It’s been a little over a decade since Mojang Studios released their award-winning game, Minecraft. Since then, players have tirelessly explored this sandbox world, consuming everything it has had to offer.
From hidden worlds to helpful cheats, player-created Minecraft mods to detailed walk-throughs, there’s never a lack of content in the Minecraft community.
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Thus, it should come as no surprise that several dedicated, patient Minecraft players have uncovered some wildly unexpected – but incredibly useful! – in-game hacks. All of which help make the Minecraft experience just a little easier.
We’ve taken 15 of those hacks and listed them all down in this ultimate Minecraft guide!
Want to avoid angering Endermen? Tired of Zombies breaking into your house? Don’t have any potions of water breathing but still wanna explore that deep lake nearby? Keep reading to find out how!
Table of Contents
Wooden Slabs are Fireproof
Minecraft already has some pretty wonky physics. It should come as no surprise that they have their own set of natural laws as well. In real life, raw wood is flammable. In Minecraft? Not so much.
They can still catch fire, unfortunately, but they don’t get destroyed. They stay on fire until you put it out. Very useful if you want to craft a wooden house with a bunch of fire sources in it.
You could, in theory, also use it for aesthetic reasons (like a roof that’s perpetually alight with fire). However, this could be – quite literally – a fire hazard. Remember that other Minecraft blocks aren’t as flame-retardant and plan accordingly!
You Can Walk Through Walls with a Boat
Is this a fun little hack that the creators left in for players to find? A serious glitch that they just haven’t fixed yet? Or an actual part of Minecraft’s laws of physics?
Who knows.
All we know is, you can use a humble boat to walk through walls. You don’t necessarily get to sail through one, but it’s a programming imperative that’s pretty fun to exploit.
Simply place a boat in front of a wall and gently push it into the blocks of the wall until about half the boat is inside. Then, left-click on the boat to enter it. Once your avatar is in the boat, left-shift to exit.
Since players always exit the boat via the front half, you’ll find that you’ve somehow glitched through the wall via the boat entrance-exit dynamics. Again, a very cool Minecraft trick that’s useful to know (especially when you need to make a quick escape).
Do keep in mind that it’s a one-way trip, though! Since you can only exit via the front of the boat, going in and out will keep you on the side of the wall that the bow’s on.
Invisible Blocks are a Thing
No, really! You can actually spawn and place blocks that are completely invisible but still function like regular Minecraft blocks. They’re not just see-through, like glass or ice blocks. They genuinely can’t be seen (unless you’re the person who placed them—then you can see a thin outline).
This only works in Creative mode, though, but it’s still a neat trick!
To summon an invisible block, type the following command line prompt:
/give minecraft:barrier
You’ll notice a new icon in your inventory. It should look like a red box with a slash through it. There’s your invisible block!
Just a few things to note: the invisible block can’t be pushed by pistons and they can’t be broken if you switch to Survival mode. But as far as setting up barriers and suffocating enemy mobs, they work like normal solid blocks, do.
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Need Guaranteed Safety? Stay in a Mushroom Biome
Even in Hard Difficulty mode, no mobs – passive or otherwise – will spawn in Mushroom Biomes. This is a great hack for beginner players who’ve only managed to gather minimal resources and need a place to sleep for the night. There are many, many ways a mob-proof setting could be useful.
Say you want to build a self-sustaining food farm but you don’t want to risk Creepers or Wolves or Zombies coming in and undoing your hard work. Build in a Mushroom Biome. Say you’re tired of fighting off mobs and you just want to focus on crafting. Build in a Mushroom Biome.
It’s wonderfully isolated – and safe! – way of living.
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Buckets of Water Make Great Landscaping Tools
Did you know that you can use buckets of water to quickly get rid of Grass Blocks and Cobwebs?
Instead of hacking away painstakingly to clear the area, just grab a bucket of water and begin pouring. You’ll notice that the water “washes away” the grass and cobwebs, leaving you with either a flat landscape or a clean, dust-free hallway.
Create Instant Pockets of Air with Torches & Buckets
… and ladders, and glass panes, and fences, and so on.
