The "Share your (E)MC tips" thread

Hi gang!

Minecraft is one of the most extensive games there is. There are tons of recipes available to craft things, tons of items which can be used for several purposes and there are also tons of simple facts which are also often just as easily forgotten.

Then add the Empire to that pool and you got one extensive game on your hands with tons of new tricks and things to overlook.

Usually these things are good enough to mention, but too small to write a whole guide about 'm. So I figured... let's try to combine this into one huge thread. I know we've had some threads like these in the past, it's time to try and restart.

Rules

• Keep it small & simple if possible. No more than 3 (different) tips per post.
• Don't "spam" the thread: I request that we wait 1 post or 1 day between posts.
  • Example: Player A posts something, they want to post again but then have to either wait for another player to post, or if no one else posts wait for 1 day (24hrs) before they can post again.
• Obviously the EMC rules (esp. the forum specific rules) still apply (just mentioning to avoid possible confusion).

I'm trying to keep the thread fun for everyone. This isn't only about sharing your knowledge, it's also about allowing others to share as well. Everyone should get a fair chance when they want, so I prefer to have a few limitations in place.

Otherwise someone like me could simply sit down, write a whole essay and then the thread would come to an end before it even got started!

This isn't only about you (random reader) and me.

Shell's first 3 tips

Exchanging support vouchers

We all know the support vouchers I hope? You can either go Iron, Gold or Diamond in the game and they also happen to be one of my favorite custom items. You can get these from the supporter page (follow previous link) or buy them from players in-game.

But did you know that you can exchange between them?

1 Diamond voucher = 2 Gold vouchers = 4 Iron vouchers.

Why would you want to do this?

Let's say you got a gold voucher. You already have 4 residences, and you're also not planning to mine on Utopia. Instead of enjoying gold for one month you could consider exchanging the gold voucher for 2 iron vouchers, so that you can enjoy iron for two months.

Or the other way around of course... You got yourself an iron voucher and you've never been a supporter before. Well, you could redeem it, but you could also have some patience and try to get hold of another iron voucher. Then you can exchange both vouchers for one gold voucher (2 iron vouchers = 1 gold voucher).

How? Just place them in your /vault and click this link: http://exchangevouchers.emc.gs/

Update: Note that if you want to redeem your voucher(s) then you might not need to exchange them first. Say you want to go gold but have 2 iron vouchers. Just put those in your /vault, go to http://redeemvouchers.emc.gs/ and redeem gold while clearly stating that you're redeeming 2 iron for 1 gold! If you do that then Krysyy can simply take both vouchers out and active your supporter status as normal. Just make sure to explain what you want so that Krysyy doesn't have to guess.

Use /horse during taming to see statistics

You just bred a new animal and it has finally grown up! Time to see if its stats are what you wanted of it. Just too bad that you have to go through that whole taming ritual before you can decide if you want to keep it or eggify it.

Yet you don't have to: while taming a horse or llama quickly type /horse and press enter (I usually type /horse first, get an error, then climb on and quickly use cursor up to get the previous command back). You can quickly see the stats even while the animal hasn't been tamed yet.

The Mending enchantment only repairs worn items

We all know about mending I hope? It's an enchant which can be applied to armor and tools and it will use earned XP to actually repair these tools. For example: killing hostile mobs gets you XP (those green/yellow balls which float towards you) and mining certain ores (coal, lapis, redstone, nether quartz) also gives you XP.

But not all 'mending items' will get repaired. Only those which you're wearing (like your armor) or holding in your hands.

So... If you have a Fortune pickaxe and a Silk Touch pickaxe then be sure to keep the 'Silk pick' in your off hand (your second hand) while mining. That way some of your earned XP could be used to repair it (this doesn't happen all the time, it's a bit of a luck of the draw, especially when you got multiple 'mending' items).

And there you have it.

Do you got some tips to share with us?

Promo's

Many know you can make money off promo's but the way I do it, I am able to obtain more than the average person. Here is how you can as well...

