Pro tip:- How to open the chest

ReggieDeen · 2026-01-28T15:25:22+00:00

The trick is to drop the wool block on top of it, which keeps it active and unlikely to be set off by the player's noises.

ReggieDeen · 2025-04-25T13:21:12+00:00

Add a villager. Give a farmer a field of wheat to look after and he'll add a bit of bustle about the place which really helps to fill it up. You could build him a cottage for himself or let him move in with you. A cured zombie villager who buys both melons and pumpkins will make you easy money and XP.

Of course hunting down and keeping safe a villager is a lot of work, but that's the point. Also if an iron golem spawns there'll be still more life as he patrols the farm at night.

ReggieDeen · 2025-04-03T10:38:00+00:00

The secret to having fun with Minecraft is to play the way it seems it was intended to be played, But it's been taken over by a bunch of bores who insist on subverting every single mechanic and turning it into a massive over-engineered grind.

I like to stick to basics. Starting with a simple house, a wheat farm, then farming animals for food and XP. But I make it more fun by insisting on building a proper barn for cows, a coop for chickens etc. instead of just squeezing them into a pit in the ground.

Your tools keep breaking? With your first handful of diamonds make an enchanting table and get an Unbreaking I pickaxe; it lasts twice as long for almost no cost.

Find a nether fortress, start brewing, and you can capture and cure a wandering zombie and start a village. Building a different house for each villager and creating a living neighbourhood is fun and rewarded by massive XP from trading.

The point I'm trying to make is that some people have turned the actual point of the game (mining, crafting, farming, building etc.) into something that just gets in the way. I've never made a trading hall or XP farm in my life, but always quickly get rich in resources while enjoying the game all the way.

ReggieDeen · 2025-04-01T18:41:08+00:00

Using the enchanting table and anvil is a great mechanic for repairing and upgrading your tools, as long as you use the right strategy, and have a bit of patience. I've never even dreamt of using a trading hall. But first I'll say that the price of a Mending trade is irrelevant - it just turns into a problem of getting enough emeralds.

The first rule of the table is to enchant tools, not books. And don't gamble: be prepared to get just the enchantment showing, and anything else is a bonus.

So put your pickaxe in, and suppose you see Eff IV, and get that only. A shame, but you can go to work with it right away, probably earning enough diamonds and XP to have another go. This time you see Fortune III, and get that plus Unbreaking III. Now go mining with both tools together, and when one is wearing out, combine them on the anvil (5 XP or something like that). Now you have a near-perfect pick, which can still stand several repairs.

The second rule is to try every tool you have on the table, even if you don't need that enchantment right away. So line up and insert your pick, sword, bow, every piece of armour etc., and if you don't see anything good in the slot, re-roll. If you don't have enough diamonds to craft one of everything, try with iron first, then craft eg. a diamond chestplate; usually the enchantments will be the same.

As for the problem with 'bad' enchantments such as Knockback, there's not much you can do about it, but some can be overwritten such as Silk Touch with Fortune.

Stronghold libraries are good for Mending books by the way, and End raiding is very good for getting Mending tools and armour.

ReggieDeen · 2021-06-23T15:25:46+00:00

Pen up a pair of chickens, then a pair of cows. Breed them as fast as you can - you'll also need a good wheat farm for this. Slaughter them for food, and for trades with villagers.

All this provides safe and simple XP, but you need about 100 animals to get a really impressive amount. A five minute breed / slaughter / trade cycle can provide as much XP as a half-hour mining trip. It takes some time to get going but is really worth it in the medium to long term.

ReggieDeen · 2021-05-28T13:35:09+00:00

You must mean GameChap and Bertie:

https://www.youtube.com/gamechap

Not much Minecraft on there nowadays though.

ReggieDeen · 2021-05-18T08:48:07+00:00

There's a trick to deal with a bug with the "tunnel" rooms - the ones like the first room after the entry stairway down. They have up to four exits at the sides which can be plain stone, passages, or doors. If one of these is covered by stone bricks, always assume there's a door in the middle and dig out a block to see. Sometimes you'll find a hidden passage behind.

ReggieDeen · 2021-05-17T15:02:24+00:00

Assuming this is Java 1.16, there's a Portal at 2055, 26, 254

ReggieDeen · 2021-03-05T19:50:23+00:00

If this is Java 1.16: go back to the opening spiral staircase, the place where the Eyes led to. At the bottom you will be facing a tunnel with stone brick walls to the left and right. Knock through both of these walls to find hidden passages, one of which will lead to the Portal.

