotl hunts fish and squid and helps you in underwater fights. If you land the finishing blow on a mob that was fighting your axolotl, you gain Regeneration and any Mining Fatigue is removed. When an axolotl is badly hurt it may play dead for about 10 seconds, healing while monsters ignore it.
There are 5 colors: pink, brown, gold, cyan, and blue. Blue axolotls never spawn in the wild: they only appear by breeding (feed two axolotls buckets of tropical fish), and each baby has only a 1 in 1200 chance of being blue.
What do goats do, and how do I get a goat horn?
Goats spawn on snowy slopes, jagged peaks, and frozen peaks. You can milk a goat with a bucket, just like a cow. Every so often a goat picks a target that is standing still, lowers its head, and rams: the hit knocks the target back about 9 blocks, so move when you see a goat lower its head at you.
Goat horns: if a ramming goat crashes into a solid block like stone, an ore block, a log, or packed ice, one of its horns breaks off and drops as a goat horn you can blow. Each goat carries at most 2 horns and they never grow back.
About 2% of goats are screaming goats: they look identical but ram far more often, every 5 to 15 seconds. Goats also jump up to 10 blocks high and take 10 less fall damage than other mobs, which is why they rule the mountains.
How do frogs and froglights work?
Frogs spawn in swamps and mangrove swamps. Breeding frogs is easy: to breed them, feed two frogs slimeballs and one lays frogspawn on the water; it hatches in 3 to 10 minutes into 2 to 5 tadpoles, and the tadpoles grow into frogs after about 20 minutes.
The frog's color is decided by the biome where the TADPOLE grows up, not by its parents: a temperate biome grows the orange frog, a warm biome the white frog, and a cold biome the green frog.
Frogs eat small slimes (which always drop a slimeball) and small magma cubes. When a frog eats a small magma cube, it drops a froglight, a glowing block: orange frogs make ochre froglights, white frogs make pearlescent, and green frogs make verdant.
Where do I find an allay, the little blue helper?
Allays are found trapped: in cages at pillager outposts and in the jail cells of woodland mansions. Free one and it follows you. An allay is a small blue flying helper: hand it any item and it flies off to collect dropped copies of that same item nearby (it searches within 32 blocks of you) and brings them back, carrying up to one full stack.
If an allay hears a note block while it is delivering, it drops its items at the note block instead, for 30 seconds. Builders use that trick for automatic item delivery and sorting.
Allays do not breed, but you can duplicate one: while an allay is dancing to a jukebox, give it an amethyst shard and it splits into two allays. Each allay can do this once every 5 minutes.
How do I make a lead and leash an animal?
Craft leads from 5 string: one recipe makes 2 leads, and no slimeball is needed. Use a lead on a friendly animal (a horse, cow, pig, or llama) to leash it and walk it home. A lead is how you bring a horse home without it wandering off. Use the lead on a fence post to tie the animal there.
To take a lead back, use shears on the leash or use the lead on the animal again; a removed or broken lead drops on the ground as an item. A lead stretches about 12 blocks before it snaps, so do not sprint too far ahead of your animal.
Wandering traders walk their llamas on leads, and freeing a trader llama drops its lead for you. Villagers and most monsters cannot be leashed.
How do maps and the cartography table work?
Craft a locator map from 8 paper around 1 compass, then hold it and use it to start drawing: it covers 128 by 128 blocks at its closest zoom and shows your position marker. On Bedrock you can also make a plain map from paper alone, but it has no marker; in Bedrock a cartography table makes an empty map from a single paper.
The cartography table (craft it from 2 paper and 4 planks) does the map work. Add 1 paper to zoom a map out, up to 4 times, reaching 2048 by 2048 blocks; zooming wipes the drawing, so walk the land again to refill it. Add a blank map of the same kind to copy a map: copies stay in sync, perfect for sharing with family. Add a glass pane to lock a map so it never updates again.
Maps only fill in while you hold them and explore, and they snap to a fixed grid rather than centering on you, so neighboring maps tile together neatly on a wall.
How do I make a compass point to my base?
Craft a lodestone from 8 chiseled stone bricks around 1 iron ingot. (It used to cost a netherite ingot; now it is iron.) Lodestones also appear in bastion bridge chests and ruined portal chests.
Place the lodestone at your base and use a normal compass on it: that compass now points to the lodestone instead of world spawn. A lodestone compass works in the Nether and the End too, where ordinary compasses just spin.
If the lodestone is broken, your compass spins uselessly; put a lodestone back in the exact same spot and the link restores itself. If you travel to a different dimension than the lodestone, the compass spins until you return. In short, that is how a lodestone works: a linked compass keeps working at any distance, works in every dimension, and only stops working when the lodestone is broken.
Recovery compass and echo shards: how do I find my stuff after I die?
Bring a recovery compass. To make one, craft 1 compass ringed with 8 echo shards. Hold it and it points to the exact spot of YOUR most recent death, so you can run straight back to your dropped gear.
The compass only points while you are in the same dimension where you died; anywhere else it just spins. It works only after you have died, and only for the latest death. And careful: the recovery compass itself drops when you die, so keep it at base and grab it for the rescue run.
Echo shards come only from chests inside ancient cities in the deep dark (about a 30% chance per chest, 1 to 3 at a time). Echo shards cannot be crafted and never renew, so spend your echo shards wisely.
What is a sculk shrieker, and how do I stay safe from the Warden?
A sculk shrieker is the horned sculk block found in the deep dark and ancient cities, the most dangerous places in the game. Only the shriekers the world generated can call the Warden: a shrieker you pick up and place yourself is harmless and can never summon one.
