Taking Inventory

Luckily, there’s a tasty treat that all striders will respond to – warped fungus. Why they love the stuff, I do not know. Perhaps it’s connected to that aforementioned lack of gray matter. Whatever the reason, wave some fungus around near a strider and it’ll come running striding.

They’re a currency! In the Minecraft world, emeralds are a medium of exchange for goods and services – just like coins and banknotes are in ours. Players, villagers and wandering traders use emeralds to represent the value of those goods and services, because it’s easier to carry around one emerald than, for example, 15 bits of coal or 26 potatoes, as any of you who’ve tried to exchange 50 potatoes for a copy of Minecraft at your local games emporium will know.

Simply right-click with it, and it’ll slow you to a sneaking pace and start blocking attacks that come from the front of you. It’ll also knock back attackers, and stop you from being knocked back. But be careful - some attacks are not blockable, and axes can disable shields.

What’s found deep underground, highly prized by both painters and Egyptian pharaohs, and is a deep shade of royal blue? No, not the leg bristles of a very cold spider – it’s our item of the week: lapis lazuli!

Why did zombies ever drop feathers? Simply because the developers didn’t know what else they should drop! Perhaps someone tried to raise the dead at a pillow factory? I guess we’ll never know...

Over the years, Minecraft’s mushrooms have become a lot more interesting. They no longer restore health, but you can craft them into stew, which fills up the hunger bar. In version 1.0 of Minecraft, rare mushroom island biomes were added, which are covered with mushrooms but also serve as the home of bizarre cow-mushroom hybrids called “mooshrooms”.

If you don’t want to deprive poor villagers of their only alarm system, you can also sometimes find one for trade – armourers, toolsmiths, and weaponsmiths occasionally have them in their inventory. Though be warned, they don’t come cheap.

Want one? Great! Go digging. You’ll need to find a few blocks of copper ore, smelt down the resulting raw copper into at least three ingots, and then stack those ingots on top of each other in a crafting grid. Once crafted, stick it somewhere convenient (a rooftop is a good place) and you’ll be safe from electrical assault.

Minecraft’s various poisons come from a variety of different plant and animal ingredients. You’ll need to get experimental with your brewing stand to discover them all. Or just look them up on the wiki. Either way, good luck!

Once you’ve got a golden apple, there are a few uses you should consider before just cramming it in your gob. Golden apples can be used to improve the chance of taming a horse, breeding and healing them, and speeding up the growth of foals. It can also be used to lure piglins, who find golden apples irresistible.