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If you’ve been playing Minecraft for more than a few minutes, then you already realize the importance of cobblestone. It’s an extremely useful material for a variety of applications, which is why you may want to learn how to make a cobblestone generator.
Having one of these can simplify your construction projects and save you time. It also allows you to leave the terrain in your environment untouched and pristine.
What Is Cobblestone in Minecraft?
Cobblestone is one of the most important types of blocks that you can mine in Minecraft. It’s essential for creating many of the basic stone tools and it’s a foundational element in building design, especially when you’re starting out.
You can find cobblestone in many places. It’s present underneath the first few layers of dirt in most biomes, so often all you have to do is dig down far enough and you’ll stumble upon it. Many times, it will simply be in exposed rock on the side of a cliff. This is one of the easier ways to get some. It’s also common in the dark caverns deep in the earth.
Watch out for monsters while you’re down there, though!
Cobblestone is automatically generated in the landscape, but it can also be generated by contact between lava and water. You may have noticed this if you’ve ever lurked inside a cave and gone deep enough to see the lava flows. Sometimes you’ll see a spread of cobblestone along the ground surrounding a lava waterfall near a water source.
What Is a Cobblestone Generator?
A cobblestone generator is a simple “machine” that you can build for yourself that will make unlimited cobblestone. This way, you don’t have to hunt for your cobblestone or dig deep in the ground for it.
Sometimes it’s easy to find cobblestone in the environment, like on the side of a cliff. If you build a huge structure, though, you may eventually run out in the more obvious places and you’ll have to start digging. In some biomes—like the desert biome, for instance—it can actually be a bit hard to find exposed cobblestone at all.
You may also find that you don’t want to dig up the terrain around you for aesthetic reasons. Maybe you have a really beautiful yard and you don’t want to mess things up by mining for cobblestone.
This is where the cobblestone generator comes in. It takes advantage of the fact that lava and water mix to make cobblestone, and it results in a simple, automated method for generating cobblestone blocks.
When it comes to how to make a cobblestone generator, it’s just a matter of gathering materials that any beginner could get their hands on. These generators can be simple or have a complex design—but we’ll focus on making one that will only require you to dig a few holes.
Materials to Make a Cobblestone Generator in Minecraft
You don’t need much to make a cobblestone generator. It only requires four—maybe five—materials:
- 2 buckets
- 1 shovel (optional)
- Water
- Lava
How to Make the Buckets
The first thing you’re going to need are some buckets to hold the liquids—in this case, water and lava. There’s no difference between a water bucket and a lava bucket, but you’ll want to make two buckets so that you can carry both at the same time.
To make a bucket, you’ll need three iron ingots. You get these by mining iron ore and smelting it into iron ingots.
If you have no iron at all, you may be able to find some iron ore exposed on the side of a cliff, but you’ll usually have to dig for it. Iron ore blocks look a bit like cobblestone blocks, but with rusty red particles in them. Once you smelt enough iron ore in a furnace and get three ingots, you will add them to your crafting table.
Place one ingot in the middle square of the bottom row, one on the first square of the middle row, and one in the last square of the middle row. This will make a bucket for you. Do this twice to get two buckets and put them in your inventory. You’ll have to go looking for the lava and water after that.
How to Make the Shovel
The shovel is easy enough to make. If you want a stone shovel, you’ll just need two sticks and a piece of cobblestone. They go in the middle column of the crafting grid—the cobblestone goes on top and the two sticks go in the squares below.
What if you don’t have any cobblestone, though? After all, you don’t know how to make a cobblestone generator yet, right? No problem, you can just make a wooden shovel. Replace the cobblestone block in the crafting recipe with any type of wood planks.
If you want a fancier shovel, you can make them out of iron, gold, or even diamond as well. You can also just dig with your hands, which is what we recommend since you’re not going to need to dig much to make the generator.
Where to Get the Water
There should be a body of water nearby, but if you can’t find one, you could also try digging until you find some source of groundwater. By far the easiest way is to just keep walking until you find a lake or pond, though. If you’re in a desert biome, you may have to go to a wetter one.
Once you find the water, just dip your bucket in and put the full bucket in your inventory.
Where to Get the Lava
Lava is a bit harder to find than water, usually. Sometimes it is exposed and flowing at the surface. In that case, it’s easy to just take your second bucket and scoop some up. Often, though, you will have to dig and walk around in some caves until you find some lava.
If you happen to see the mouth of an underground cave at night and there is light coming from inside of it, this is also a good sign that there is lava down there.
Just as with the water, dip your bucket in the lava and put it in your inventory. Be careful, though, since lava can be dangerous. Never touch it directly or you could catch on fire.
How to Make a Cobblestone Generator in Minecraft
Finally, let’s discuss how to make a cobblestone generator once you have all of your materials.
How to Make a Cobblestone Generator: The Simple Way
The simplest way to make a cobblestone generator is like this:
- Dig a trench in the dirt that is six blocks long, one block wide, and one block deep.
- In one of the middle blocks of the trench itself, dig another one-block hole so that it’s deeper in that one spot. This is where the fluids will meet and your cobblestone will be born.
- Pour your water on one side.
- Pour your lava on the opposite side.
- If you’ve done everything right, a cobblestone should appear in the center block between the two liquids. Mine the cobblestone and you will notice that another cobblestone appears to take its place! This is how to make a cobblestone generator that endlessly produces more cobblestone. Just keep mining and you’ll have all the cobblestone that you want without having to damage any of the landscape.
- There are a few things that you should keep in mind, though: when pouring the water, be careful not to allow it to touch the source of the lava. If it does, this will turn it into obsidian instead of cobblestone and your lava will disappear as well. Obsidian is a really strong block, but it’s kind of a pain to work with because it can only be mined with a diamond pickaxe.
- Another thing to watch out for is the cobblestone block falling into the lava itself when you mine it, which can cause you to lose the cobblestone. There are a few ways around this, but the easiest way is to build a cover around the lava so that the cobblestone can’t drop into it. This will also keep you from falling into the lava yourself!
How to Make a Cobblestone Generator: The Fancy Way
There are variations on this simple idea that automate the cobblestone generator. For example, you can add a piston to the system that pushes the cobblestone out of the way periodically, so that the generator can make more cobblestone without your having to mine it right away.
This is more advanced stuff, though. You’ll have to learn how to create a piston, a clock circuit, and other elements that would allow you to automate the process. For now, start with the simple version and then add components as you improve and refine the design.
Conclusion
If you’re sick of having to go searching around the landscape to find cobblestone to mine, then making a cobblestone generator might be exactly what you need. It’s particularly convenient when you’ve found an area that you really like and you don’t want to mess up the terrain. It makes it easier to settle down in a single area without having to make long trips underground, too.
These generators are very easy to make even if you only have simple tools. With a couple of buckets and some lava and water, you can make endless cobblestone to suit all of your needs in Minecraft.