Minecraft: Guide to Farming Review

February 21, 2019 at 10:29pm
By Jason Stettner

While I consider myself to be incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to Minecraft, I was pleasantly surprised by this book. This is a visually guided hard copy filled with text, diagrams and hints to become a successful farmer within the game. I thought it would be rather straight forward, but there's a lot going on within these binded pages. I thought I knew almost all of the farming process, but this one certainly goes beyond what I now believe are the basics. In this guide to farming you get to explore a number of categories. These categories come in the form of four sections; crops, animals, mobs and blocks.

The last two might sound odd, but you can indeed harvest the bad creatures and the very world you explore in unique ways. What I really liked about this book was that it presented the basic method for farming any particular item, gave you a list of required ingredients and presented a detailed setup. You got to view a visual aid for each item, then go a step forward. Moving from just the basic setup you'd get methods for collecting a resource through automation or improving your method with better proficiency options. There are also recipes for any special items you might build, tips on the general game and further concepts that expand what you can do with what you've just created.

The book is cleanly presented with a white and green color theme. You can tell its Minecraft based, but it comes across as more of a professional offering. The pages are precise, typically offering an image and then small written blurbs around them. There are highlight tips and other little facts placed throughout. It's generally presented in a simple, and streamlined formula. I believe that this should be an easy guide to understand, offering something for all audiences.

It has layers of complexity, but it gives all the steps so that anyone could become effective at all methods of farming that were presented within it. It really does seem to cover all elements of this activity within the game. It goes over all of the food types, even obscure ones and a wide range of mobs from the title. I will mention that the content is pre-Aquatic update so it's missing out on recent critters such as Fish; Turtles, Pandas and Foxes. Other than that, it's quite up to date.

The Conclusion

The Minecraft: Guide to Farming book brings detailed instructions and a wealth of information on this specific element of the game. I don't believe this would be difficult for any audience to understand and it's a good read. There are many great tips, and an in-depth look at advanced farming techniques. You get the whole process that's necessary to learn from humble basics, to a more automated process that makes crop collection easier.

This is carried throughout the entire book, whether you're wanting to efficiently maximize crop yield, generate more blocks for building or to harvest even the most deadly of mobs out there. They really cover it all in here, some of the Minecraft automatic farm options were very fascinating and I look forward to applying them within future world builds.

Minecraft: Guide to Farming Book Review
Author: Alex Wiltshire
ISBN: 9781101966433
Review Copy Provided by Penguin Random House Canada

Rating Overall: 8.5