I am wondering what I can do with the springs of lava found in mines, or lava lakes... What can you do with it? Create an Island, done! Make a Lava Wall for lighting, also done. Making Obsidian, expensive on time, but done. What else can I do with it? 

Discuss the possibilities of Lava!

Just to be clear, I am looking for something creative to do with Lava, I would like to know what is possible, if I mentioned it above, please don't tell me about that.

You can protect your house from mobs by surrounding the ground with lava. They cant cross over it and it looks better than walls and torches.

I personally use them for manly showers, manly hot tubs, and I'm thinking about adding a manly theme park with a manly lava slide.

That aside, I like their use for:

- Traps - Lava makes these so much more fun.
- Hiding items - layers of lava can be used to hide stuff.
- As a weapon - a bucket of lava can be highly effective when properly used

Those are the three I can think of off the top of my head.

There's definitely cooler uses for it that I've forgotten.

I know a couple of usage I use normally in single player that I use it. I use the lava for these reasons

-Used it for a cooking source (it last the longest for one use)
-Used for defending your house (by building a 2-block wide moat filled with lava to protect against mobs)
-Used for decoration like a lava wall (but got to be careful with flammable blocks like wood, wool, and other blocks)
-Used for hiding things as well

There's only one thing that I use lava for, and that is to make cobblestone generators. I do use them for cooking, but it always ends up getting messed up, and I never really used it for anything else.

zanderlex :

ooh, that's a good one.

On the minecraft server, I actually made an entire structure that fixes itself through a bunch of pistons and a cobblestone generator.

EideticMemory : I saw something like that on YouTube, a trap door where you break a block to activate the trap, and after a few seconds, the block gets repaired.

zanderlex :

That actually gives me so many ideas. wow.

mrfe :
mrfe :
mrfe :

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

EidegicMemory: Things like this are really tough and need so much space and stuff, want me to post the video that I got it from?

zanderlex : YES

EideticMemory :
EideticMemory :
EideticMemory :

YES YES YES

EideticMemory : It took a while but I found the video if you want ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9EmEg1A70w

zanderlex :

That was actually even cooler than what I was originally planning.

Thanks for finding that!

EideticMemory : Cool, use all my knowledge to your advantage. Its a bit tough though.

Well, the only thing I can think of is traps. And to stop mobs from crossing to your house. I can't give many suggestions, so forgive me x-P.

When the resources are readily available, I'll build a cobblestone generator early in the game to save myself the potential dangers of digging for resources or getting caught outside after dark.  But once I have some half way decent gear, I will usually take it down and start looking for my own resources.

I actually like using lava for lighting.  I can place a single block at the top of a building with a tube of glass reaching down through the house.  It makes a good light source, and it only takes a single block to light a  lot of space that way.

I'll use lava to build myself a portal, usually somewhat early in a game.

As several people have said, lava makes a great defensive mechanism.  I like to build a retractile floor in the entrance of some of my homes.   Hallway only one space wide, then lava a couple of spaces below that with the entire trap area surrounded with obsidian, . . . just to add to the futility of the situation.  Its an alarmingly effective way to deal with hostiles

When mining, I'll commonly dig near lava to get it to flow, then keep it running in a ditch as I mine.  Its effectively a free light source and it let me reserve a lot of my torches that I would otherwise use.  You just have to be a little bit careful with it so you don't let it flow into your digging space.

I used to use it to create beacons of a sort  for myself, but when beacons were added to the game, I started using those instead (I have the xbox 360 version of the game.)

Otherwise, I really don't do much with lava other than ignore it and try not to do anything that might get me burnt.