Minecraft is Explosive

In Minecraft there are a few different types of explosives and as you can imagine all of them involve the use of gunpowder. Each thing of course has a different effect, but all can be worthwhile.

Types of Explosives

There are actually four different types of explosives in Minecraft, splash potions, fireworks, TNT, and creepers and each has its different uses. Creepers are of course the source for your gun powder, but you can if armored up allow them to explode near you just to clear some blocks out of an area. This of course will work better if you do it on relatively fragile blocks like grass or sand as a regular creeper’s explosion won’t do much damage to stone. A charged creeper (one that’s been struck by lightning) will do a great deal more damage obviously, though unless you’re in some boss armor, I’m not sure I’d let that get anywhere near me, and probably not even then. Of course if you’re looking for a decent sized explosion without being blown up by creepers you can always go with TNT which causes a good deal of damage and doesn’t require that you be in the blast radius. TNT can be crafted with 5 gunpowder arranged in an “x” pattern on the crafting window with 4 sand blocks filling in the empty spaces. TNT can be set off using a number of methods including redstone wiring, flaming arrows, and of course flint and steel. Next up we have fireworks which at first may seem a bit useless, but they can have their advantages. Fireworks come in a variety of shapes and colors and can even be made to go different height meaning you can use them to establish a code with friends on a multiplayer server and send messages to one another without using chat. Of course you could always use them as a means of celebration as well as they do provide a pretty cool effect. Finally we have splash potions which are regular potions that have had gunpowder distilled into them. These don’t do explosion damage but rather make the potion throwable and give it an area effect (like a grenade). This is most useful for poisons, potions of weakness, or potions of harming, though splash potions of healing and regeneration give a player a unique option to play a healer role in a party of several members.

Why Use Explosives?

Well some of the reasons are obvious like coded firework messages and splash potion uses, however some are less so. TNT for instance can be used to quickly take a digging project from the surface level down to bedrock, however the TNT might land on valuable resources and destroy them so be careful where you place it. Interestingly it can also be used to create a cannon for use in PvP which normally won’t allow you to change the blocks of an enemy base directly, so you blast your way in with TNT or for the slightly more insane, TNT can be used to create a launch pad to shoot you high into the sky (possibly to quickly get out of a mine). Still, when it comes right down to it, playing with explosives in Minecraft is just good fun.

Conclusion

While explosives may seem to have few practical uses, they do in fact provide a unique experience in the game of Minecraft that’s well worth trying out. If you’ve got gunpowder just lying around and are ready for something new, give explosives a try in your N3rd C0rn3r.