Light a Blasting Keg

Fancy blowing something up? Properly this time — not painting over a block, but a real keg, a hissing fuse, and a crater. We'll make one, light it by hand, and then do the clever version where you set it off from a safe distance with a plunger.

Here's the thing worth knowing first: a blast breaks blocks but you get nothing back from them. It's demolition, not mining — the pickaxe is still the only way to actually collect anything. So blowing a tunnel is fast, but you wave goodbye to whatever was in the wall. Fair trade for the fun.

Grab the parts

Open the chat with T (or /) and type this in:

/give blasting_keg

(You can make the keg properly too — mine a bit of Brimstone and Nitre, turn them with some coal into Black Powder, and wrap that in planks. The recipe book walks you through it. But /give is quicker while you're learning.)

You'll need a Magnesium Firestarter too, and that one you have to craft — put a Magnesium and an Iron Ingot side by side in the top row of your crafting grid.

Set your keg down

Pop a Blasting Keg on some open ground, well away from your house or anything you'd miss. Right now it's just a quiet wooden barrel. It won't do a thing until you light it.

Light the fuse — then run

Right-click the keg with the Magnesium Firestarter. You'll hear the fuse catch. You've got about four seconds — so don't admire your work, leg it. Get a few blocks back, behind a wall if there's one handy.

Boom. A crater roughly eight blocks across (the blast reaches about four blocks in every direction from the keg), right where it was. And notice — no blocks dropped for you to pick up. That's the rule doing its job.

You did it. Try setting one off next to bedrock sometime — the bedrock just shrugs it off. Some blocks are simply too tough to break.

The clever version — blow it from a distance

Once that's fun, here's the proper demolition trick:

/give blasting_keg
/give plunger
/give cable

Place a keg, run a line of Cable from it to where you'll stand, and put a Plunger Detonator at your end of the wire. Now push the plunger — the pulse races down the cable and lights the keg from right where you're safely standing.

(You can craft the Plunger Detonator too — an Iron Ingot, a Copper Cable, and an Oak Plank in a row across the top of your crafting grid.)

Run cables to three or four kegs from one plunger and a single push sets them all off at once. Or hide a pressure plate on the wire and let someone walk into the bang. That's a story you can take as far as you like.