Minecraft Recipes for Dummies: Portable Edition (For Dummies Series) Paperback – January 1, 2014

I loved that it made it possible to play mind craft with my son. I am not a video gamer at all and this helped me to under stand it. I liked that it was written by a parent kid combo.

Great shape

My 9 year old daughter is really into Minecraft and loves to read. She read through this whole thing within 1 week and is very happy Santa gave her this for Christmas. Some of the things in the book she already knew but what she didn't know the book explained very clearly how to do the different things. One of her friends parents bought the book as well based upon my daughters experience.

For a Noob at this game, it gave me a plethora of information and a quick "how to" guide to sit along side my computer as I played. I was able to quickly find what I needed to further my progress in the game. Best used in small doses so as to not be overwhelmed. I would recommend this to novices, it may not help those that are more advanced, but I am sure there's something in there for everyone who loves this game! Thanks for enhancing my game play!

Outdated with the new potions brewing system, doesn't have an exhausted list nor does it really tell you much about how to get the ingredients. Not very impressed.

I bought this for my 6 year old son for Christmas. I don't know much about Minecraft but this book is a great reference for all of the necessary recipes. He is constantly referencing it.

It is a good book for recipes in mine craft five star rating if you like mine craft get this book

Grandson and granddaughter are both happy with book. Finding "recipes" they did not know about for Minecraft.

Just what my son was looking for to help improve his crafting

pretty much what I know

My husband uses this for Minecraft PS4 everytime he plays. He found this quite useful.

Firstly let's clear up a mistake the dummy reviewing this book made. Just above the title of this book are the words 'Portable Edition'. Being a bit of an old duffer, I conflated 'portable edition' with 'pocket edition'. Pocket Edition as any nine year old will tell you is Minecraft on a phone or tablet. Portable edition refers to these slimmer narrower Dummies guides. The information in this book is not just for Minecraft PE. Realising this earlier would have saved me lots of conversations with my son that went something like,'What about Prismarine?'*sigh* 'not in the pocket edition Dad...''Granite?'*sigh* 'not in the pocket edition Dad...'So I gleefully noted lots of errors and omissions, ready to unleash a toxic review on this piece of misleading filth. Thankfully the pocket/portable thing dawned on me early enough. I'd lost some time but I still had my face.It wasn't time entirely wasted. There was some good father-son bonding, even with the sighing and poking around on Minecraft wikis I learned more about what my children spend a great deal of their lives doing, namely building stuff out of cubes. In my day this was called Lego and hurt a lot more if you trod on it.So the book then.Firstly, it has recipes from various platforms (PC, PE, Raspberry Pi and console) in it, which is certainly a good thing. It's a Dummies guide, so a no-frills how to do it. These books are never style over substance, (again a good thing) but it is at least full colour. My son has read until broken the  Minecraft primers  . I can't really recommend these enough. If you're looking for a way into Minecraft for your child, you'll struggle to find anything better. This however is for a different crowd, it sort of assumes that you know the basics of how to play, and are into making as many different things as possible. It's more akin to Scholastic's latest blockbuster (get it!) the  Minecraft Blockopedia ; a book I haven't bought, because what would be the point?Which leads me onto the rub with this book. It's very nice. If you want a book with all the Minecraft recipes in, it does the job well. I've had the information checked a verified by a independent expert and he tells me it's good. He was vaguely interested in Prismarine, which is something he hadn't encountered before, but other than me asking him to take a look a few times, he has never picked it up. Why? Because he uses Minecraft an awful lot. He talks about it seemingly endlessly with his friends. They know all this stuff back to front. They pick it up by osmosis. If I'd paid for this book, I'd have wasted my money.It's possible, of course, you have dropped into Minecraft in isolation, haven't really played it before and don't have anybody to talk to about it. In which case you're probably an adult. Then you might want the book as a handy reference guide. Even then, you're on a computer, Google what you want to know. It's all there, catalogued by lifeforms far more geeky than you can possibly imagine. I can see the appeal of the Blockopedia for adults. It looks nice, wonderfully tactile and best of all it's a cube! It is, essentially, a coffee table book for people whose caffeine comes in Coke cans. The Dummies guide? It's functional, but it has a function you don't really need.In any case isn't it cheating? To my mind the interesting bit of Minecraft, if you're playing Survival mode, is working out what you can and can't build. If you're going to copy it out of a book, you might as well just play in Creative. Finally, the game will evolve and the book won't; another thing not in its favour. With a cover price that comes in under the price of some of the unofficial magazines I've bought, this is a decent quality product, but with all the information already out there already, you have to ask yourself do I really need it? Minecraft primers Minecraft Blockopedia

Minecraft is somewhat of a phenomenon. Starting from humble beginnings as recently as June 2009, Minecraft has turned from something that most people hadn't heard of, into something that seems to divide people into "love it" or "can't see the point" camps. One of the core features of Minecraft is exploration and experimentation, with seemingly endless possibilities for the player to discover. In fact there's so much to discover, that even if you are like my son and put some serious hours into playing Minecraft, you will struggle to discover everything. But more than that, at first Minecraft can be quite intimidating to play if you are used to having some guidance as to what to do.There are a plethora of guides online and in books, including several Mojang licenced books dealing with specifics. I have the Redstone Handbook, the Combat Handbook and the Redstone Handbook, all of which are very good. So I review this "Dummies" book against its peers.Guide books are a little like teachers. A good teacher can fire students' interest in a subject and get them excited about what they are learning. Bad teachers can put you off a subject completely. Then there are the average teachers, who don't fire any enthusiasm, but do a fair job of explaining the subject. With that metaphor in mind, Minecraft Recipes for Dummies is a fairly average teacher. It covers the subject well, from fairly simple starter "recipes" up to fairly complex creations. It's a good "How to" reference book but, despite its' claim to be "quick, easy and fun", I didn't find it particularly fun. The Mojang books are far more engaging in my opinion. Maybe some more colour would help?Regardless, if you only want one reference book, and want it purely for reference, this is not bad at all. It really does cover a LOT of Minecraft and will explain pretty much everything you might need to know about Minecraft.