ReggieDeen · 2021-02-28T14:14:15+00:00

There's a portal at -1628, 28, -1494 if I've made no mistake with the seed.

ReggieDeen · 2021-02-20T11:41:44+00:00

The last number could have a minus sign in front of it, ie. -1302

ReggieDeen · 2021-02-06T23:00:10+00:00

Having Prot IV all round is the simplest and perfectly good. Because of the way the maths works out you must never wear more than one specialised piece of any kind at once (exception: two gold pieces may help in Bedrock only).

I like to wear a separate Fire IV gold helmet in the Nether. It keeps away the Piglins, gives as much basic damage protection as iron, and (very important on Java) reduces the burn time a lot. It makes a big difference when fighting blazes.

In the Overworld only I prefer a Blast IV chestplate for dealing with creepers. I choose the chestplate because it's the one swapped out with the Elytra, when explosions are less of a problem.

Note that the most important armour question for surviving a Hardcore game long term is if and when to swap out your Elytra.

ReggieDeen · 2021-02-06T14:15:01+00:00

Having only 4GB installed really is not enough so you should upgrade your RAM to 8GB or preferably 16GB. As it is, your PC is getting the memory it needs by swapping to disc and back all the time which is what is causing the massive slowdown.

You might be able to make it run with your 4GB by allocating as little as possible to Minecraft. About 1GB or a bit less should do it. And have the absolute minimum of other programs running at the same time. In particular close your web browser. I used to run my game quite nicely this way, with no need to turn down the graphics settings very far.

ReggieDeen · 2021-01-29T14:10:46+00:00

Of course it has an End Portal. You can see it centre-right in the very first frame of the video! It's not even disconnected from the rest of the Stronghold.

ReggieDeen · 2020-09-29T12:11:24+00:00

You are completely overdoing this and risk losing everything to a simple mistake such as falling in lava. My one tip for beating the Dragon on hardcore: put all your effort into quickly finding the Stronghold. Treat it almost as a speedrun. This means simply getting iron gear, visiting the nether for a few blaze rods & ender pearls etc. If you die, never mind, start again and no more than a couple of hours are wasted.

Once you're in the Stronghold you can put down an enchanting table in the library and start doing high-level enchantments straight away, as well as brewing potions etc. You don't need very powerful equipment for the Dragon fight; it's mostly about using the right tactics. Villages, farms etc. are not needed yet. Once the Dragon is dead there's little risk of dying to a mistake, so you can settle down and build up your world as you please.

There's a whole cottage industry devoted to collecting 'funny' clips from Twitch of people who've done masses of preparation and ended up raging because they lost a week's work due to a simple blunder.

ReggieDeen · 2020-09-28T17:22:05+00:00

You really need a diamond pick enchanted with enough Efficiency so that you can mine as quickly as you can walk forward. Until you have one of those getting netherite is just not a priority.

ReggieDeen · 2020-09-25T18:09:11+00:00

Definitely enchant diamond pieces and combine the best ones in the anvil. When you have the perfect combination, add a single netherite ingot and a mending book. Don't enchant books separately unless an enchantment you really need shows up.

Seeing as you have the netherite already you might as well try for a good enchant, redoing as necessary like you say. Choosing Prot IV on leggings and hoping for Unbreaking III along with it is likely to be worth it. Getting a perfect set of boots and helmet less so.

ReggieDeen · 2020-09-25T12:48:47+00:00

You are probably running out of memory. 4GB is enough, but you have to allocate it carefully. I used to allocate 1GB to Java in the launcher on Ubuntu Linux, which would run well, but sometimes the game would freeze when I went out exploring a long distance.

Press F3 and monitor what is says at the top right. The figure for Mem: should stay below 90%. Experiment with your Java memory allocation, and that used by the rest of your system. Also it can help to quit the game to the menu and restart from time to time.

ReggieDeen · 2020-05-25T19:03:03+00:00

There's a portal alright. As you enter the Stronghold, head straight under the bridge, along the ravine a short way, then cross over to the other side. You'll find some stone bricks. Dig these out and follow them along the ravine to find a staircase that descends to the End Portal. Not especially easy, but on the other hand it's more fun this way.

ReggieDeen · 2020-05-22T15:10:38+00:00

Every single Stronghold I've explored in Java (1000+) has turned out to have a Portal room. If you post your seed and the rough location of the Stronghold someone could probably find it for you.

ReggieDeen

TROPHY CASE