Have you ever seen a creation in Minecraft and wondered how on earth the creator had managed to do it? Chances are, you could probably could have built it too, you just didno t try. Here are some tips Io ve come up with for anyone wanting to build bigger projects in Minecraft.

Start small

Before you jump into a huge pixel art project or begin work on a redstone pong machine, have a go at a smaller project. Whenever you try and build something, thereo ll be easy mistakes waiting to happen and you want to discover them while working on something smaller. If you find out that youo ve miscalculated while halfway through creating a space invader out of cloth, youo ll be grateful that it wasno t a 500 x 100 mural depicting a scene from Star Wars.

Believe me, demolishing a huge section of a redstone circuit and rebuilding it two blocks to the left is not fun.



Believe it or not, making this button open a door contributed significantly to my ability to build a CPU, it taught me how to not break my own circuits.

Break it into pieces

Every big project can be broken down into smaller projects, and this doesno t just apply to Minecraft. Painting a picture is usually done one layer or area at a time, computer code is often done as multiple functions, getting a degree is done one subject at a time. When working with big redstone projects in Minecraft, seperate the circuits out into smaller circuits and do them one at a time.

My Minecraft CPU wasno t quite as hard as people think, as ito s really only a whole bunch of simple circuits connected together. I started with an adder, then built each of the other ALU instructions one at a time. The accumulator, clock, memory, etc. were all individual projects as well, so the whole CPU came together without me having to think about anything more than the small part of it I was working on. Breaking the project into parts makes things simpler, but it also makes the completion of each piece a milestone.



Trying to build a Pokemon world like these guys? Doing it one structure at a time doesno t seem as bad as starting at one end of the map and building towards the other. (click to see Kanto in Minecraft)

Use whichever game mode you want

Some people call peaceful mode cheating. Io d like to see them build a CPU in hard mode. If someone built something in peaceful mode but told everyone that theyo d done it on hard, Io d call that cheating, but I dono t see anything wrong if youo re being honest. Be realistic when deciding what difficulty setting you choose, and then dono t worry about what anyone else says. Ito s your project, do it how you want. Building things in hard mode is certainly more impressive than on peaceful, but sometimes ito s worth saving yourself the trouble if it means that you dono t have to keep fixing creeper holes in everything.




Do your research

If youo re going to spend days working on a tribute to your favourite movie and you dono t want to finish it and find out it has already been done before, check before you start! If you can think of it, it has probably been built in Minecraft already, so if you want to do something unique, look it up first.

On the other hand, if youo re having trouble building something, look online for help. If you dono t know how to do something with redstone, check the Minecraft wiki, forums, youtube, or just google it. Even if youo re building something unique, someoneo s probably build something that has some similarities to your project, so go have a look. The wiki has all the basics for redstone circuits and a lot of more advanced stuff, as well as plenty of information on things like farming methods and working with minecarts. Also, dono t be afraid to ask for help!



Three of the best places to find help with your projects. Remember them when you get stuck!

Record your progress

If youo re building big, there are probably people interested in your project, and theyo re probably interested in the process as well as the final product. If youo re up for it, take screenshots, videos or even a written log of what you build and share it on the internet. People might ask you questions about your work, or offer suggestions. You could get invited onto a server by people appreciating your work, or maybe asked for a copy of your save files. Even if you dono t get much attention about your work, there are probably some other Minecrafters somewhere whoo d love to see what youo ve built. Consider starting a blog, a youtube channel, a twitter account or a thread on a forum. If youo re up for sharing your work, go with what youo re comfortable with and start posting.

Make sure youo re having fun

This might seem a bit obvious, but you want to be having fun while playing Minecraft. If you start a huge project but you dono t enjoy working on it as much as playing other games, youo re probably going to give up on it. Building something that really interests you should be more important than choosing something to impress someone else.