As the server is located in the USA, look for the Holiday's. This will help so much, as you will have an idea when the promos come out, From there you will want to set aside a Large Amount to an alt, or just try not to use it on your account.

When you know the holidays, you can now look on the wiki and see the promo items that usually release, and you will see a pattern that you can use to anticipate what type of item will come out.... For example, Easter, will be the Egg Wand... New Years, are Promos... Very basic and straight forward.( Don't buy fireworks, its fine to buy 1-3, but they don't sell for that much as there are just too many and useless)


If there is an holiday that you know will be an item, say a Suit, Sword, or any tools, try to start saving up for the items up to a month before time...

That means not going to the mall, and buying a DC of Fish, or DC of Quartz Blocks....

Now that the promo has come out, You will want to buy as many as you can.... and store the items in your storage in an area you wont be tempted to go in to get the items out of and sell...

Best way is to make a Vault, and store all your proms in there, so they are in their own room and out of the way...

Now that you have the Items, you have to play the waiting game... I Would suggest keeping these items for at least a Year, or more if you want. That way you will get the most profit from it instead of selling in the first few months...

I myself sometimes keeps the promos for up to 2.5 years, and by then I have made up to 40x the cost of what i bought them for back then....

Items!


For Items, This will cover 3 Topics, "Bulk" and "Non-Bulk" and "Saving".

Bulk Items

For Bulk Items, You can easily make a ton of money if you are doing it proper.... If you want to sell items in Bulk, you have to be able to sell the items that you are able to obtain in a fast and efficient manner.... That means if you are good at farming, Make sure to sell farm goods, and not, say Quartz Blocks...

Then there is the fact that you have to look for what sells and what people are looking for. A good way to do this, is to ask around, ask mall owners, make threads...

When you start to do this, you will want to advertise, and do it for personal, or get in with a Shop/Mall and do bulk orders to supply the shops...

One issue that most fail at this, is the fact of when they get swamped with orders... Try to have a ton of stock at hand, so you are able to fill small orders fast and work on the large orders.

A good tip is to also have a Max amount of orders that can be filled at once, and all other orders past that would be on hold and not filled yet until it is in that limit, that way you are not swamped and people can still back out if they wish.

N0n-Bulk Items

If you want to sell just items, but don't have a ton of items, don't bother with a shop on your res, work on looking at malls and shops to see what is out of stock, and what sells fast. You will also want to look at what makes the cash and what does not.... for example, you can sell colored wool, instead of seeds... You will get a better profit.

Saving

Saving is a Trick thing to do, but it can work if you do it right... Say you have Diamonds, instead of selling or using, You can hold onto those diamonds and wait until the diamond market is at a high point, or when, say a mall is running low and they buy for a high price...

I have done this with many items, and has worked for me, to make a ton of money.... so again this one is more or less not advised as it is very tricky to do and if you do it wrong you can loose a ton of cash....

Voting

Voting is a quick way to earn cash, and not just items, If you vote daily you can earn up to 300k+ in rupees in just a year, not including the items (Diamonds, emeralds, Vouchers)....

When you obtain a voucher, hold onto that voucher and wait until someone is looking for one as you will make more money then if you just sell it... Again something small that makes more cash...

Ill try to help out a little and add one tip of my own - the horse economy in a nutshell.

Speed
A horses speed statistic is written on the egg, or when you ride it and do horse. The slowest is 47 while the fastest is 139. Commonly though, most have about 120. The best to sell is 129-133, while others are much rarer and you wont see around much.

Jump
Jump is how high your horse can jump (duh) where the lowest on emc is 41 and highest is 130. Typically you find horses with 60-70 jump, though. 78+ jump on a fast horse is really good and boosts the price a bit.


HP
Hp is your horses health. The lowest is 15 and the highest is 34, but typically you find 20-24 hp.


Prices
Proces are complicateing, i will go over just one price of one horse speed as it gets quite complex. Lets say our horse is 130 speed. We can't price it with iust that, there are many factors that go into prices.

