Minecraft - How to build this

Post Reply New Topic

Hey,

I saw on overclock.net a glass structure on minecraft that was under water and I would like to build my version of it but I don't know how, wouldn't you drown if you stay under water that long? How do you keep the water out, I don't want to steal this dude's image but its the second post in this thread on overclock.net.

Also I guess we can treat this like a generic minecraft thread,

There's a few different ways to do it.

Firstly: potions. Get a few of these, and underwater anything becomes so, so much easier. Get a potion of water breathing (made using a puffer fish, which you get, of course, by fishing), a potion of night vision (soooooo much easier to see underwater; you use golden carrots to make this), a potion of speed (normal swimming is SLOW. This makes it much easier! You use sugar for this), and if possible, boots with Depth Strider on them (horizontal movement can become MUCH faster underwater, based on the level of the enchantment) and also Aqua Affinity (dig at a more normal speed underwater) and Respiration (air depletes much more slowly) on a helmet. Use the "extended" versions of these potions, which last 8 minutes, and are gotten by adding Redstone to a finished basic version of the potion.

Second: Sponges. This is the most difficult method, because you need, well, sponges to do it, which requires that you enter the most dangerous area in the game, the underwater temples. This is the only place to find these, and the mobs in here can be NASTY. Dont even enter this place unless you have strong enchanted armor, because the mobs here all hit like freight trains, and tend to appear in swarms, attack from an extreme distance, and their attack, a bizarre electric beam, cannot be dodged; once it locks onto you, you have to get something solid between you and the mob before the beam "pops" and does damage, in order to defend against it. There are miniboss versions of these horrid things in there too, always exactly three of them... and they have an undodgeable spell that they will place on you from an absolutely massive distance (get even remotely near the temple, and you're immediately hit by this, and there's NOTHING you can do about it), so you have to kill all three of them before you can even grab the sponges. The spell they hit you with is a debuff, and a really nasty one, that basically prevents you from digging at anything at all. It has a very long duration, and the instant it wears off, those big guys will smack you with it again, and as before, there's nothing you can do. Potions are a must here, too. With the sponges, you can essentially drill a big hole in the ocean (indeed, this makes as little sense as it sounds like), basically removing all water from the building zone. You can then replace the water later with the awesome power of buckets. Since sponges are blocks, they are reusable.

Third: the "breating with torches" trick. This allows you to refill your air meter at any time underwater. Here's how it works: Stand next to any wall that's at least 2 blocks high (just drop a couple of dirt blocks down on the floor, for instance), stand with your face pressed against it, and place a torch there. The torch will flash into existence and immediately break, but your air meter will instantly refill, because water cannot enter any space that has anything the game considers a block, which torches are. The torch only lasts for a split second, but it's enough to count as having your head in a space with air. This is a really important trick when dealing with water.

There's other methods you can use as well, but I think these are the best ones.

Good luck with it, as building things underwater can be a major pain, and takes absolutely FOREVER if you dont use methods like these.

As a bit of an underwater specialist, what I do is build the structures first, *then* clear the water out second.
The ability to "float" around as you build a structure lets you build things with an almost "creative" ease.

Edit :
Unless you're building a really big structure, using sand to get rid of the water is more efficient than trying to get sponges from underwater fortresses. Sand is easy to get.

EVERYTHING is more efficient than trying to get sponges. I mostly just like the things

Sure took bloody forever for them to FINALLY be re-added to the game. They were removed in, what, the "indev" version? Or "infdev" maybe.... either way, a LONG time ago.

Though, they dont take too long to get if you already are far enough in your world to have alot of the things necessary. Took me about 30 minutes to get a bunch of them.


The sand thing is good too though. I've done that one to drill through lava. I dont remember why. I assume it made sense at the time.

I usually dont remove the water though, myself. I do the potion thing. Get rid of excess water later. A bit less of a hassle...

Thanks Misery,

I am going to try a mix between option one and three, I am doing well in this play through, haven't died once and have some pretty good gear so potions are do-able. Also thanks SpiceWolf, it seemed logical to build the structure first unless maybe you could build something and flood it afterwards

Last edited by dcj123 on 10 Oct 2015, 1:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Double post sorry

Another double post sorry

Edit - OMG I am not having a good day, I was trying to edit the original post and it keep spawning new post for some reason, I am really sorry, won't happen again.

Yeah, generally just building the structure in the water is the best idea; some people do prefer to clear it out, but that can be very time consuming; it's something you do mainly if you dont have enough potion ingredients. You dont NEED potions to do that sort of building, but it takes absolutely freaking forever to do it without them, but if you do have them (and preferrably also the couple of enchantments), the speed of building can be equal to building on land. You just have to work a bit for the equipment that you need. But that takes much less time than placing 10 gazillion sand blocks. That technique is mostly for clearing out smaller amounts of water, as it's actually a really useful technique, just.... not for really large amounts. If you can get enough sponges, the water removal can be done very QUICKLY, but that's definitely pretty tough. That one mostly happens for those that love the adventuring aspect and are out conquering the temples and ruins and such to begin with.

Good luck with it though! Feel free to ask if you've got any questions or want more tips or something. Honestly we dont get enough Minecraft-related chat going on in this place.

I did it guys!

Its a test building so nothing fancy but its underwater

I'm assuming the blocks in the back are dirt and sand? I dont really use texture packs since I find them confusing so it's hard for me to tell.

What kind of method did you end up using for this?

Also one other thing that might be neat: using tinted glass (or tinted glass panes) for the dome/windows/whatever. I wonder how that might look underwater?

Oh, also, one other tip: You can use either glowstone blocks, or jack-o-lanterns (pumpkin combined with a torch, it's a very strong light source) to make permanent sources of light in the water. That could have some neat uses around there too.

It's a good feeling isn't it

Yes, I can disable mods and take another screenshot if you want lol



A mix between one and three, I didn't have any potions of water breathing but I had a potion of night vision and a potion of speed. So with that I used the torches to breathe underwater. I had a disaster going but I filled in the structure with sand and than dug it out from the inside.



Those blocks look like crap with my mods, I'll disable them and see what they look like.



I haven't seen any pumpkins in this world but I keep that in mind.