Minecraft

Modes

Survival mode

In survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from monsters, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game, except in peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is depleted, automatic healing will stop and eventually health will deplete. Health replenishes when players have a nearly full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful difficulty.

Players can craft a wide variety of items in Minecraft. Players can craft armour, which can help mitigate damage from attacks, while weapons such as swords can be crafted to kill enemies and other animals more easily. Players acquire resources to craft tools, such as axes, shovels, or pickaxes, used to chop down trees, dig soil, and mine ores, respectively; e.g. tools made of iron perform their tasks more quickly than tools made of stone or wood and can be used more heavily before they break. Players can construct furnaces which can smelt food, process ores and materials, among others. Players may also trade goods with villager NPCs through a bartering system involving trading emeralds for different goods, and vice versa.

The game has an inventory system, and players can carry a limited number of items. Upon dying, items in the players' inventories are dropped, and players re-spawn at their spawn point, which is set by default where players begin the game, and can be reset if players sleep in a bed. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn, which takes 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, breeding animals, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armour and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects.

Hardcore mode is a survival mode variant that is locked to the hardest setting and has permadeath, which permanently deletes the world if the player dies. If a player dies on a multiplayer server set to hardcore, they are put into spectator mode.

Aftermath
(Above) Survival Mode in Minecraft, the health and hunger bar are present in this mode

Creative mode

In creative mode, players have access to all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or remove them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters do not take any damage and are not affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance.

The_End
The Minecraft creative mode inventory, allowing the player to access every block in the game

Modes continued

Adventure mode

Adventure mode was added to Minecraft in version 1.3; it was designed specifically so that players could experience user-crafted custom maps and adventures. Gameplay is similar to survival mode but introduces various player restrictions, which can be applied to the game world by the creator of the map. This forces players to obtain the required items and experience adventures in the way that the map maker intended. Another addition designed for custom maps is the command block; this block allows map makers to expand interactions with players through scripted server commands.

Spectator mode

Spectator mode allows players to fly around through blocks and watch game play without directly interacting. In this mode, instead of having an inventory, players have the ability to teleport to other players. It is also possible to view from the perspective of another player or creature. This game mode can only be accessed within the Java or PC edition.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer in Minecraft is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, LAN play, local split screen, and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). It enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. Players can run their own servers, use a hosting provider, or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live. Single-player worlds have local area network support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators (op for short), who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs.

One of the largest and most popular servers is Hypixel, which is visited by over 14 million players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. Many servers have custom plugins that allow actions that are not normally possible. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use IP addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, it was announced that Realms would enable Minecraft to support cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018.

A first spawn in Minecraft
(Above) Realms, one of the multiplayer functions in Minecraft

(Below) Minecraft hardcore mode, where upon death the player cannot respawn and the world is deleted

A first spawn in Minecraft