Factor one - color
If your horse is white, it will cost less

Factor two - exact percentage
If your horse is 130.99, it Is worth more than a 130.00 with the same color,other stats, etc.

Factor three - jump
If your horse is meant for speed, not jump, 78+ jump sells for more

Factor four - Hp
If your horse is meant for speed, 25ish health is about what makes your horse change price

Ok, time for an example!

Horse A
Black white dots
130.78
82.13
23.00

Horse B
White none
130.24
67.32
19.00


In this, its quite obvious horse A costs more, but lets get a bit complex...

Horse C
Black white dots
130.98
68.55
19.00

Horse D
White none
130.93
83.21
25.00

Now both horses have good stats, honestly id price them about the same. So basically, heres the a bad 130 compared to a good one


Bad
White none
130.01
62.00
18.00
(Worth 3.5kish)

Good
Dark brown black dots
130.99
85.00
26.00
(Up to 10kish)
If you have a 130, generally expect 130.50ish speed, 69ish jump and 22ish hp most are white none but 1/9 times a random color horse is bred, so theres a chance it can be a 130. This "normal stat" 130 sells around 5k

Now the reason i only covered 130 speed for price is because. Well, this goes the same for ever percent up you go, and 1% more speed really changes things. Heres proof of concept.

A player sold me a 134 for a REALLY low price of 50k because it was on the worse side of 134s. However no matter how bad a 135 is i would never even sell one, but if i had to sell the worse side one it would be 1 mil minimum. (Most 134s go for 150k and 135s go for 1-2m)

Thats all i have, and my fingers hurt lol.

i have 2 ^.^

u can repair items in ur 2x2 crafting grid, but it will use up one item



this is really helping with pigman or skellie grinders b/c u can just add all the used stuff to ur grid and keep repairing.



protect ur light blocks with glass!

lightblocks like glowstone and magma are not protected when u dont use buildmode so ppl can grief when u place them in the waste but if u place a glass block b4 it then ppl cannot grief b/c the glass block is protected!

and light still works ^.^

Carry XP bottles with you in mob arena and wear mending gear, when it gets down to low durability splash yourself with XP.

As soon as a new update comes out, collect as much of the new items as possible. Adverize like crazy and try to sell them all within a day of the new update to get the best prices before the market becomes saturated with these items.
Eg: un-enchanted Elytra selling for 100k when 1.9 came out, now goes for 10-30k enchanted.

Getting XP and enchanting and repairing your stuff

With 1.9 and mending enchantments, you typically acquire one set of good armor and tools shortly after you start. Once done, it's way easier to put mending enchantments on your stuff and use incoming XP to repair everything than anviling your items to fix them.

Getting mending enchantments

Mending is one of the enchantments you don't get randomly at an enchanting table; you need to get a book from a librarian. On EMC, there's several shops that sell mending books, cheapest I found is 150R per book, most expensive one is 1000R. So it shouldn't be that hard to get mending on your first diamond tools.

Using mending to repair your tools and armor

Whenever you get XP (pick up one of those yellowish spheres), the game choses one of your items that has mending, attempts to repair that, and if it's at full durability, gives the XP to you. So, when you're wearing 4 pieces of fully mended armor, and wielding a mending pick, most of the incoming XP will go to an armor piece, transfer to you, increase your level, but be lost on the pick. So while at that XP grinder, take of the armor pieces that are at 100% to repair the rest faster!

Ways of getting XP

1. The well-known mob grinder way

Find a spawner, build around it to funnel the mobs into a space where you can attack them but they can't attack you, kill them. There are several mob grinders on EMC, however, getting XP from them is quite slow, in my opinion.

2. Trade with villagers

This is the way I get most of my XP, and has the additional advantage that you can do it on your res, right next to your anvil and enchanting table. However, you need stuff to trade, so you need to build a farm yourself, or buy stuff to trade. Fortunately, there are several shops/malls that sell stuff for cheap and have public villagers to trade with, so if you aren't very short on money, this is the way to go. And, because you can do this in an environment that's completly safe, there's no problem with taking off your armor, getting XP, and repairing your tools.

