For years, I played Minecraft survival games strictly without cheating. But after many worlds, both vanilla and modded, I changed my approach to cut out excessive grind. There was a way to enjoy the game more, and reduce game lag.

Just like any creative work, an experienced crafter develops shortcuts and automation to spend more time creating and less time preparing and grafting. I shouldn't call these "cheats". They're commands that assist my preferred way of playing.

Avoid grind with the right commands

So to help me spend more time on the aspects I enjoy, I allow myself some cheats:

• Teleport between important places
• /give myself sustainable resources and their products
• Use a potion /effect to save time

That doesn't mean that every cheat is available. I only use the time-savers, not the cheats that enhance my ability or reduce risk.

Teleports

If you make a viable route between two important places, then set up teleport pads in creative mode, which transports you instantly between those places. You just need a command block with tp @p 12 64 -70 (your target location) as its command, and a pressure plate or something else to activate it.

If there are many such places, then create a teleport nexus that links out to all the other places. If the nexus is near your main base, then when you teleport locally, loading will be instant.

In modded Minecraft with maps or waypoints, if you've visited a place before, use the map to teleport to it. This saves lots of walking time. For me it helps avoid the nausea I sometimes feel when jumping during long journeys.

/give

I now work on the basis of proof of sustainability, where I prove that I can sustainably collect a resource, and then add that resource to the list of items I can give to myself as I need them, without having to grind.

For your own games, I suggest you find a balance that works well for you. In my games, I tend to decide what's reasonable, and that can change with each game, and how much I'm enjoying the initial grind (if at all).

For example, you might start the game in a forest, punch a tree, get basic tools, mine stone, and then chop more wood with the stone axe. After you've chopped a few trees that regrew from saplings, declare that wood to be sustainable, and put it on your whitelist of free resources that you can /give yourself at will. The same applies to things you can craft using whitelisted ingredients. Help yourself!

Examples:

• If you've proved you can sustainably harvest birch logs, then you can give yourself birch logs and any birch items and sticks.
• If you also have a fletcher villager who can give you emeralds in trade for sticks, then help yourself to emeralds also. However, you might still want to make the real trades to upgrade your villager to the higher-tier trades.
• If you create a stack of charcoal from sustainable logs, then you can help yourself to charcoal. Add torches to your whitelist too, because you've proved you can sustainably make the sticks and charcoal for the torch recipe.
• If you made an iron golem farm, and have accumulated two stacks of iron ingots, then help yourself to iron ingots. Also help yourself to poppies and red dye.

As you progress, your whitelist will grow, and you'll stall less on the basics when trying to progress.

/effect

If your game is biased towards building or mining out spaces, then consider enchantments and effects that save time. For example, make your mining really fast: apply a haste effect to yourself, and enchant the pick.

This is a quality of life cheat that saves you time, without cheesing the game.

Enjoy

You can cheat to enjoy the game more and help you achieve more in your precious time, where perhaps your interest has waned because of grind. If you want to avoid running farms, then your game will lag less if you give yourself sustainable resources as you need them.

This is just one set of guiding principles that preserves most of the honesty of progression in Minecraft. If you enjoy playing another way, like creative building, or like to use all the cheats, then go for it!