Crafting in Minecraft- Advanced Tools 1- Durability Tools

So!  I’ve already covered all the basic tools in Minecraft, but there are a few specialized tools for more advanced tasks.  You may or may not be aware of all of them, but I’m here to explain them and let you know about the ones you haven’t found yet.  So, without further ado, let’s start!  First, I will cover the wielded tools, all of which have durability that can run out- so remember from Basic Tools that you will want to combine them rather than using them until they break completely.

The Hoe

The hoe is a tool used for one purpose only- and that purpose is farming.  Farming is the only way to get wheat, and is also used to generate watermelon (a useful and cheap food, though it doesn’t fill your hunger meter up very well) and pumpkins (which can be used as decoration or to make jack-o-lanterns, another advanced tool).

The hoe, when you right-click on a block of dirt, will change the texture of the top of it, and remove any grass growing there.  The furrowed dirt has a few specific traits that I will get into in my farming articles, but for the moment you just need to be aware that it exists, and is the only place you can plant seeds.  Other than that the hoe is not really a useful tool- it’s very specialized.  So, we’ll move on!

Clippers

The only wielded tool in the game that does not use wood is the clippers, which are made entirely of metal.  Clippers have two main purposes and three side purposes.  The main point of clippers is leaf blocks and wool.

Normally, to get wool, you would have to kill a sheep.  This is not a very good way to gather wool, because you only get one or two pieces, and the sheep is dead.  Clippers allow you to shear a sheep- right-clicking a sheep with shears will generate two to three pieces of wool, occasionally even four.  The sheep’s appearance will change to show that it has no wool as well.  While this used to be good entirely for the sake of efficiency, one of the recent updates in Minecraft causes sheep to consume the grass off the top of dirt blocks occasionally.  If a shorn sheep does so, its wool regrows!  This makes clippers very useful for cosmetic building, as wool blocks can be dyed different colors.

Leaf blocks, on the other hand, normally decay into nothing or are destroyed by hand, typically resulting in no drop with occasional saplings and infrequent apples appearing.  A leaf block that you have left-clicked with clippers, however, is instantly removed- and drops as a placeable block.  You can then build with it like any other block and it won’t automatically despawn- and what’s more, after you place it, you can still break it to try and generate an apple or sapling.  This also allows you to build a larger tree if that’s what you want, or make partially see-through floors without spending coal and sand to make glass blocks.  Additionally, because leaf blocks are partially translucent, if you have a thin layer they will not block light, allowing you to construct a floating building that does not preserve monsters underneath it from sunlight-burning, for instance.

Clippers will also allow you to harvest vines rather than destroying them.  Normally, if you break the block a vine is attached to or if you break a vine, the piece you broke and all the pieces hanging from it that are not attached to another block will despawn, and you will get nothing.  If, however, you use clippers, breaking a piece of vine with them will give you a piece of vine that you can put on the side of any block- although any vine hanging from that piece will still be destroyed.  This is important because vine, when placed on a block, will spread to surrounding blocks and grow from them as well as the block it was placed on.

The second extra use of clippers is to remove tall grass from the environment in the form of tall grass that can be replanted wherever you want it, rather than destroying it and having a chance of generating seeds.

Finally, clippers are the tool to use when you find spiderwebs underground.  Breaking a spiderweb with anything else will not give you anything, but using clippers on it will get you pieces of string.

The Bow

This brings us to the bow.  The bow is the only ranged weapon available to you in the game, and it is unfortunately not a terribly good weapon.  Its range is rather limited, its firing rate is poor, and you need to construct arrows in order to have ammunition (or hunt a -lot- of skeletons).  There are, however, a few other things you can make that require you to have a bow- which is made into part of the object.  The bow is also one of the two tools that you need string to make.

The Fishing Rod

The fishing rod is the other string-using tool.  A fishing rod is used, naturally, in water.  By right clicking, you can cast your line out.  Another right click will reel the line in- which you usually don’t want to do unless your cast landed out of the water, or the bobber that displays on your screen has dipped under the water’s surface.  Successfully fishing will give you one fish.  Fish isn’t an excellent food, but if you haven’t got a herd of cows or a sty full of pigs, it’s probably your best available food, once it’s cooked.

Flint and Steel

What to say about flint and steel?  Right clicking things with it will set them on fire.  This is nice for decorative purposes, but most blocks won’t be affected worth speaking of.  The real use is against monsters and animals- and setting monsters on fire, while amusing, is usually not a good idea.  A monster on fire will not stop attacking you normally, and may catch things around it on fire.  Like you.

Setting a pig, cow, or chicken on fire will have an interesting effect- if the fire kills the animal, it will naturally drop cooked meat.  Unfortunately, this prevents the animal from dropping anything -but- meat, and it’s still likely to catch other things on fire as well, including you if you aren’t careful.  And while it’s important to not be caught by ninjas, ninja-evasion isn’t much good if you’re not alive to enjoy it.

Keep in mind that you can’t use flint and steel to directly set a monster or animal on fire- instead, you have to click the surface it’s standing on, which will catch fire and then set the beastie aflame.  You should also keep track of where you set fires so you don’t step in them and- say it with me- set yourself on fire.