2a) Trading sugar cane/paper with librarians

Sugar cane farms are incredibly easy to build, and and you can convert the cane to paper, then sell to librarians. One problem is they will lock up after a while, so you need to trade something else to unlock them. So, sell as much paper to them as you can. Then, use one emerald to buy glass. Press Escape, give the villager 3 seconds to refresh. If paper is still locked, buy another glass. If glass locks up before paper unlocks, buy a bookshelf. This is a bit of a hassle, but gives you more emeralds than you spend, so it's easily sustainable.

2b) Trading wheat, carrots, potatoes, pumpkins and melon blocks with farmers

Way easier to trade than sugar cane, but building the farms is a bit harder. Grab a few stacks of everything, sell everything to the villager as often as you can. The advantage is the villager will auto-unlock as you keep selling different stuff. If you have a lot more of one thing than of another, sell this one thing first, and only a little of the other, to keep the balance while selling.

2c) Trading spare emeralds with clerics

You can use the emeralds you got in 2a) and 2b) to buy XP bottles from clerics. Not worth the bother in my opinion, the trading itself gives you a lot more XP than the bottles do. But if you have some spare emeralds you don't need, this is where you can dump them. If the cleric trade locks, buy some redstone or glowstone lamps; both of them can be sold to shops easily.

3. Quartz mining

This isn't for people who are very new, as you need a bit of equipment, but it's a nice way to gain XP and make money at once, as quartz sells well in auctions and shops.

Get a pickaxe that has at least Efficiency IV, Unbreaking III and Mending on it, if possible, Fortune III is a good bonus to get more quartz. Enter the nether (waste, not wild; the wild nether doesn't have quartz in the areas around outposts). Dig down a staircase to level 10. Put some netherrack in your off hand. Hold your pick in front of you, and walk straight ahead.

• With Efficiency IV or V, the pick will break the netherrack instantly, so you can walk ahead at normal speed.
• Down at level 10, there aren't any lava lakes anymore, so no obstacles to find a way around. There are some caves, but you can either explore them, or build a bridge to stay on your straight track.
• Whenever you encounter quartz, mine it. The XP from quartz mining will repair your pick more than netherrack mining wears it down, so your pick and the armor you're wearing will repair over time! You might want to take off your armor while mining quartz ore only when it's at 100% though to make sure the XP goes to your pick.
• If you have a different tool you want repaired while mining quartz ore only, put it in your off hand . Some of the XP will still go to your pick, but the rest will repair your off hand tool.
• From time to time you will open a lava pocket. When that happens, you do want your armor on, and you do want some netherrack in your off hand. Quickly step back 2-3 blocks and right-click the ground to place a block that that blocks the lava flow. Now you have enough time to place another netherrack block into the lava source. Wait for the lava to drain, then continue your way. If you react quickly, the lava won't set you on fire at all; if you have decent armor, the fire won't kill you. If you are clumsy and have trash armor .. well, then don't try this.

This works remarkably well - much better than trying to explore the nether and find quartz veins, as there's no lava lakes to bother you or ceiling blocks you have to build up to, and there's no ghasts that spawn in your 2x1 tunnel either, so you can mine in peace.
As an additional bonus, you can collect the netherrack (bring some shulker boxes!) and smelt it to nether bricks to sell to a mall.

Finding your mining base again....

When I go out mining I usually set up a small base with a locked chest and then simply head out and start digging. When my inventory gets too full (even with a shulker box) it's time to head back, dump my stuff and then it's digging time again. Doing that saves me plenty of time to dig.

Despite popular believe I don't always dig tunnels back to the spawn, so sometimes I simply need to travel across land to head back to my base. But how to quickly find it?

Solution: place & use a bed in your base. Then, after you went to the right wastelands (for example by using /waste e), use this command: /compass bed. Now your compass will point at the bed you used, making it really easy to find your base without having to rely on coordinates or looking at F3 all the time.

