Ex Nihilo (Minecraft) Wiki
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Welcome to Ex Nihilo! On this pages we want to show you how to get started with Minecraft and Skyblock, and show you the benefits of our mod. So, jump in!

What's this about?[]

What is Skyblock?[]

"Skyblock"[1] is the name of a Minecraft Map, invented by Noobcrew in year 2011. It was first released for Minecraft Version 1.3, where it contains a small overworld and a nether biome.

Skyblock was by the time embettered and further developed, but the main concept is and has always been to create an empire of almost nothing. In traditional Skyblock, this "nothing" consists of a small island floating in the sky, completely made out of dirt. On this island you will find a tree as well as a chest filled with some lava and ice. Around there is another island, made completely out of sand. On this island you can find a chest with some more stuff and a cactus of 3 blocks height.

By the time Skyblock gained high popularity amongst YouTube, and therefore many variants have been released for any versions of Minecraft. On a modded game new possibilities come to extend the standard concept. For example in "Sky Factory 2" the start island is reduced to one dirt block with a tree, as surviving with this is possible only due to Ex Nihilo.

What is Ex Nihilo?[]

That's the point where we come to this mod: "Ex Nihilo" is a mod created by Erasmus_Crowley[2] especially for the use in Skyblock-type maps. It adds many fun and interesting, but always useful stuff if you are having great plans with your world. Some of the blocks and items are also very useful in non-Skyblock maps.

For a detailed information about things added by the mod, see Category:Modded.

But for now you should get a small introduction about the mod without too much detail.

What does Ex Nihilo come with?[]

Ex Nihilo is under-the-roof packed with new stuff. Only one of that is the Barrel, which allows the player to get new dirt or (more important in Skyblock) collect Water from rain. You will especially in the first time get to use the Barrel quite often, but after having created an infinite water source, it may get less important. More often then you will use the Sieve: It allows you to get rare resources from hammered items easily, such as iron or gold. Using the Sieve on a dirt block, you may also get rare and ancient plants... Oh, and the next important tool for you is the Crook, being capable of increasing your sapling or Apple income drastically! Also, you may sometimes get a little Silkworm out of the leaves, which you can use to obtain string being a very rare resource...

Now, how do I get into it?[]

Sounds good, huh? But before you can play, you first have to do some easy steps:

Buy and install Minecraft[]

You may not forget that Minecraft is NOT a free game, and you will have to pay about 27$ to play it. Also to play you will have to download and install a working client from the official Mojang Website. But installing Minecraft may not be the topic of this article.

Fetch the Skyblock Map[]

WARNING: BEFORE this step, you may start Minecraft at least once! Otherwise you'll have a hard time following this step.

Go to the MinecraftForum Thread of Noobcrew's (or any other) map to download it. Then look for the zip file you made, and copy it to your Minecraft Directory. Extract it to the folder "saves" you will find there. If there's now a folder named as the map, and this folder contains some cryptical files such as "level.dat", then you're right.

Your Minecraft Directory[]

So, where do you find this? On Windows computers, just type "%appdata%/.minecraft" in the explorer navigation bar. This standard path is ALWAYS used by the Minecraft Launcher. However, the Launcher can handle more than one Minecraft profile, whereat the player can also redefine the game directory. If that's the case with you, find this folder, or try using another profile.

And there you are![]

You can now easily play Skyblock for Minecraft Vanilla. Just select the world (those are normally created a long time ago and therefore in a low place in the list) and start. Remember to follow the rules explained on the map forum thread!

I want MORE!!![]

So, simple Skyblock ain't enough for you? Try playing one of the various modpacks all over the web! They make your gameplay more difficult, more specified, but also a lot easier, more comfortable and broaden your blocky horizons! But before you can play like this, you first have to mod your Minecraft version.

Download the Forge client[]

Luckily, this is quite an easy step. For this, visit http://files.minecraftforge.net/. There pick the Minecraft version you want to install mods for, and download the installer that suits you best.

Which one do I need?[]

Forge comes with many options, but most of you will only need one: The "Universal JAR". Notice that you must have Java[3] installed to use it. If that's not the case and you are using Windows, you may take the .exe Installer file instead (Unfortunately, this ONLY works on Windows, but you need to have installed Java for Minecraft anyway).

Install Forge Mod Launcher[]

Now you have to open the recently downloaded file. If anything is well, a window should pop up with the Forge symbol in it. Here select the "Install Client" option, and type your Minecraft directory (see above; Normally, Forge automatically detects your standard Minecraft directory). NOTICE that at least for this step you must've started the selected Minecraft version in the selected directory at least once, because Forge uses the file downloaded to the "versions" directory then!

Fetch your mods[]

After a short time, Forge is (hopefully) successfully installed. You can now play Minecraft on the newly created profile "forge" in your Launcher. Then you can watch a new loading screen with an anvil. Well, for now it does almost nothing, and is gone soon. That's because you may not have any mods installed. But that's easy to fix: look for Minecraft mods of your version on the internet (By the time this is written, 1.7.10 mods are REALLY common, while there exists almost NO mod for 1.8.9+. Keep this in mind when installing Forge). After you downloaded the jar files, place them into the newly created folder "mods" in your Minecraft directory. Now restart your Forged Minecraft client. Congrats! You are now playing modded! You can see the number of installed and enabled mods in the home menu.

What about the modpacks?[]

Modpacks are downloaded in a similar way as single mods, but here you'll get a zip file instead of a jar archive (which is by the way technically a zip file with a Java ending). Place this file in a folder named "modpacks". Now all the mods, textures, structures, scripts,... of the pack should be installed on restart. Remember that for changes having effect you always have to restart!

Finally![]

And again you're done! Now you may just install mods as said above, or uninstall them by simply removing the file from the folder. Of course, if you wanna play Skyblock, my advice for you is to always keep Ex Nihilo installed, as it is quite a light-weighting mod (strangely). But hey, you're now complete with the first steps, so let's take your first steps!


References[]

  1. For more information, see the official MinecraftForum Thread
  2. See his MinecraftForum Thread for more information
  3. Visit the Java website do download

References[]

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