Why Use Beacons?

The world of Minecraft is extremely vast; 60000000 blocks is a whole lot of terrain. Sometimes, your resources and places of interet can be hard to find in the world, so that's where beacons come into play. To see any good beacon, all one should need to do is look around the area, and not have to move around.

Take my sand quarry for example. Easy enough to see from most directions. But, not so well from the desert.

  My local desert biome is flat, featuring only gentle slopes. But, if you walk into it a fair amount, all there is to be seen is this beacon. This way, I don't get confused when I need sandstone when I'm working in the desert. ;) The wood blends in well with the hill, but you can see the beacon towards the middle of the screenshot.

My Beacon Designs

I think it is wise to have various beacon designs (that are distinguishable, but simple to remember), so you know which beacon marks what.

So, here are all my beacons and their purposes! As a note, these beacons will be built to whatever height they are most visible at in the wilderness, with the exception of the directional arrow.

This beacon is just a basic pillar, and it doesn't mean that more than that, either. Personally, I use it to mark any general point of note, or resource. During my first Minecraft experiences, I used it to mark some sand that I found near a small water pool. These beacons were particularly vital in the tundra. (Yes, I know they are called Ice Plains, but tundra is just the name the Wiki used before the biome could be displayed on the Debugging menu.)

This is a beacon that I interpreted from PaulSoaresJr's Alpha/Beta Minecraft Tutorials. It's two pillars; one of them is two blocks lower than the other. It marks the entrance to a cave system. I don't have a unique marker for Strongholds and Abandoned Mine Shafts, so I could re-purpose this beacon, by building it with a material that can represent the "structure".

Next, this is a marker from my Minecraft history, too: a Nether Portal beacon. It can be used for if you head out of the Nether on an adventure, and want to remember where the exit portal appeared.

Do you remember these beacons? I showed them to you guys in my Nether travel guide! In the event you don't, these beacons (they are more like arrows) are useful for navigating any landscape that doesn't have many distinct features, like the Nether, or Minecraft Infdev/Alpha's biomeless overworld. I built two to show that the short end of the top part can be pointed in any direction: toward the next beacon. (Following the chain in the direction of the short end will take you back home.)

Before we continue, there is one more beacon that I forgot to show: the base marker. I don't use it much anymore because of its size. I would have built it, but I ran out of wood, and there is a new game that I have been eager to play. So instead, here is some text art of it:

i    i    i

l    l    l

 l    l    l 

~~~~~~

Inventing a Beacon Design

For the final part of this post, I will show you how I come up with my little designs by coming up with one right here.

Let's start with a normal pillar, and work from there.

For this demonstration, I'll be inventing a Dungeon beacon. So, what features are there in a dungeon? Not much, but a small, cubic room. So, I'll put arms spanning out to show the room.

There is also the Monster Spawner. To represent that, I can put a central block on top! I don't have any right now, but since this will be above any dungeons I find, I will have some moss stone, so I can put that on top so people know what this is marking better.

So, there you have it! That's all for this week. As always, I appreciate your feedback a ton, and thanks for stopping by my blog!

    

   I'll see you all next post. Until then!