Forgot password
Enter the email address you used when you joined and we'll send you instructions to reset your password.
If you used Apple or Google to create your account, this process will create a password for your existing account.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Reset password instructions sent. If you have an account with us, you will receive an email within a few minutes.
Something went wrong. Try again or contact support if the problem persists.

Minecraft Earth Guide: Tips & Tricks on Getting Lots of Tappables

This article is over 5 years old and may contain outdated information

Minecraft Earth has officially entered early access for most of the world, and all miners are welcome to join! Using GPS data and augmented reality technology, Minecraft Earth brings the beloved game to the real world in a spectacular way.

Recommended Videos

Today, we will go over the basics of the game and how to make the most of your experience. We will also show you how to level up in a swift manner, so let’s get started with our Minecraft Earth tips and tricks guide on getting tappables and leveling up quickly!

Welcome to Minecraft Earth!

Minecraft Earth takes the survival crafting sandbox game that the entire universe loves and throws it into the real world. Now, you can see pigs and cows run amuck inside your own living room!

That is only a part of it, though. The tutorial in Minecraft Earth is VERY brief, and it only teaches you the basics of tappables. So, we will go over the core loop of the game in more detail.

You start off as Steve or Alex, and they will move around in relation to where you are in the real world. Yes, this is basically Pokemon Go but with a Minecraft theme! You will see various objects pop up around you – these are “tappables”.

Tappables are various blocks and entities from Minecraft, and you can add them to your inventory by tapping them rapidly. You will see many of them pop up around you, but you can only collect the ones that are within your range (the yellow circle around you).

In order to collect a variety of tappables and items, you are going to have to get out there and adventure in the real world!

What can you get from tappables?

Tappables come in different forms, and here is a list of the kinds of tappables you can expect to come across. Every tappable you find is worth some experience points, so they a major contributor to your experience pool.

  • Trees will give you logs that you can process into wooden planks. The type of log you get depends on the tree: there are oak trees, spruce trees, and birch trees.
  • Animals will give you… well, animals! The animal you see on the map is the one you get when you tap on it. Be sure to collect all the pigs, sheep, chickens, and cows!
  • Rocks will give you various basic minerals, such as cobblestone, stone, sand, granite, and more. You will need lots of cobblestone for crafting basic tools.
  • Hills will give you lots of different fauna, including dirt, red mushrooms, and different kinds of flowers. You can use these to make your buildplates pretty.
  • Chests are the rarest kind of tappable, and they provide you with pre-crafted rare items, like redstone mechanisms, TNT, note blocks, and much more!

Tappables randomly spawn all over the world, and there is no data yet on whether or not certain tappables spawn in specific places. So, if you are looking to earn a lot of tappables, simply open the game while you are on your daily commute or walk and take a look around!

You do not have to play for that long as there is a good chance you will see some immediate tappables spawn near you.

So what do you do with all this stuff?

We are glad you asked, miner! All of the goodies in your inventory can be used just like how they are used in Minecraft: for building and crafting! Let us explain “buildplates” and crafting to you.

Buildplates are little pieces of your own personal Minecraft world that you can build on and customize to your liking. If you tap on the button with the little castle on it, you can look at your buildplates. Your first one is given to you for free!

It is a small 8×8 buildplate, but you gotta start somewhere, right? You have two options: build and play.

In Build mode, you can use the blocks and items from your inventory to permanently make changes to the buildplate. You can use the tools to pick up items and mobs. When you are done, exit and your buildplate will save in its current state.

In Play mode, you will enter your buildplate with health. You can be hurt by hostile mobs in this mode, so be careful! Blocks now must be mined with the appropriate tools, and you can set up your own little adventures.

In Play mode, nothing is saved so do not worry about using too many items or blocks; when you leave Play mode you will revert back to the state you were before you started it.

Did you get all of that? Basically, think of Build mode as the “creative” mode and play mode as the “survival” mode, just like in the original Minecraft. Use build to set up interesting scenarios or battles, or just build a house if you want. Then use play to act it out and show it off!

Time to craft some stuff!

If you want to survive some of the adventures or make some of the fancier items, you are going to need to craft! The middle button will take you to the crafting screen, where you can craft or smelt.

In the crafting menu, you have access to five different categories: construction, nature, equipment, and items. Construction deals with building blocks and furniture while nature has refined blocks you find in the wild.

Equipment has all of the gear you need, and items has redstone mechanisms, interactive furniture, and more.

What you choose to craft is completely up to you and what you want to do. Do you want to build something cool on your buildplate? Why not craft some doors, beds, stairs, fences, planks, and other building blocks?

Want to build some crazy contraption? Visit the items section to see all of the different redstone mechanisms you can craft, like pressure plates, switches, levers, and more!

Adventure for some rare items!

If you are feeling a little daring, we have just a thing for you: adventures! When you are out and about in the real world, you may notice some particularly big tappables with glowing rays of light emitting from them. These are adventures!

Adventures are not tappables – they are actually preset buildplates that you can explore in play mode. The difference is that you can actually keep the stuff you find from the adventures in play mode, as opposed to play mode on your own buildplates.

Before you head off into an adventure, you will need the right tools for the job. We recommend a sword for fending off hostile mobs, a pickaxe for mining through the earth, an axe for cutting down trees, a shovel for digging through the softer minerals, and a bow for sniping mobs from afar (don’t forget the arrows!).

Adventures almost always have hostile mobs hidden within them, so it is important you bring a sword and ideally a bow, but it is not required. Since most build plates are not too wide or long, you will have to start digging down. Peek your head around to find soft spots, and start going down!

Most of the time there are some caverns hidden below the surface where you can find rare items and mobs that want to eat you, so defend yourself and grab that sweet loot!

Start working on your career challenges!

Now that you have dabbles in tappables, buildplates, and crafting, you can start working on progression! Much like the original game, Minecraft Earth is ultimately a sandbox game so you can do whatever you want without feeling pressured.

However, if you want to level up faster and unlock the later buildplates, you will need to earn more experience. You get experience points whenever you complete an adventure, find tappables, or complete a career/daily/weekly challenges.

There are three types of challenges: daily, weekly, and career. Daily and weekly challenges are limited time as suggested by their name, but if you manage to complete all of them you can get some rubies for your hard work.

If you want to focus on leveling up, start working towards career challenges. They offer nothing but high amounts of experience points, so they are the perfect way of leveling up. They also offer you a bit of guidance on what to do next if you like to follow some sort of progression route.

With a combination of exploration, tappable collecting, and challenge completing, you should be able to level up relatively quickly!

And that is our guide on leveling up quickly and getting lots of tappables in Minecraft Earth. This is just the beginning though, so stay tuned for more guides like our tips for getting more buildplates and rubies! In the mean time, if you have any other tips or tricks to share, let us know in the comments below!

Author
Image of Jeremy Kanjanapangka
Jeremy Kanjanapangka
Jeremy is a Content Writer for Touch, Tap, Play, and has been writing in the games journalism industry for almost a decade now. With a degree in English and a passion for games, he loves to talk and write about all kinds of games. While you can find him covering the latest and greatest games, there is a special place in his heart for RPGs, action-adventure games, fighting games, and anything Nintendo related.