Minecraft is Conservation

As it’s an important topic in the real world so too is conservation important in Minecraft. Now technically the environment in the game will never collapse due to a lack of trees or anything like that and since the world goes on forever all materials are essentially infinite, however who wants to travel 5,000 blocks or further out to go get some wood? That’s an epic journey by any standard and not one I’d be particularly interested in embarking on. As such almost purely for convenience conservation of resources is important.

What to Conserve

Basically you want to try and not waste anything that you can’t produce infinitely with some sort of generator. So dirt, while common is something you’ll want to preserve. Iron and gold likewise until you can get farms for those items at which point you can just have at it. Diamonds and Obsidian of course you’ll want to try and conserve pretty much always as they’re both a bit hard to come by, though if you can get a redstone farm going you can always convert that to obsidian and then just use the obsidian for whatever. There’s obviously more but you get the idea. This however also involves the idea of replanting trees when you cut them down or even netherwart when you raid a supply from a nether fortress so that if something terrible should happen and you fall in lava on the way home, you can still get resources from those same sources rather than needing to find another supply.

How to Conserve

The best way to conserve your valuable resources for better uses is carefully choose the materials you decide to use for tools. While a stone pick is slower and less durable, the materials used to make it are easily found and can be generated infinitely. You will never run out of material for stone picks. On the other hand, if you don’t have an iron farm, using an iron pick on anything less than gold, emeralds, redstone, or diamonds is simply wasting that material. With a stone pick you can even make a new one on the go by carrying wood with you as you mine so its breaking isn’t as big a deal. Similarly using gold for anything besides powered rails and potion is a bit of a waste, unless you’re going to directly enchant the thing being made, but really it’s ultimately just not worth it. Finally we come to the hoe. Because it’s only use is tilling dirt and it doesn’t do that any faster based on the material you’re using there’s really no reason to ever make a hoe with better materials except to increase the durability. Still a stone hoe lasts a very long time, and once your iron farm is going an iron hoe will easily till even a large field. Of course there’s always replanting as well. When you cut down a tree, grab one of the saplings falling from the leaves and replant the thing. If you destroy a bunch of grass getting seeds, leave a couple so they can spread again. This will prevent you from needing to go far and wide to find those resources again in the future.

Conclusion

With a little extra effort you can make sure that valuable resources aren’t wasted needlessly and that the area around your base will continue to be rich in resources for a long time to come ensuring a bright future for your N3rd C0rn3r.