Minecraft’s rules about being underwater are pretty set in stone. Players can breathe for a maximum of 15 seconds (barring the use of potions, enchantments, etc.). Afterward, you start taking 2 damage every second until you replenish your air supply.
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Now, there are plenty of scary Minecraft mobs. But being trapped underwater, dying a slow death as your screen gradually turns red can be pretty traumatizing.
Thankfully, you can cheat your way out of this situation (for a limited time, sure, but every extra second helps) if you’ve got some torches, ladders, fences, or doors in your inventory. Any block that has “air” around it – so basically, any block that doesn’t take up the entire cube – can be used to create a temporary pocket of air underwater.
Standing in the block as though to use it will automatically place you in that pocket of air. And if you use fences, you can actually link these pockets of air to create a makeshift underwater tunnel to freedom.
If using a torch, place it on a vertical surface underwater next to your head to breathe. The water will snuff it out, but it’s a good way to reset your 15-second timer.
If you have a bucket, you can scoop up water (one bucket = one block) to create a temporary air block. Again, neat way to reset your timer.
Here are some other Minecraft items that you can use as emergency air sources:
- Iron bars
- Glass Panes
- Fence Gates
- Trapdoors
- Ladders
- Slabs
- Doors
- Signs
- Walls
Cats vs. Creepers?
Did you know that Creepers are deathly afraid of cats?
Yup!
Just like the titular character in Stephen Sommers’ 1999 hit film, The Mummy, Creepers will avoid cats at all costs. If you have a bunch of them hanging around your house, Creepers won’t touch your borders at all.
They won’t work against other mobs, of course, but if Creepers are your primary concern at the moment, then yes. We highly recommend stocking up on a bunch of cats.
Plus, they make really cute pets!
Finding Diamonds: 16×16 Chunks and Y-Coordinate 11
We know the numbers are confusing, but let us explain.
When you’re mining for diamonds, it’s in the game’s program to spawn three or more diamonds per “chunk.” Now, one “chunk” in Minecraft measures 16×16 blocks. So if you’re no longer finding diamonds, it’s possible that you’ve exhausted your chunk. Time to move on to the next one.
The best place to find diamonds is at the Y-11. This refers to your Y-coordinate, which measures height or depth. You can check your coordinates by pressing F3. There are also more diamonds at a depth of Y-11 to Y-16, but Y-11 has proven to be the sweet spot.
How to make use of this info? Say you’re not finding any diamonds. You check your Y-coordinates. You’re at Y-6. You’ll know you can afford to go deeper to Y-11 (up to Y-16).
But say you haven’t gotten another diamond and you’re at Y-19. Remember that there are three diamonds per 16×16 block. This means that you should probably go wider instead of deeper. Else you risk losing your diamonds in lava.
Pumpkins Can Make You Invisible to Endermen
If you’ve played Minecraft for a while, you know how intimidating the tall, gangly Enderman can be. Sure, they’re usually peaceful. But once you accidentally make eye contact with them, it’s game over. They turn into this gangly, shrieking, charcoal-colored mess of a mob that’s capable of relentlessly pursuing you to the ends of whatever world you’re currently in.
In this case, you might think it’s safer to just keep your eyes on the ground as you walk past. But this leaves you vulnerable to a lot of other elements.
If you want to successfully skip past them, risk-free, all you need to do is equip a pumpkin as your head armor.
Will you look silly? Sure. But your viewpoint will be restricted. In turn, the game won’t register any eye contact you make with Endermen—even if you’re looking directly at them!
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Endermen Can’t Swim
Let’s say you don’t have a pumpkin in your inventory. Now you’ve accidentally locked eyes with an Enderman and they’re pissed. You know there’s no way you’re winning this fight. What do you do now?
Head for the nearest body of water and jump in. Endermen, for some reason, can’t swim. So if they jump in after you, they immediately sink. The safe zone is about two blocks away from solid land – which means you should be in the third block onwards if you want to live.
Endermen will sink through the first block, but they can – with their crazy reach – still reach you from the shore if you’re within a two-block grabbing range. So just stay out of that distance and you should be safe.
