or, a list of things about Minecraft that took me forever to figure out, that might not be obvious to new players, or that I just found helpful
Equal parts gravel and dirt can be crafted into coarse dirt, and using a hoe on coarse dirt changes it to normal dirt, so you can effectively change gravel into dirt if you have at least 2 dirt blocks with you
I know the game technically teaches you this BUT: you can cure zombie villagers by hitting them with a splash weakness potion and then feeding them a golden apple. This is an easy way to populate a village you built yourself, I've done it in all my survival worlds. The easiest way to protect newly potioned and appled villagers is to dig a long trench, get the zombie villager to chase you, circle the pit until the villager falls in, and cover the pit so no mobs attack the zombie villager when it changes into a villager.
Killing fish is a pretty good way to get bones. I don't need a skeleton farm because automatic fish farms are probably among the easiest automatic farms to build
drinking milk stops status effects
Tiny slimes can't damage you. You can keep them as pets.
The fastest transportation method is, for some reason, a boat on blue ice. Many horses are faster than powered rails.
Suspicious stew can be crafted, even though it's not part of the creative inventory or recipe book, using the normal recipe for mushroom stew+one flower. Allium gives a couple seconds of fire resistance, poppy gives night vision, cornflower gives jump boost, blue orchids or dandelions give saturation, and oxeye daisy gives regeneration.
A lot of wooden items—fences, doors, bows, fishing poles, and so on—can be used as fuel in furnaces. It's not efficient but it's a good way to get rid of excess items
Sneak to add blocks to the side of a furnace or chest directly. Do y'all have any idea how long this took me to figure it out. (This is also how you add a hopper to a chest.)
gold or iron armor can be melted down into gold and iron nuggets
The fortune enchantment affects sapling drops from trees and crop harvests.
Early in game, smelting copper into ingots is one of the best ways to get XP fast.
Fishing odds are slightly better when it's raining.
When you first get a full set of diamond armor your first instinct may be to wear it on a quest into the Nether. Don't. Take a couple stacks each of gravel/sand and any stone and run repeated suicide missions until you've made a stone shelter around your portal and paths across surrounding lava lakes.
More nether navigation tricks: drop columns of gravel down precipices in the Nether and then add cobblestone to the side of the gravel columns to build stairs from the top down
If your nether portal goes out while you're in the Nether, a Ghast fireball hitting the inside of the frame will relight it. But please don't get caught in the Nether without flint and steel
Lava breaks your fall much like water does, and you can't drown in it, though it's very hard to move in. Fire resistance potions will let you exploit both of these things.
Fill a basalt delta with three- or four-block-high towers of whatever block you like, two blocks apart, in staggered rows. Occasionally place a block on the side of the towers' top blocks. This won't stop magma cubes from spawning, but it will stop the large ones from moving effectively.
Using silk touch to grab the red and blue "turf" layers in Nether forests lets you farm both kinds of giant nether fungi by bone-mealing mushrooms, though the turf colors and mushroom colors have to match up. The growth is unaffected by obstructions above and the fungus "foliage" blocks never decay like leaves do. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea. BUT doing this repeatedly will eventually completely obstruct the "sky", protecting you from Ghasts
Nether fortresses and bastions are found along a "grid" pattern, so when you find one nether fortress you can travel in a straight line to find another fortress or bastion. Villages do the same thing, except when they don't. (Really, how villages spawn is a total mystery to me.)
Bonemealing moss will straight up convert surrounding stone into moss. I have no idea why. Since bone meal can be automated using a dropper iirc, this seems like it could lead to some weird redstone contraptions.
Horses can survive falls that would seriously damage a player.
Animals can and will climb ladders. I don't know why. But if you push a sheep or cow toward a ladder, they will often automatically ascend it. I've used this fact for automatic farms before.
You can name literally anything using an anvil, even if you can't repair or enchant it
Soul sand placed underwater creates bubble columns that shoot you upward. Magma blocks create bubble columns that pull you down. You can breathe in the bubble columns.
Night vision potions, if you've never used one, will also let you see the ocean floor.
A water source block in an "ocean" biome will spawn ocean animals, whether there is room for them there or not. If you change a section of ocean into a one-block-deep pond, you'll still get fish in there
you probably won't like this one but. keep a notebook with the coordinates of important spots it is SO HELPFUL
I'll add more when I think of them. please note that I play bedrock and some of these might not work in java
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