Getting materials in Minecraft can be a grind. To get around that, the Minecraft community has come up with plenty of creative ways to build complex machines to automate the process of farming resources.

To get a sense of how to efficiently slay and collect from cave spiders, DocM on YouTube put together a helpful video to show off exactly how to build a kill chamber. You can check it out below, and find more of his videos on his YouTube channel.

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New Halloween skins are available for Minecraft on Xbox 360. The Halloween Skin Pack is available for $2 (160 Microsoft Points) and offers 55 skins including vampires, Dracula, Frankenstein and many more. Mojang hints that “some even include capes!”

100% of the proceeds from the skin pack will be donated to charity, with the money split between Block By Block, Sands Lothians, Child’s Play and Macmillan Cancer Support. You can read about the charities in more detail on PlayXBLA.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.

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Minecraft is being played by more people on Xbox Live Arcade than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or FIFA 13.

As posted by Major Nelson, the Microsoft Live activity chart for the week ending October 15 shows Minecraft (Xbox 360 Edition) has topped the charts for the very first time, beating out retail heavy-hitters Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and FIFA 13. They had to settle for second and third places, respectively.

A quick scan through previous chart updates shows that Call of Duty games have pretty much nabbed the top spot for the past four years. It's another colossal milestone for the game, which was recently revealed to have sold four million copies on Microsoft's console, making it the best-selling XBLA game ever.

The Microsoft Live activity chart counts how many unique users are playing a game whilst connected to Xbox Live. In addition to Minecraft, Modern Warfare 3 and FIFA 13, the rest of the top five is rounded out by Call of Duty: Black Ops and Borderlands 2.

Minecraft was the recipient of a massive patch last week, which brought with it a host of changes to the game. A full list of the latest additions and changes can be found in the Minecraft Wiki.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant and has a vested interest in mines, being Welsh and all. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

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