Hello, I'm N8thanH, and welcome back to Across the Map!

For this week's post, I decided to make a guide for crafting Fireworks, since the Fourth of July and Canada Day are coming up in their respective countries! Let's begin.

Part 1: Gathering Materials

The first step to any good project. For this activity, get the following items. I will demonstrate what they do in the next segment.

Basic Materials:

• Paper
• Gunpowder
• Any Dyes of your choice

Extra Effects:

• Feather
• Gold Nugget
• Fire Charge
• Wither Skeleton Skull (or any head in Creative mode; Wither Skeleton Skulls are the only ones available to players in Survival Mode)
• Glowstone Dust
• Diamond

Part 2: Learning to Craft Fireworks

Open up the old crafting grid! It's time to learn how to make basic fireworks! Get your basic materials, and let's get to it.

The first item you will need to make a firework is a Firework Star. It is simple to make, since none of the recipes involved with crafting fireworks have a specific shape. To make it, just place Gunpowder and your dye color of choice inside the grid, and you will get a Firework Star. Notice its shape is Small Ball, which is the default. Pretty self-explanatory.


Now that you have the Firework Star, you can add it to a rocket. To do that, just put paper and an extra unit of Gunpowder into the crafting grid, along with your firework star.


There is your firework! When you launch it, it will have all the traits of the star you created! Here is the one I made as it explodes.


Before we get into different shapes and effects, there are a few other options we can use on our fireworks. For one, try adding more gunpowder when you make a firework. You can increase the duration of the firework's flight from 1, to either 2 or 3! 2 is usually ideal for visibility.



To demonstrate this, I set up a small row of dispensers. They each have a basic firework, only with different flight durations and color (to distinguish between them better). The rockets increase in length going from right to left, from 1 to 3, with 1 being red, 2 being lime, and 3 being yellow.


This is the result:


Some brief tidbits: you can use multiple dye colors when crafting a single firework star, and you can have multiple stars in one rocket! So, you can do craziness like this...


I guess the multiple stars is only for adding extra colors, in terms of what we are currently doing. I sort of expected to see two explosions, apart from each other... We will have to try using stars with two totally different shapes.

The final option for this segment is a fade-out. To do that, throw more dye onto an existing star, like this:


Here are some photos of the explosion!

Exploding...


Fading...


Faded.


Part 3: Shaping Your Firework

Alright. On to the final segment! In this part, I will run you over all the different shapes you can use, and the ingredient you will need for it. To change your firework's shape, add an ingredient when you are initially crafting the star, like this.


Okay. Now for a run-through of all the different shapes and effects. Here we go! After this, we will do the little two-shapes experiment. The fireworks used will all have no special effects added other than the one being shown. Also, I've used Red as a default all post. Let's shake it up and use lime!

Feather: Burst
This shape has no particular form.


Gold Nugget: Star-Shaped
Looks like how one would imagine a 3-dimensional star to look: kind of like a spiny ball.


Fire Charge: Large Ball
This one is exactly like the default shape; Small Ball, only larger, and with more sparkles!


Wither Skeleton Skull/Head: Creeper Face
Inspired by everyone's favorite (or quite possibly least favorite) monster! <3


Glowstone: Sparkle (effect)
Adds an extra shimmer to your explosions, and makes a satisfying crackle, like a bowl of Rice Krispies. Since it's an effect, not a shape, you can add this in with any shape ingredient you want. It's a bit hard to see on the screenshot. You will have to try it for yourself!


Diamond: Trail (effect)
The explosion now has a tail, like the white willow fireworks you see at most celebrations involving fireworks.


 We are almost done here for this week, but since I said I'd try this, here is a firework with two stars: one is a purple Large Ball, and the other is a green Creeper Face.


It worked as expected: both explosions happen at the same time. Although, I have seen servers make fireworks behave differently than what's possible normally, on custom servers.

So, that concludes this week's post. As always, your feedback is very much appreciated, and thanks for stopping by my blog. I'll see you all next post. Until then!