These items do exactly the kinds of things you’d anticipate them to do. There are several redstone components that fall into the category of simple mechanical devices such as the lever, button, pressure plate, and tripwire. Before we start showcasing some simple Survival Mode tools, let’s learn about some of the individual components. Those kind of exercises are obviously adventures in Creative Mode (we’d be more than impressed by someone that built a 20,000+ block computer in Survival Mode, that’s for sure) but that doesn’t mean you can’t deploy some redstone tricks in Survival Mode. We’ve been playing Minecraft quite a long time, and we’re still continually astounded at all the creative devices dedicated players build!
If you want to be wowed by just how far people have stretched the boundaries of Minecraft, hit up YouTube and search for redstone inventions. What kind of elaborate devices?Īs we mentioned in the introduction to this lesson, creative players have crafted some truly remarkable redstone devices that are quite sophisticated including replicas of early computer CPUs, graphing calculators, and elaborate creations that can perform complex tasks like elevators, drawbridges, and such. Redstone use falls into two distinct categories: using redstone to make redstone devices like the clock and compass seen above, and redstone circuit components like repeaters, pistons, and dispensers (the circuit components are used to build more elaborate devices).
It’s also used as an ingredient in a handful of potions. Even players who don’t get into building elaborate redstone creations will still use redstone to create some of the more advanced tools in the game like the clock and compass. Redstone is named such because the principle component of most redstone creations is the redstone dust: a valuable material collected by mining redstone ore blocks. The best way to get a feel for redstone is to load a Creative Mode game and open up the redstone tab in the Creative Mode inventory, seen below: Familiarizing Yourself with the Materials
There is a staggering number of really neat things you can with redstone that range from improving your efficiency in Survival Mode to building really fun games and mega structures in Creative Mode. So, while we’re going to do our best to give you a taste of what redstone can do, we’d strongly encourage you to fire up your favorite search engine or head over to YouTube and look up redstone tutorials if our overview appeals to you. The material is so versatile and the applications so diverse you could easily write a textbook-size tome just on the subject of redstone theory, design, and application. One British teenager even built a working graphing calculator with a display out of redstone.Īs you can imagine, the kind of folks that find themselves drawn to a game where you can build just about anything from blocks are oftentimes the same kind of folks that love building and experimenting with just about anything: electrical circuits included. Redstone components like levers are just like switches on real-world devices and redstone dust is laid down in the game like electrical wiring.Īlthough that seems pretty simple, you can string together redstone components together to create very complex things. The easiest way to think about redstone is in terms of electrical devices.