Minecraft^® For Dummies^®, Portable Edition

Minecraft® For Dummies®, Portable Edition

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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
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Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Minecraft is a registered trademark of Notch Development. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012955540

ISBN 978-1-118-53714-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-53713-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-53715-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-53716-9 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Author

Jacob Cordeiro has been playing Minecraft since the Alpha pre-release. Jacob attends Stanford Online High School and won an award for his game entry in the 2011 Scholastic Art and Writing competition.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions and Editorial

Senior Project Editor: Kim Darosett

Acquisitions Editor: Amy Fandrei

Copy Editor: Rebecca Whitney

Technical Editor: Alec Hendricks

Senior Editorial Manager: Leah Michael

Editorial Assistant: Annie Sullivan

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cover Photo: Image courtesy of Jacob Cordeiro

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Senior Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees

Layout and Graphics: Jennifer Creasey

Proofreaders: Cynthia Fields, John Greenough

Indexer: Potomac Indexing, LLC

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

If you enjoy games about building, survival, engineering, and adventuring, Minecraft is for you. Having attracted more than 8 million players, Minecraft is a loose-ended yet adventurous sandbox game that becomes whatever you make of it.

Minecraft is about gathering resources and building structures while facing monsters. The world of Minecraft is composed of cubic blocks, which you can break and replace to build houses and craft items. That’s all there is to it. The game has evolved to become so balanced and complex that it has attracted millions of satisfied fans. While skimming or scouring Minecraft For Dummies, Portable Edition, you can apply every bit of Minecraft information you need to start playing the game to your liking.

About This Book

This book assumes no knowledge of Minecraft, and it can guide you from registering a Minecraft account to crafting various items to building automatic farms and giant buildings and machines, all with an assortment of basic building blocks.

Although Minecraft has a gigantic community of players who design their own third-party programs, Minecraft For Dummies, Portable Edition, focuses primarily on the game itself. This book is a helpful resource for new Minecraft players to gain momentum in the game and recall information they may have otherwise forgotten. Though this book goes only so far in giving strategic guidance, leaving most of the game to the player’s creativity, you can find extensive notes in this book on many of Minecraft’s most complex systems and game components.

Minecraft continually releases new updates and features — this book is accurate to Minecraft version 1.4.5. Because later Minecraft updates aren’t likely to change the primary game mechanics, this book encompasses most of Minecraft’s main features.

Foolish Assumptions

Rather than try to consider every single type of reader who might pick up this book, I’ve made certain assumptions about you, the reader:

You have a computer, and you know how to use it.

You know what a web browser is, and you can surf the web.

You have an e-mail address, and you know how to use it.

Your computer can download and run Java programs.

You have a functioning keyboard and computer mouse.

Icons Used in This Book

I’ve placed various icons in the margins of this book to point out specific information that you may find useful:

This icon calls attention to any tip or trick that you can use to enhance the gameplay.

This icon emphasizes points that you should attempt to retain in your memory. If you can remember these special points, you’ll be a better player.

If you see this icon, read its information! Warnings can prevent you from making a big mistake that can be hazardous to your Minecraft world (or your computer).

You can safely skip this geeky stuff. However, it deserved a place in the book, so you may be interested in reading it.

Conventions Used in This Book

In Minecraft For Dummies, I use numbered steps, bullet lists, and screen shots for your reference. I also provide a few sidebars containing information that’s non-essential but may help you understand a topic a little better. Web addresses appear in a special monotype font that looks like this:

www.dummies.com

Bonus Content at Dummies.com

You can find a free bonus chapter, “Exploring Other Blocks and Items,” and the appendix, “Blocks, Items, and Crafting Recipes,” available for download at

www.dummies.com/go/minecraftfd

Where to Go from Here

Reading Minecraft For Dummies, Portable Edition, from cover to cover provides a lot of useful information, but you can just as easily skip around to find specific topics of interest to you. If you’re new to Minecraft and you want to know what the game is all about, read Chapters 1 through 3 and skim most of the other ones. They delve into more detail than is necessary at first. You can always return to those bits later.

If you’re more experienced in Minecraft and you want to deepen your understanding (if you haven’t done so already), simply skim the first three chapters and find some interesting topics later in the book. Also, be sure to check out Chapter 11, of course, which has a top ten list of Minecraft tips.

Occasionally, Wiley’s technology books are updated. If this book has technical updates, they’ll be posted at

www.dummies.com/go/minecraftfdupdates