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    Alex Wiltshire
    Written By
    Alex Wiltshire
    Published
    1/18/17

    SimplySarc's top Minecraft hacks

    The Minecraft boffin's best tricks for fun and personal gain!

    I really enjoy SimplySarc’s videos about his discoveries of weird hacks and tricks in Minecraft and how they work.

    Sure, they sometimes stop working after Jeb and the gang update the game, but they’re so clever and he explains them so clearly that, well, I just don’t care that I rarely get them working myself!

    So I asked him to list his favourites. Thanks so much, Sarc! Science googles ON!

    Designing custom blocks – inside the game!

    One of SimplySarc’s most recent discoveries is making your own custom blocks without the need for texture packs and all within vanilla Java Minecraft! It’s complex and involves a lot of theory, but it really works.

    “It’s cool because who hasn't thought about adding their own blocks to the game?! It works similarly to how banners and shields work, so you have a few ‘layers’ which you can change the texture and colour of. You can then lay them on top of one another to form something new. To create them you have to force a monster spawner’s ‘preview’ to hold a couple of remodelled leather boots on its head and arms!”

    Invisibility cloaks!

    SimplySarc performed a magic trick when he seemed to show a portal to an alternative dimension in a simple floating cobblestone platform. But the way he did it was super fascinating. In case you don’t see it, here’s the link to the full explanation.

    “These things are really awesome because they let you hide things in plain sight in a very Harry Potter-esque fashion! They work because Minecraft has trouble rendering things behind things that are partially transparent. You essentially add a custom model with a transparency between 10 and 90%, and any entity that passes behind it will vanish!”

    Adding a custom HUD!

    What if you could have custom bars on your screen that count up your mana supply or ammo count? SimplySarc worked out how! Well, two ways, one better than the other, but both using a trick with held items.

    “I noticed that items on your hotbar can be warped, scaled and morphed quite a lot with a resource pack, so if you warp, scale and morph them enough you can create new HUD elements like thirst bars, ammo displays, mana bars or anything you can think of!”

    Automatic notifications in Survival mode!

    Here SimplySarc displays great use of some Minecraft quirks (plus a little cruelty) involving a skeletons and a cat. I also like his earlier solution, which involved the invention of the Notification Wolf. I wish I had a real-life Notification Wolf.

    “Something you can’t do in Survival Minecraft is use ‘/say’ to send automated messages through chat, like alerts that your iron has finished smelting. But I figured out a hacky way to do it by using wolves or ocelots and a skeleton. Basically, you receive a chat notification if a tamed pet dies with who killed it and using what weapon, so if you give a skeleton a bow named with your notification and goad it into shooting your pet, you can send automated chat messages!”

    Create an icy bridge!

    Last one! This one is very clever, and actually a pretty practical way of briefly extending bridges across water!

    “You can create temporary ‘drawbridges’ using a quirk with the frost walker enchantment. For some reason, frost walker still activates when placed on an armour stand, meaning you can create devices that freeze water blocks immediately and automatically. Using this you can make drawbridges for your friends to use to cross your moats!”

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