Block of the Month: Sticky Piston

Here’s how it works. First, make a piston with some wood, iron, cobble and redstone. Second, squish a slime ball on the top of it to make the surface sticky. Third, put it on the ground, facing the block you want to move. Fourth, apply a redstone signal. Then boom! Your block will move all on its own. Flip the redstone signal and it’ll move right back where it came from.

There’s just one catch. Sticky pistons can only move things a distance of a single block. Should have led with that? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean they’re not useful! Au contraire, my friend. Sticky pistons can be used to make hidden doors, or traps. To automate crop harvesting or water flow on farms. To swap between decorative blocks in creative builds. Or to hide a chest full of your most valuable possessions. 

To be extra advanced, try pushing more than one block at once. You can use slime or honey blocks to glue things together up to a limit of 12 blocks, allowing you to move large structures with a single piston. Play around with them a bit and you’ll no doubt come up with zillions more ideas.

Be aware that there are a few blocks which can’t be pushed or pulled by sticky pistons. I’m not sure why. It might be something to do with quantum physics. You won’t be able to move bedrock, obsidian, spawners, jukeboxes, portal frames, or anything made of sculk. Most fragile things – like plants, eggs, and redstone circuitry – will just break when pushed.

Also, we need to give credit where it’s due: pistons originally started off as a mod created for Java Minecraft by Hippoplatimus. There was also some work done on the same problem by DiEvAl. They both offered their code to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten, who rewrote it  and brought it into the game in Beta 1.7, released in June 2011.

Today, sticky pistons remain the perfect tool for moving things in Minecraft. As long as you only need to move them a distance of one block. More than that, and it’s probably best to just do it yourself.