So, I have been playing minecraft again lately. I’ve discovered how much my original world I spent my time in was keeping things from me: namely it never spawned Villages, and… strongholds.
That last one is important. While no villages ever spawned, I was able to build my own village by curing zombie villagers. But, strongholds are the only place in the game to find end portals. Unlike nether portals, you cannot build your own portal to the End dimension, so you have to find them in strongholds.
I found my first stronghold about a month ago in a new world I was exploring, and also found way too many villages to even count. But those aren’t the reasons I’m posting: I wanna talk inventory.
I got obsessed with how I can load up my character to carry everything I would ever need. It started with what the character could carry by itself and slowly expanded from there. Since I can make ender chests (I hadn’t been bothering cuz I was saving every ender pearl I got to activate the end portal before now) I’ve included the following: 27 slots in the ender chest, 27 slots in the player inventory , 9 in the player hotbar, and one slot in the offhand which I’ll ignore for the time being as my version only allows holding a shield, maps, or a totem of undying.
Now, there are things called “shulker boxes” which can hold their inventory and be placed in inventory, but I’m not counting them here cuz one can only find them in the End dimension, and you cannot return from there until one has defeated the End Dragon… Which I have not.
So, here’s my loadout, complete with my reasons for including each. Starting with my ender chest:
- Iron blocks (64) : used to make most things in the game, frankly.
- Gold blocks (64) : mostly for making golden apples, carrots, etc.
- Diamond blocks (64) : top-tier armor/weapons/tools and needed to make the enchanting table.
- Emerald blocks (64) : trading, and beacon activation (one day)
- Coal blocks (64) : fuel and making torches
- Redstone blocks (64) : powering stuff and boosting potions
- Lapis Lazuli blocks (64) : powering enchantments
- Obsidian blocks (64) : building enchanting tables, nether portals, and ender chests
- Cobblestone (64) : needed to make all stone tools and furnaces. You can go with a stack of stone blocks if you like, as you can break them into cobblestone, but it’s just one extra step and doesn’t save space.
- Gravel (64) : comes in handy as a pit filling, making concrete, and also drops flint for arrows and flint&steel.
- Sand (64) : also great for filling, also makes glass, sandstone, concrete, and TNT.
- Conduits (64) : Creating zones underwater for stuff
- Sea Lanterns (64) : can activate conduits, and lights up anywhere
- Cobwebs (64) : these are like string blocks, as each cobweb yields 9 string, which can in turn be recombined to get wool.
- Sugar cane (64) : makes paper and sugar, also plantable to grow more, so if you got water, this is also an infinite supply if managed correctly.
- Bones (64) : for making bone meal (which makes white dye) and for taming wolves. Bone blocks would’ve given you three times as much bone meal, so you could go that route, but you cannot tame a wolf with a bone block.
- Slime block (64) : great for mechanical contraptions, makes slime balls for sticky pistons, and can be combined with blaze powder for magma cream to make potions of fire resistance.
- Bookshelves (64) : boosts enchanting, can be broken to get 3 books per block.
- Ender pearls (16) : to make eyes of ender for ender chests
- Blaze rods (64) : used to make blaze powder and brewing stations
- Nether wart (64) : for potion brewing
- Soul sand (64) : for growing more nether wart
- Nether Quartz ore (64) : Going with the ore instead of the block or the raw quartz itself for two reasons: yes, quartz blocks would have 4 times the quartz in one stack, but you cannot convert them back to just the quartz crystals. Keeping a stack of ore vs the crystals means that, potentially, you can get more to drop with enchanted tools. The crystals are good for making daylight detectors, observers, various stone types, and redstone gizmos.
- Ice (64) : can be melted to make water, and water makes an infinite supply of itself when arranged correctly. In a cold biome, you can melt 2 blocks, arrange them for an infinite water source, and create a big area of water that would then freeze into Ice again, so this stack could potentially be used to create infinite water, ice, packed ice, and blue ice.
- Grass block (64) : Could go with regular dirt blocks for this, but having it already grass means if stuck underground with just dirt blocks, you can’t grow grass. With grass, you can use bone meal to get flowers, ferns, and tall grass to drop wheat seeds.
- Jungle wood (64) : I struggled with the decision to have wood in here at all, as I’m going to have stacks of saplings later, but you need wood to make so much stuff in the game. And if you’re stuck in the dark, you’ll need wood to make sticks to make torches to provide light for saplings to grow anyway, so have a stack of wood. Any type is fine, really, but jungle wood serves as a base for growing cocoa beans.
- Oak saplings (64) : Not only will growing oak saplings produce wood, breaking the leaves will also produce sticks, more saplings, and most importantly, apples. Dark oak saplings also produce apples and drop them at a higher rate, but I’d go with regular oak as you need the clearance to plant the dark oak in groups of 4 to grow anything, whereas the regular oak needs much less space.
