Minecraft: 6 Beginner Tips For Create

Create some amazing contraptions with this Minecraft mod!

Create is a mod that brings Minecraft to a completely new level. Made by simibubi, Create is part science, part engineering, and completely aimed at making your Minecraft life a little easier. Create automates everything from cutting down trees to delivering items with the click of a button, and comes with aesthetic material to make your home look amazing.

Related: Best Open-World Games Where You Can Build A House

It's a fairly straight forward mod that requires only a little bit of tinkering to get familiar with it. But finding the starting point of a big mod can be difficult. Where can you look when you're wondering where to start?

If you pause the game, you'll see a small icon with a pair of goggles on it next to the menu options. Click that, and go into the Ponder Index, where you'll find visual tutorials of how to build most of Create's basic machines. The Ponder Index also introduces you to the materials you'll need most in your Create journey, like Andesite, Copper, Zinc, Gold and Brass.

In game, you can also hover on Create machines and components, then press W to ponder and find out how they work. The Ponder Index is an invaluable resource — be sure to make good use of it.

Create, like most mods, introduces some of its own base materials — Andesite alloy, Zinc, Brass, and Rose Quartz. It also introduces new variants on common ores — crushed, nuggets, and sheets — that you'll use in your creations.

Zinc can be found among the normal ores, while Andesite alloy, Brass, and Rose Quartz are made from material you'll find anywhere in the Minecraft world. There's more, but these are the basics for what you'll need to get started with your Create adventures. Get to mining — that Andesite isn't going to find itself!

Cogwheels are a cornerstone of Create. Most early-game machines need them, and you will never have enough. Cogwheels are necessary for both creating and powering machines. You can make small ones in stacks of eight, and big ones in stacks of two, using wood and Andesite alloy. They also make for a great decoration if you're trying to achieve a steam punk look, or an engineer's lab.

Related: Minecraft: The Best Ways To Get XP Fast

Always make sure you have a few on hand, as well as some gear boxes, because you're going to be doing some wild things to get your machines to work. Worry about cutting it down later. Your first job is figuring out what you need to get each machine to turn. Whether you choose to pare down on the number of gears or keep them for decoration, you'll be happy to have as many as you can possibly make.

Create involves so much more than machines. The first thing you'll want to build, once you have your materials ready, is a Mechanical Press. It's a fairly simple machine that can be powered by a Water Wheel, and will press ingots into sheets. Get yourself some gold sheets, then make your next two most important tools — the goggles and wrench.

The goggles let you see how fast an energy source is moving, and the wrench will help you change the direction something is facing, allowing you to rearrange how you connect Cogwheels to a machine. You might be able to live without goggles, but you won't get far without the wrench.

A Water Wheel will be your first source of energy. It's slow, and will really only be good for early machines. Once you move on, you'll want to look into some of the faster energy sources, which will be able to keep up with your advancements. Equipped with your goggles, you'll be able to see the Kinetic Stress Impact an energy source has on a machine. If a machine needs more energy than the source is outputting, you'll get an error about the source being Overstressed.

Related: Best Space Mods In Minecraft

At that point, you may need to graduate to a new energy source if you can't find a way to speed up the one you have. Note that speed and Stress are two different things. Speed is measured by rotations per minute (RPM), and is measure in increments of two, while Stress is measured in increments of 12. You'll need to figure out how to keep your stress low and speed high to get things done.

Create — like the name suggests — is all about breaking out of the box, going above and beyond, and expanding your imagination. Minecraft is a game all about flexibility and using what you have to make great things, but Create goes further by making all of your wildest dreams a reality.

If you can think it, you can build it. Everything from giant automation factories to a working rocket is at your disposal with just a few smaller pieces of a machine.

Next: Minecraft: Hardcore Survival Modpacks

Sam is a lifelong gamer (going all the way back to the NES era) and dedicated writer. They live in Missouri with their wife and four animals (two cats and two dogs), have an almost unhealthy obsession with JRPGs, and love finding new games to play - bonus if they're LGBTQIA-related.