Another advantage is that if you happen to die during your mining session you'll spawn at your base, so that you can quickly run back to retrieve your items (as long as there's no lava! ).

Getting lots of gravel at once!

What is the one thing which you cannot do with a voters shovel? Don't know? Get gravel Because of the Fortune III enchant there's a 100% drop rate for flint when you start to dig out gravel. Sounds hopeless, right? Well, don't despair just yet...

If you place a torch under a whole stack of gravel and then let the gravel fall you'll force to drop itself as a block:

Gravel for the taking!

So even if you have voter tools you can still get yourself gravel if you need to

Smallish comment on the "how to get gravel" tip: another advantage is you won't wear down the durability of whichever shovel you use. Also, you can use this even when you don't have 2 blocks below your gravel: take a torch in your offhand. Use your shovel to dig the lowest block of a gravel (or sand) column, then quickly right-click. You'll place the torch in the now-empty spot where the gravel block used to be, so everything that starts falling down kinda mines itself.

It also gives you a boost in total durability. About 10% more than just adding together the 2 item's durability stats. You can see actual durability stats by pressing F3+H. Then hover over the item with your cursor. Much more accurate than just relying on the indicator bar . This is toggleable, meaning it stays until you use F3+H again.

I use a combination of these with sand as well. Particularly useful when using sand walls and sponges to clear large bodies of water.

My tips (apply to all of MC):

Safely build up high FASTER:

Most know when building high in the air you can hold crouch to avoid falling off. However, this is very slow for building. Did you know there are ways to move faster? Speed potions or beacons are the obvious ones, but there is another method. More simple and requires nothing special! Simply use 2 directional keys at once while crouching! Example: if I'm moving backwards and placing a platform to my right (drop on right side), just hold down AND right arrow keys while holding crouch key. You will move against the drop-off but can't fall & you will move backwards too! Try it without holding right key and then use right key & you can see the boost in speed! It is not as fast as regular walking, but it helps!

Build your mob farms for about HALF the material cost!:

You can cut way down on material costs by building mob farms from half slabs. Floors, walls & roof can ALL be made of half slabs!

Floors: Must be on the TOP 1/2 of the block space for mobs to spawn on them.

Walls: You can use either the top 1/2 or the bottom 1/2 of the block space as long as you are consistent either vertically or horizontally in the same row/column. This is hard to explain (I'll try to add screen shots later).
Basically, if you put all wall slabs on the bottom section of the block space, you are fine. Or if you put them all on the top half of the block space, you are fine. There are also more complex checker patterns you can do, but I'll keep it basic here. Besides being cheaper to build there is another advantage... you can SEE inside to know what is going on WITHOUT letting light in!

Roof: place slabs on the BOTTOM half of the block space for the roof of your farm. This will stop spawns on top of the farm too.

Upgrade your spellbooks

I'm pretty sure most of us simply buy their enchanted books, but what if you managed to get some lower level books which you don't really care for? For example: Unbreaking III is the highest and best we can get, so what to do if you got an Unbreaking I book? Just toss it away?

No, you can actually upgrade it!

Here I have a Bane of Anthropods II book. As you might know this can be applied to a sword so that it'll do more damage to spiders and such (spiders, silverfish & endermites). The maximum level which we can obtain is V. So what should I do with this book?

Well, if I have another low level book of the same type I can actually combine for an upgrade:

It is official: II + II = III

Here I've placed two "Bane II" (Bane of Anthropods) books in an anvil and as you can see I can create an upgrade. For only 3 XP I can combine both "Bane II" books and exchange them for a "Bane III" book.

So you might want to think twice about tossing away low level enchantment books: try to collect more and you can easily upgrade them!

