7 Awesome Things You Can Build in Minecraft

There is nothing quite like the satisfaction of building something. This object, which you have constructed, stands for all the effort, planning, and careful dexterity you mustered. There's nothing the wild creatures of Minecraft can do to destroy your precious architecture (except for maybe those goddamn exploding creepers).

Your first cave

Here is my first home, carved into the dirt hill near the beach. Not very impressive, but I soon slowly renovated like a home owner obsessed with the Home & Garden television network.

The simple stone blockway gave way to a quaint wooden door, a glass window installed, a nice little fence to keep out most monster, until eventually, after one creeper too many, I replaced the dirt entirely with cobblestone to reinforce it against explosions.


Towers and spires

This tower, constructed with the help of several ladders I removed later, was made to be a bright beacon in the darkness. The lighting system is sophisticated enough that one can easily spot this in the distance at night.

The very top has a torch on top followed by one on each side. The extra torches lower down were put in later to increase visibility where the local trees would obscure the higher portions.

The ladders were removed because they didn't quite fit, but it was quite a feat to remove the pieces while still actually using them.



An igloo

The maps in Minecraft are randomly generated and every now and again, you'll be spawned into a map that's snowing.

An igloo isn't a very effecient home to build. You need four snowballs to craft a snowblock and the rate which you need to shovel snow piles will wear out your tools very fast. If you so much as bump your snow walls with your tools, you'll find a very unappealling hole in your wall. The roof is constructed of stone simply because of how much work it is to craft more snow blocks.

The fence is my favorite part though.



Bridges

Pictured above is a very simple bridge. The wider the gap though, the more difficult it becomes to build a bridge. Luckily, as gravity doesn't affect most blocks, you can easily begin slapping blocks onto one side and start spanning the gap.

This is a natural spring I came across underground and decided to build this bridge in order to cross over faster. The suspended stone chandelier was an idea I got when watching a video that starred one of Machinima's most avid Minecraft directors, SeaNanners.


Manmade water sources

What you're seeing above is difficult to see due to the angle, but it's a waterfall that begins out of thin air.

Actually, anything involving water instantly becomes more interesting. In order to manipulate water, you need to craft a metal bucket. With this, you can pick up a water block and drop it anywhere. It's not a finite source but rather a block of water that becomes the source for a river or waterfall.

From here, there are all sorts of interesting manmade water structures, such as pitfalls, elevators,  and water slides.

Skylights

Pretty much one of my favorite, useless things to build. It's pretty self-explanatory with the exception that when you break glass, you break it for good. No glass cubes are dropped for you to reuse, so you have to be sure of your placement.

It gives you a great view of the time of day outside and of mobs wandering around your property. Best of all, it's easy to harvest sand and just chuck into your furnace for glass when you want to keep going with the idea.



Ports and docks

One of my biggest endeavors as of late. This was built on my 3rd generated map since the snowing map freezes all surface water and makes a port and dock impossible to make.

This monstrosity is three floors including the roof, complete with balcony, ladders, windows, lighting, and a dock complete with boat! And it's still a work in progress as I'll constantly be adding on in order to make it something worth calling a "port". A red brick utility shed, portmaster's desk, wave breakers, and even a custom built schooner is on the horizon.