This Minecraft player beat the game without mining a single block

Minecraft's name suggests it is, at its core, about two things: breaking blocks and building stuff. But one player has shown you don't need to mine a single block to reach the end credits—all you need is a few village raids, a couple of TNT blocks, a lucky end portal spawn and the odd skillful water bucket to save you from a great fall.

Hedgey started their run by jogging village to village, pinching anything that wasn't nailed down. Bread, apples, a few bits of armor: even planted seeds weren't safe when Hedgey stamped on them, causing them to burst from the ground. Well-stocked with food, Hedgey used creepers as pseudo-TNT to blow up trees, yielding wood for a crafting bench and a trusty boat.

After raiding shipwrecks they hunted desert pyramids, which proved fruitful looting spots. Armed with actual TNT this time, crafted from the remains of dead creepers, they blew holes in the floor to get at the chests, happening across the odd golden apple, which would prove useful against the Ender Dragon later.

Now with more iron armor, a shield and some decent weapons, Hedgey could venture into the Nether. Using the old lava and water bucket trick to make obsidian, they crafted a portal, jumped through, and sacked Nether fortresses for goodies, keeping an eye out for blazes, which they farmed for blaze rods.

After killing a bunch of endermen, and using their pearls to make the important eyes of ender, they went after the end portal, and got lucky: after finding the right spot, a nearby cave system led them straight to their target. Hedgey explained in the comments in this Reddit thread that they otherwise would've had to blast through the floor with TNT and hope for the best.

The final fight went smoothly enough, and it was punctuated by some nifty use of a water bucket to break some potentially deadly falls—the best one is around 9:55. You can watch the full video at the top of this post.

Oh, and if you're wondering (like I was), the shader pack is Sildur's Shaders, the enhanced default variant. If you want an alternative, here's our list of the best Minecraft shader packs.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.