Minecraft: Here’s How To Use ‘Can Be Placed On’ & ‘Can Destroy’ Commands

Minecraft is a game of endless possibilities, and everything you develop can likely be transferred into the game. You can play Pokemon in Minecraft or even have guns. You can create maps to have fun mini-games or let players solve weird puzzles. Commands are crucial to making these possible, so how and where would you use the ‘can be placed on and ‘can destroy’ commands in Minecraft?

Explaining what adventure mode is

Do you know how almost every other game besides Minecraft has a preset map and intuitively leads you where you need to go, either through NPCs that guide you or missions you must complete to advance? You can do all that in adventure more. Of course, you’d have to develop a story, download a few mods, and set everything up for other players to enjoy, but adventure mode can be used for all that and more.

So how does Adventure Mode make this happen? In this mode, you can’t destroy any blocks, so the environment and the look of a map are preserved and, for the most part, won’t distract you from reaching the ultimate goal. Of course, not all blocks should stay unbreakable or unplaceable, so to counteract this, you would use the ‘can destroy’ and the ‘can be placed on’ commands to counteract that.

Playing in adventure mode

Adventure mode can be placed on Bedrock and Java Edition Minecraft, and getting to it is the same. By default, Minecraft won’t allow you to set the world to adventure mode, so the only way to do it is to create a creative or survival mode world with cheats enabled. So, you’d go into Singleplayer and click on the Create New World Option. From there, You have to allow cheats and then create the world.

Then, it’s time to go into your chat and type in the command /gamemode adventure, and you’re all set. If you want to make an existing world an adventure world but you don’t have cheats enabled in it, I suggest going into this world and entering the settings. Then, click Open, allowing you to make it a world with cheats enabled. Quick note, this way, you’ll always have to do it like this once you exit the world.

NBT tags

NBT tags used to be called Data Tags. The ‘can be placed on’ and ‘can destroy’ commands are NBT tags and commands, as previously referred to. These tags allow you to set a property for an entity or mob, and they go beyond just the two. They can be used as part of commands like /summon, /fill, /data, /give, and more. For this article, we’ll use the /give the command for the two tags we’re discussing.

Each entity and mob in Minecraft has its unique set of tags, so remembering them all might be trying to shoot for the stars, but they can also be neatly found in many places for all mobs and entities. Take, for example, the player’s NBT tags. There are around 40 categories of NBT tags for the player, and each category has many of these tags that can be used.

They allow you to change how the game functions at its core literally. Of course, not all entities have this many tags, but it shows you there’s no point in remembering them all.

Explaining the commands

Now, onto explaining each piece of the commands and what’s interchangeable in these commands. Let’s start by dissecting the can be placed on command. /give @p [block type] 1 0 {CanPlaceOn:["minecraft:[block_type]","minecraft:[block_type]"]}.

As I said, the NBT tags are always separated with {} squiggly brackets. The give command is self-explanatory and will give the player the wanted block, which we’ll define in the first [] bracket. Of course, you’d type in the type of block without the use of brackets. The one after defines how many blocks you’ll get

Now, in the squiggly lines, you first define the NBT tag and then the exact block type that you can place the first block type next to or on. In this case, I opted for allowing one block type to be placed next to two block types so, for example, you could place a stone block next to a diamond and a netherite block. Remove the comma and the excess [] bracket at the end to allow just one block to be placed. If the command doesn’t work for you in newer game versions, place the one that defines how many blocks the player will get after you’ve closed all the brackets. It’ll look something like this. /give @p stone{CanPlaceOn:["minecraft:diamond_block"]} 1.

‘Can Destroy’

The command looks something like this /give @p minecraft:diamond_pickaxe 1 0 {CanDestroy:["minecraft:stone","minecraft:stonebrick"]} is pretty self-explanatory. Blocks can usually be broken with tools, so you’d give the player a tool like a pickaxe to allow the player to destroy blocks, such as stone and stone bricks. Again, if it doesn’t work in newer game versions, replace it with the /give @p minecraft:diamond_pickaxe {CanDestroy:["minecraft:stone","minecraft:stonebrick"]} 1 command.

You can type this command using the regular command window but insert the command into a command block and make it dispense a block every time the player presses a button.

Expanding on the commands

You can do a ton with just these two commands in Minecraft, but players seem to use them most when creating custom maps for PvP, such as puzzles and escape rooms. You don’t have to limit yourself to just that, and you don’t have to use the commands to adventure mode to achieve the same.

In the example of escape rooms, unless you truly care about the look of the escape room, you can easily make the walls out of bedrock, and since it can’t be broken in survival, you won’t end up with a player escaping unless they solved the puzzle.

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