Review: Minecraft Handbooks

 

Minecraft Handbooks are books to guide you through the wondrous game of MINECRAFT. Today I will be reviewing the Official (Updated) Beginners Handbook, and the old Redstone and Construction Handbooks. I will review them in different sections, starting with the Beginners Handbook.

You are alone in a mysterious new world, full of hidden dangers. You have only minutes to find food and shelter before darkness falls and the monsters come looking for you. What do you do? 

The Official Minecraft Beginners Handbook is a brilliant way to start playing survival minecraft. Whereas creative Minecraft is pretty easy to explain to a newcomer and start playing on, survival can be somewhat hard to grasp. But this book goes through your first day in Minecraft using simple steps, explaining everything from creating tools to monsters and animals. And once you've completed your first couple of days in your new virtual reality, you can start farming, mining, breeding animals and exploring the area surrounding your little house. 

I think this book is easy to use and very well explained, and also contains some great extras, such as interviews with Notch, the Minecraft creator, and Jeb, leading developer. 

 Here's everything you need to know to get connected to the electrifying possibilities of redstone.

For those of you that don't know, redstone is essentially power and electricity in Minecraft. This book explains how to collect redstone and use it to create simple things such as torches, pistons and piston doors. But for those of you that want to go a step further, it also includes community creations such as the Super Stopwatch by JL2579 and Cubehamster, and the Color Map Display by Sethbling. 

There's nothing that can't be built in Minecraft, but with so many possibilities, where do you start? And how will you ever match the creative flair of the experts?

Construction has to be - personally - my favorite part of Minecraft. So I can tell you now that this book is great - I consider myself creative with my builds in Minecraft, but these are something else.  Fyre UK are an incredible building team who work with Block by Block and many other people all over the world, to bring Minecraft and real life together. They have worked with Mojang to create this book, and it includes some of their builds, along with instructions on how to build a Decorative Garden, and simple wooden house. Whatever level of creative-ness and love for building you have, I think this book has something for everyone, and can be of use to even the best builders. 

-Beth

Happy Reading (and gaming!)♥