Learning for the sake of learning is an exercise in futility. You will often end up losing focus and will never have achieved anything. You need to set a clear goal, and then figure out how to meet that goal.

What this means for Minecraft modding is that you shouldn’t set out to learn how to mod. You will learn how to add an item, a new material, a block, and a lot of basic things. But it will be a long time before you take the leap and create an actual mod.

Rather, you should figure out what you want to *create* first. Then figure out how to create that thing. It doesn’t hurt to keep your goals simple at first.

So that’s what this post is about. What do I want to create first?

Doc’s Dagger Mod

The design I’ve come up with is by no means original, but it should help me create something solid while I learn how to mod. I want to create an alternative weapon: a dagger.

The dagger will have 5 subtypes like any other tool: wooden, stone, iron, gold and diamond. Other mods could then extend this if they wanted to.

The dagger will do less damage than a sword but will attack faster. It will also have half the durability of a sword of the same type. It will not have a sweep attack – it will attack only one enemy at a time.

Players should be able to throw daggers. Doing so will cause the same damage as a melee attack. This will cost 1 durability if they hit a creature, or 2 durability if they hit a block. Thrown daggers will be recoverable provided they don’t break.

Until Next Time

So that’s the basic mod I’ve designed. By no means original, but it’s a simple goal that will leave me with a complete mod at the end. I’m confident I can learn how to do all/most of this. It won’t teach me *everything* there is to learn about Minecraft modding, but it will give me a start. And if I enjoy it, I can always design another mod after this one.