<you> Follow me.
They come with you
On foot, at your pace, keeping up over hills and around water rather than teleporting to your shoulder. Say "wait here" and they stop where they are. Say "come here" from across the valley and they walk it.
Survival, by the rules
A Minecraft AI friend who has to earn the iron.
In survival Cog plays by the same rules you do, and nothing appears out of nowhere. To hand you iron armour they have to walk there, dig it, smelt it and make it, in that order, the way you would.
One sentence, eight steps
"Go and get some iron and make us armour."
One thing to say, eight things to do. Seven of those steps stay invisible until one is missed. Here is the whole chain, and what goes wrong at each link if you skip it.
- 1
Look in the bag
What is Cog carrying, and is any of it a pickaxe?
without itIron needs a stone pickaxe or better. Swing a wooden one at it and the ore breaks and gives back nothing at all.
- 2
Make what is missing
Cobblestone and sticks into a stone pickaxe, at a table.
without itIf the table is across the yard, Cog walks to it. A craft attempted out of reach is refused by the server, quietly.
- 3
Dig down
A staircase into the ground, one step at a time.
without itDigging the block under your own feet drops you onto whatever is below it, which is sometimes the ceiling of a lava pocket.
- 4
Light it behind them
A torch every few blocks on the way down.
without itAn unlit tunnel is a spawner by the time you want to walk back up it.
- 5
Mine the ore
Find it, tunnel across to it, break it.
without itRefused outright if the pickaxe cannot harvest it. Better to find out before the trip than at the ore.
- 6
Pick the drop up
Walk over what fell out of the block.
without itBreaking a block is not the same as holding the item. Stand three steps back and a perfect dig scores zero.
- 7
Build a furnace and smelt it
Eight cobblestone, put down, fed, and waited on.
without itRaw iron is not an ingredient in any recipe. And the wait is on what comes OUT, because a furnace with no fuel looks exactly like one that is working.
- 8
Craft it, and put it in the chest
Ingots into armour, armour into the chest.
without itThen counted back out of the chest. What is in there is the number you get told, not what was meant to go in.
The other things you say
Most of it is not an errand at all
<you> Stay here and watch the place.
They hold the ground
Cog picks up anything hostile that comes inside the ring you left them in and deals with it, and they break off if their own health drops rather than dying in your doorway. You get told what turned up.
<you> What have you got on you?
They count it out
You get the actual contents. Ask for nine iron and they hand over nine iron or say how many they really have. Ask them to put it in the chest and the number is read back out of the chest afterwards.
<you> Bring in the wheat.
They do the boring half
Harvesting, replanting and hauling: the parts of a farm that are work rather than play. You get the crop without spending twenty minutes walking rows.
The rule underneath
Nine iron means nine iron in the chest
Breaking a block in Minecraft drops the item on the ground; it does not fly into a bag. Stand three blocks back while you dig and you can break every block perfectly and come home with nothing at all. That is why Cog walks over the drop rather than counting the swing.
Every number they give you is counted out of the world afterwards, not out of what they meant to do. If they got seven of the nine, they say seven. The long version is a blog post.
Asked for9 iron
In the chest7 iron
Cog reports7 iron
When the sun goes down
What does Cog do at night?
About a minute before the mobs come out, Cog says so in chat ("it's getting dark, i'd better dig in"), stops what they are doing, keeps everything they have gathered, and hides. With a bed, they sleep through the night, which also makes the bed where they come back if they die. Without one, they dig three blocks down, seal the hole over their head, wait for the sun, and cut a staircase back out in the morning.
Cog also eats on their own. When they are nearly starving, or too hungry to heal, they eat whatever food they are carrying, whatever else they are in the middle of.
What it is like
An AI player who does the parts you would rather skip
- UnattendedSend Cog off and go and play. You hear when it is in the chest.
- A real staircaseCut down to the ore, rather than a hole dropped into the dark.
- Lit on the wayTorches as they go, so nothing spawns in behind them.
- Your rulesCog mines and crafts everything, the same as you have to.
When Cog cannot finish something, because the vein ran out or the way down was flooded, you get told that rather than an empty chest and a shrug.
Read next
Where to go from here
- Creative vs survivalWhen to reach for which.
- CapabilitiesEverything you can ask for, in both modes.
- VerificationHow a claim gets checked before you see it.
- For puristsWhether an AI in Minecraft is cheating, answered honestly.