Okay, that’s the inventory for the ender chest. Now for the player inventory:
- Ender chests (64) : Okay, you only need one and 64 is ridiculously excessive. But they do stack that high, so if 1 chest takes up just as much room as 64, have as many as you like!
- Chests (64) : to have a place to put stuff to free up inventory space to work.
- Pumpkins (64) : good for making pies, golems, and carved for helmets and jack-o-lanterns. Also yields 4 seeds.
- Melons (64) : yields 3-7 melon slices (or up to 9 with a tool with the Fortune II enchantment) slices good for making “glistering” melon slices and seeds.
- Beetroot seeds (64) : grows beetroots (and more seeds) from which you get make beetroot soup and red dye. also breeds pigs.
- Potatoes (64) : used to make baked potatoes (for rabbit stews) and… more potatoes.
- Sweet berries (64) : Grows sweet berry bushes that yield more berries, and which act as good protection as they hurt mobs (and players) when walked thru. Also can tame/breed foxes.
- Cocoa beans (64) : makes brown dye and cookies, plant on jungle trunks to grow more.
- Wheat seeds (64) : I’d say this is optional, as bone meal on grass blocks will eventually yield grasses that drop them. Use them to grow wheat and more seeds. breeds chickens too.
- Brown mushrooms (64) : makes fermented spider eye and is an ingredient in a bunch of food items
- Red mushrooms (64) : food item ingredient
- Spider eyes (64) : for use in potions
- Dark oak saplings (64) : grows dark oak trees for wood, sticks, apples, and more saplings.
- Birch saplings (64) : grows birch trees for wood, sticks, and more saplings
- Jungle saplings (64) : grows jungle trees for wood, sticks, and more saplings, growing them in groups of four makes a giant tree that will have vines.
- Spruce saplings (64) : grows spruce trees for wood, sticks, and more saplings
- Acacia saplings (64) : grows acacia trees for wood, sticks, and more saplings
- Snow blocks (64) : can make snowballs, also good for building
- Clay blocks (64) : makes bricks and terracotta
- Eggs (16) : kinda proud of this one, as not only are the eggs themselves food ingredients, but a thrown egg has a 1/8 chance of spawning a chick. A stack of 16 will pretty much guarantee you get at least one chicken. Once you have two chickens, you can start breeding them (or keep collecting and throwing their eggs) all you want. Thus, this stack of 16 in the inventory is an unlimited supply of eggs, chicken meat, and feathers! And for those of you who would warn not to count them before they’re hatched, the real world doesn’t have a built in algorithm guaranteeing a 1/8 success rate 😉
- Silk Touch pickaxe : This is for picking back up your Ender chest if, like me, you only have the one you’re carrying around.
- Silk Touch shovel : good to get grass blocks, podzol, and mycelium. (The silk touch pickaxe would also work, but I wouldn’t like to put wear and tear on that item since it’s the only way to pick back up ender chests)
- Depth Strider boots : for your underwater adventuring
- Respiration helmet : again, for your underwater adventuring
- Shield : for most non-life threatening battles
- Arrows (64) : even if you have infinite enchantment on your bow, 1 arrow takes up just as much space as a stack of 64
That’s the inventory for the player, here’s what I like to have in my hotbar:
- Diamond pickaxe : Best if enchanted with fortune, efficiency, and/or unbreaking
- Trident w/ Riptide : my weapon of choice, and doubles as good transportation 😀
- Crossbow w/ Multishot : my favored ranged weapon
- Golden Apples (64) : Again, having this many is ridiculous, but they do stack that high, so go nuts! Great for super healing, breeding horses/donkeys/mules, and curing zombie villagers.
- Food (64) : I would say the stack of golden apples will do for this, but realistically you would probably not use them for regular rations. I usually end up with a stack of bread or cooked fish
- Fishing Pole w/ Luck of the Sea : fishing is fantastic in minecraft as even one measly source block of water will allow you to fish for not only fish, but you can catch things you cannot make yourself, such as saddles, and especially items enchanted with mending; something you cannot get with an enchanting table.
- Carrots (64) : I like to keep carrots in the hotbar when travelling on horseback, cuz whenever I short a jump over water and get dismounted, I hold the carrots and the horse’ll follow me to the other shore. Saves a lot of time and wrangling. And of course carrots are also used to make golden carrots, rabbit stews, and the famous carrot on a stick. Oh, and more carrots if you plant them.
And finally, what to wear when out an about town:
Head – Aquatic Affinity
Torso – Protection
Pants – Thorns
Boots – Feather falling boots
Offhand – Totem of Undying