Kids Code & Computer Science

A huge draw of Minecraft is its near-limitless world, but imagine if that suddenly got taken away. Welcome to SkyFactory 4, a modpack that it’s less about exploration and more about being creative with minimal tools.

How minimal? As small as it gets. When you spawn into SkyFactory 4, you have access to two resources; a tree and the dirt block it’s standing on. You start at the top of the tree. Everything else around you is a bottomless void that you do not want to fall into.

So what fun is it if you only have a tree and a single dirt block? Well, with some manipulation of Minecraft’s mechanics, plus a little help from the mods that come with SkyFactory 4, it’s actually a lot more interesting than you would think.

Sapling Starters

For instance, when you break a tree’s leaves in Minecraft, it can drop a sapling to grow another tree. This means that you can dig down through the tree’s trunk until you hit the dirt, make wooden blocks with the trunk blocks, then make a wooden platform around the dirt and catch any saplings that fall from the leaves.

You can then plant these saplings where the tree once stood and have them grow. It takes a while for a tree to grow, so now’s the time to make use of one of the mod’s additions. Repeatedly press the crouch button near the tree and it should show some green sparkles around the sapling. Continue doing this and the tree should eventually grow.

Now you have an unlimited source of wood, but things would be very boring if you could only make wood stuff. Fortunately, SkyFactory 4 also has an acorn system, which allows you to make things you would otherwise find in Minecraft.

Acorn Accessories

For example, trees can drop acorns that correspond to a specific element. You might find some Dirt Acorns as you farm your trees. If you combine these with the Dirt Resin you get from trees, you can make a dirt block, making room for more trees. You can also make a crook to ensure you get more saplings.

From here, you can make a drying rack, and dry out some of the Dirt Acorns. This creates Petrified Acorns; combine 8 of these around a Dirt Sapling for a Petrified Sapling. You can use this to make stone, and then a furnace.

You can also combine some of the Dirt and Petrified resources to make Clay saplings, which give you clay you can make into bonsai trays. These trays grow mini versions of whatever tree you plant and automatically harvest them from you.

I will leave it at this point since you’re best off exploring the modpack for yourself. As it turns out, there’s a lot you can do with just a tree and a dirt block!

Learn More