Today’s block of the week is arguably the most fascinating block in Minecraft PE. Its complexity allows it to be utilized in nearly every aspect of the game—from stopping zombies that wander into your base to gathering vast amounts of resources or even building a functioning computer within MCPE.
When redstone was first introduced in version Alpha 1.0.1, it was originally called “Red Ore Dust“, and stepping on it would break it. This feature was quickly removed, and the block was renamed to Redstone in patch 1.0.4. Since then, its capabilities in Minecraft Pocket Edition have expanded significantly—starting from the early addition of compasses and clocks through dispensers and notebooks to its more recent role in potion-making and beyond!
You can typically find redstone in the lower 16 layers deep beneath the surface in MCPE. It usually appears in large veins of 4-8 blocks, each yielding 4-5 pieces of redstone along with some experience when mined using an iron pickaxe or better. Naturally, you’ll gain more with items enchanted with Fortune.
The ore itself lights up upon being pressed or touched, meaning you can use it alongside an observer block as a pressure plate that detects contact from any side of the block, not just the top. Another fact that some may not know is that you can also “charge” redstone ore with light by illuminating it with brighter sources. It will then emit that level of brightness when activated until it breaks or is deactivated.
Redstone can be placed in lines that transmit signals between various blocks to create circuits in Minecraft PE. These circuits can range from something simple like a switch opening a door to something complex like a computer in-game. Explaining how this works fully in a block of the week article might be too complicated; however, you can read about redstone on Minecraft Wiki for more details.
Instead, let me share a bit about my first redstone creation. I hadn’t been playing long, but I built a massive wheat farm that I harvested and replanted whenever half of the field had fully grown. This quickly became tedious. So, I unleashed my engineering skills to tackle this issue. Take that, problem!
I constructed a garden on a hillside that, with the flick of a switch, would release a stream of water across the farmland, carrying all the harvested wheat and seeds into a small container below, where I could collect them. I was so proud; I encased everything in glass and gathered a crowd of friends to witness my success with the switch for the first time.
I flipped the switch, and it worked! The water flowed down the steps as planned, and I collected a pile of wheat effortlessly in mere minutes. But then I realized… I had to replant all the seeds again. I had no choice but to make my way back to the machine and manually sow each piece of farmland with new seeds.
