Empire Blog | A Minecraft Blog

A Minecraft Blog about the Empire and Minecraft


Minecraft Skins: Sketch A Sweet Skin

by 3 Comments

Minecraft skins are one of many ways you can express your creativity in-game. Whether you want to shake up your current look, remove a feature, or go beyond your basic Steve or Alex shell, this guide has you covered!

There are many Minecraft skin design websites, such as Tynker, Novaskin, and The Skindex’s editor. I will teach you the basics of designing skins using my favorite design website, Miners Need Cool Shoes. The basics of skin design include making skins, adding onto skins, or removing parts from skins.

[Read more…]

Minecraft Furniture Guide: Better your Builds

by 3 Comments

Hooray! The exterior of your build is finished, and now you need some furniture to fill the inside. Of course, Minecraft doesn’t come with prebuilt furniture (unless you’re using a furniture mod). Don’t worry though. There is a wide variety of Minecraft furniture that you can create.

While building, the most important thing to remember is that you can play around with the furniture to find the best fit for your build. Don’t be afraid to change the size, block type, or location of your furniture if it doesn’t look right to you!

[Read more…]

Stone Slab: Minecraft Block Spotlight

by 1 Comment

“To stone slab or not to stone slab, that is the question!” – William Stonespeare

Okay, you caught me. That is not an actual quote or person, but the point stands. Many blocks have slab forms and most of them look exactly the same as their full parent block. However, one slab is different from the rest: the stone slab.

 

 

What is this “slab of stone” I speak of?

stone slab

Just from this picture, you can already tell that the stone slab is the most beautiful block in the game. The sleek design really captures its beauty; the way the light pierces its pixels makes me feel- whoops, sorry. Getting a bit off topic there.

You are able to craft a stone slab by placing three stone blocks together on a crafting table, which produces six stone slabs.

stone slab

The crafting recipe to get six stone slabs.

[Read more…]

Advance Forward! The Hardest Minecraft Advancements

by 1 Comment

Minecraft Advancements 101

Advancements are trophies that clearly mark the barrier between the casual player and the intense gamer. For some, they are just notifications which pop up on your screen every now and then. For others, they add a whole new dimension to the game. In the case of Minecraft advancements, they can be ignored or pursued vigorously.

Mojang overhauled the Java Edition’s achievement system in March 2017, with the release of 1.12. The old mechanic was relatively simple, serving as a way to introduce new players to various aspects of gameplay, represented by a tree of possible achievements. Now, with advancements, this purpose lives on with the added intricacy of five different categories (represented as tabs) of accomplishments: Minecraft, Adventure, Nether, The End, and Husbandry.

Each tab contains a tree, and while each advancement can be earned independently of those before it, you have to unlock the advancement before it to view later advancements on the tree. You will notice that there are three different types of advancements which comprise each tree: normal (square icon), goal (ellipses icon), and challenges (the fancy square icon). Challenge advancements will reward you with varying amounts of experience points when completed.

There are a few dozen Minecraft advancements to complete, but here I’ll be listing off what I believe to be the four hardest challenge advancements to earn in a survival world.
[Read more…]