Always anvil enchants from higher tier to lower tier, so it is xp efficient

When writing in a book and quill, make sure that you know exactly what you're wriitng. It is a smart idea to maybe do a rough draft of something first before wriitng it down and get rid of as many mistakes as you can, unless you're writing a journal. Once you sign it, it cannot be changed and if you want change a specific part in the book and quill, you need to erase all work after it. Just remember that when working with books and quills.

This is true in vanilla and on most servers, but enchant anvil costs have been tweaked with, a lot, on EMC.

For example, in vanilla, if the item has never seen an anvil before, unbreaking III needs 3 XP levels, and mending needs 2, but these increase every time the item has been anviled. So, after anviling (is anviling a word?) that unbreaking III, the cost of mending increases to 3 as well; if you anvil 4 different enchants on your helmet first, mending will cost you another 6. That's why, in vanilla, it makes sense to combine several enchants into one book first, then anvil that book on your item, as long as you don't put too enough into a book to make it too expensive to anvil it at all.

On EMC, cost for anviling have been raised; the cheapest books like mending, cost 7, the most expensive one is thorns III, which costs 17. However, this is independent on how many enchants the item already has (mending always costs 7), as long as the item has never been repaired. Repairing the item raises the cost for future enchantments. For example, once I made the mistake to anvil four of the "Power III Unbreaking III" dropped bows together to get a Power V Unbreaking III bow, then trying to put mending on it was extremely expensive so I finally decided to just throw the bow away.

So - On EMC only, enchant your items as much as you want, in whatever order you want, but make sure to put all enchants on them before repairing them. And, there's really no reason anymore to anvil-repair items instead of just putting mending on them, as mending costs XP only, while anvil repairs cost XP and resources.

when ur out in wild on ur home server u can still change perms on ur res. shell kinda taught me but im first ^.^

use ! b4 ur res name. so if i want 2 give my friend Blinky perms id do:

/res pset !ayanamikun BlinkyBinky build t

and when i need 2 remove perms then just do:

/res pset !ayanamikun BlinkyBinky build r

if u need this for other resses then just add the number (like ayanamikun-2).

5 carrots and a juicer give you carrot juice.

So right now I've taken my (temporary, awwwww) place as the overlord of SMP2 and figured I should use that moment to debunk a mystery: several players wonder if you can actually control time in town.

And although you may think that's a silly question I don't think it is, I can definitely see where it's coming from: outside town you have more vanilla'ish Minecraft worlds (hostile mobs, no teleporting, damage, hunger) and town has always been a bit special in comparison. So why wouldn't it be special with this as well?

Time for a test (and a bump of this thread as well )!

I grabbed my precious DRTT (Dirt Removing Ticking Tock, a soulbound clock!) which I got from a very nice yet evil friend on SMP3 If you wonder how special this is to me: I basically keep it with me every where I go (and why not? I can't l loose it because it's soulbound)

SO:

Got my clock, you can see the time and my bed looks a lot more comfortable than my bed at home

<drumroll please>

Tadaaah!

As you can see: the moment there's no one around in town you can indeed control time, just like in any other Minecraft world. Just get into a bed when it's dark and it'll be light in no time!

BONUS!

So what about Utopia? Yeah, I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd like to know that part too. So... I grabbed my stuff and set up camp:

Now... I've been waiting here a long time now but as soon as night falls I'll get back to you guys about this one

With the release of 1.12 we also gained access to the recipe book which can help us bulk craft stuff. But... whenever you come across a block which has multiple colors such as concrete, fences, boats then the recipe in your book will just flash over them. Not very easy to find what you need

I managed to click on red concrete dust, but the recipe is already at orange...

Now, I know that the solution is mentioned in the pop-up you'll get, but I also think it's very easily overlooked. So what to do when you only want to craft white or light-gray concrete?

Right click on the recipe entry:

Also notice how the first 2 entries (upper left) are the ones I can make.

As said, this applies to all recipes which have variations in them. Like boats:

• Leave before it's too late and you lose the entirety of your social life you've been building for all your years on Earth?

Believe it or not, is good to change things up, maybe play on another server, on some modpack, so you dont burn out EMC