How the danger works: stepping on a shrieker, or making a noise that a nearby sculk sensor passes along, sets it shrieking and gives YOU one warning. Warnings add up across all shriekers, and on the 4th warning the Warden emerges, if one is not already near. Shrieks also darken your screen with the Darkness effect. Many players ask how many warnings they get: you get three warnings of grace, and the fourth warning calls the Warden.
Staying safe in the deep dark: sneak everywhere, walk on wool or carpet where you can (wool between a sensor and a shrieker blocks the signal), and if a shrieker goes off, freeze and wait for quiet. Warnings fade by 1 every 10 quiet minutes. Three shrieks is your sign to leave and come back later. A natural shrieker you break loses its summoning power forever, even if you Silk Touch it and put it back.
How do I set my spawn in the Nether with a respawn anchor?
Craft a respawn anchor from 6 crying obsidian and 3 glowstone: crying obsidian fills the top and bottom rows, glowstone the middle row. This is crying obsidian's real job (it can never build a nether portal).
You cannot sleep in the Nether: a bed explodes there, so the respawn anchor is how you set a spawn point in the Nether instead. The anchor works on charges: charge it by using glowstone BLOCKS on it (not glowstone dust): it holds up to 4 charges, shown by its dial. Then use the charged anchor while standing in the Nether to set your spawn point there.
Each respawn at the anchor consumes 1 charge, and everyone sharing the anchor shares its charges, so keep it topped up. If it runs empty or is broken, you respawn at world spawn instead. Never use a respawn anchor in the Overworld or the End: it explodes with fire, just like sleeping in a bed in the Nether. Topped up, a respawn anchor works like a bed for the Nether.
How do I trade with piglins?
Throw a gold ingot at an adult piglin in the Nether, or use the ingot on it. The piglin inspects your gold for a few seconds (about 6 seconds on Java, 8 on Bedrock), then tosses back a random item: ender pearls, crying obsidian, obsidian, fire resistance potions, string, quartz, gravel, soul sand, or iron nuggets are all on the table.
Rare prizes: a Soul Speed enchanted book (about 1 in 100 barters) or iron boots already enchanted with Soul Speed. Soul Speed is a boots-only enchantment, up to level III, that lets you run fast on soul sand and soul soil instead of being slowed; it never appears on an enchanting table, and wearing it slowly wears the boots out.
Two warnings: baby piglins just keep your gold and give nothing back, and piglin brutes never barter. And wear at least one piece of gold armor in the Nether: piglins leave gold-wearing players alone, but they attack anyone with no gold on.
How does a raid start, and how do I win one?
A raid starts with an ominous bottle. Kill a raid captain (the illager carrying the ominous banner) and it drops one; drink it to gain Bad Omen, then walk into a village. Bad Omen turns into Raid Omen, and about 30 seconds later the raid horn sounds and the waves begin. Changed your mind? Drink milk to clear the omen before the countdown ends.
Waves of illagers attack the village: 3 waves on Easy, 5 on Normal, 7 on Hard, plus one bonus wave if your omen is level II or higher. Later waves bring vindicators, witches, evokers (which always drop a totem of undying), and ravagers.
Win by defeating the last raider of the final wave: the village celebrates with fireworks and every player who fought gains Hero of the Village, which means trade discounts (on Java, villagers also give gifts; on Bedrock, raiders drop extra loot). On this server, a genuine raid victory is also one of the five seals that open the Adventurers Guild — and it only counts if at least one of our players stands among the raid's winners: if the village and its golems win it alone, the village is safe but the seal does not break.
How does a totem of undying work?
A totem of undying drops from evokers, the spell-casting illagers found in woodland mansions and in later raid waves. Every evoker drops exactly one, and Looting does not change that.
Hold the totem in your main hand or your offhand. It does nothing sitting in your backpack. If damage would kill you, the totem pops instead: you survive at 1 HP, all status effects are cleared, and you gain Regeneration II for 45 seconds, Absorption II for 5 seconds, and Fire Resistance for 40 seconds to get away and heal.
One totem saves you once, then it is gone. And it has limits: a totem cannot save you from falling into the void.
How do I make a boat with a chest?
Craft a chest boat by combining any boat with a chest at a crafting table. The chest sits in the passenger seat, so a chest boat carries one rider plus a full single chest of storage: 27 slots for your loot.
Open the chest by sneaking while you use the boat, or from your inventory screen while riding. Break the boat and it drops itself plus everything stored inside, so nothing is lost.
Chest boats shine on long exploring trips and river runs home from a big mine. Just remember the seat trade: a normal boat carries two riders, a chest boat carries one rider and the cargo.
Silk Touch or Fortune: which enchantment do I want?
They are rivals: Silk Touch and Fortune can never be on the same tool, so most players keep one pickaxe of each. Fortune goes up to level III; Silk Touch has just one level.
Silk Touch makes blocks drop THEMSELVES. Stone drops stone instead of cobblestone, glass drops instead of shattering, ore blocks drop whole, and grass blocks, ice, and glowstone come away intact. It is also the only way to pick up an ender chest, and to move a bee nest with the bees still inside.
Fortune makes blocks drop MORE of their normal loot. Fortune III on an ore averages about 2.2 times the drops, so one diamond ore can drop up to 4 diamonds, and Fortune also boosts harvests of wheat, carrots, potatoes, and melons. Simple rule: Fortune for mining riches and farming, Silk Touch when you want the block itself.