Kill Skeletons to Help Your Farm
Want to grow plants and trees really fast? Kill some skeletons and harvest their bones. You can use these to craft bonemeal, which is hands-down the most effective fertilizer in Minecraft. Applying it to almost any plant, tree, or grass block will instantly speed up the growth period. In some cases, in fact, bonemeal is powerful enough to make a plant reach full maturity in seconds. Doesn’t always happen, but check out this video by AnimatedDisc as an example.
There are very few plants bonemeal won’t work on, by the way. Here’s a quick list:
- Cactus
- Vines
- Nether Wart
- Chorus Plants
- Sugar Cane (Minecraft Java Edition only)
Every other plant block is a fair bonemeal game.
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Clone Blocks with the Scroll Wheel
This is another handy little building hack that you can use in Creative mode. It’s a great way to quickly grab the blocks you need in a quick second.
Simply middle-click on your mouse’s scroll wheel while you’re looking at whatever it is you need. This will automatically place a block of that item in your hand.
Say you’re looking at a torch on a brick wall. Click the scroll wheel, and you’ll have a torch block. Then move your crosshairs to the wall. Click the scroll wheel. You’ll have a block of a brick wall.
You can even use this trick on passive mobs. Click the scroll wheel while looking at the mob and you’ll instantly obtain a spawner for that mob.
Use a Fence Instead of a Door to Zombie-Proof Your Home
Do zombies keep breaking down your door at night?
Yep, we’ve all been there.
If you don’t want to build your home in a mushroom biome, the next best thing you can do to guarantee a full night’s rest is to zombie-proof your door. And it’s actually incredibly easy to do so.
Option 1 is to build your door one block higher. Place it on a stone block or any sturdy barrier block. Zombies won’t be able to reach it, but you certainly can.
Option 2 is to place a fence in lieu of an actual door. Minecraft zombies aren’t programmed to break down fences and so will be successfully stopped when they reached the entrance to your humble abode. The clear space above the fence allows you to fight them off as well!
Use Buckets of Lava as Fuel
If you accidentally stumble across a pool of lava, don’t be so quick to run away. Grab a bucket and scoop some up! Lava is an incredibly potent source of fuel for Minecraft furnaces. To put that into perspective, blaze rods can fuel a furnace for about 120 seconds.
A bucket of lava can fuel a furnace for about 1,000 seconds.
Lava is also one of the key ingredients in crafting obsidian, a rare block, so. Might as well stock up on as many buckets as you can, right?
Have a Water Source Every 5 Blocks When Farming
Tired of your crops drying up? Keep them within five blocks of a water source!
Farmlands only become dehydrated when they’re six blocks away from water. Within five blocks of the source, they’ll stay hydrated for as long as you need them to. So if you’re building a farm, plan accordingly.
Some people alternate rows of water and farmland for aesthetic reasons. Others build pools of water right in the middle of farmland areas. There are plenty of ways to utilize this hack without compromising the visuals of your farm!
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Conclusion
So, there you have it! 15 little-known Minecraft tips for a fun, stress-free experience! Of course, there are definitely more Minecraft hacks out there that we didn’t cover here. But we feel these fifteen tricks are uncommon enough and substantial enough to really make a difference in your game.
Here’s a quick recap:
- Wooden Slabs are Fireproof
- You Can Walk Through Walls with a Boat
- Invisible Blocks are a Thing
- Need Guaranteed Safety? Stay in a Mushroom Biome
- Buckets of Water Make Great Landscaping Tools
- Create Instant Pockets of Air with Torches & Buckets
- Cats vs. Creepers?
- Finding Diamonds: 16×16 Chunks and Y-Coordinate 11
- Pumpkins Can Make You Invisible to Endermen
- Endermen Can’t Swim
- Kill Skeletons to Help Your Farm
- Clone Blocks with the Scroll Wheel
- Use a Fence Instead of a Door
- Use Buckets of Lava as Fuel
- Have a Water Source Every 5 Blocks When Farming
With that said, feel free to let us know any little-known Minecraft tips that we might have missed! Or go out there and discover your own hacks. The discovery aspect is a huge part of Minecraft’s incredible replay value, after all.
