Survival

Survival mode is second released game mode where players will have build structures and fight for survival. It is currently the main focus in the development of Minecraft. It is the only playable game mode in the most recent Alpha version of the game. Players can build shelters to fend off enemy mobs that will spawn to make the their life harder.

All building blocks in the game must be earned. Players will also get an inventory so that they have more space to gather items, which players can combine together using certain combinations to create new objects. This process is known as crafting. Players can try mining underground to look for precious minerals.

Survival Multiplayer (SMP)


Survival Multiplayer is currently in heavy development and is only available in Alpha. The finished game would probably mean that players can build and explore together. However, SMP is currently in a very buggy state. Neither players nor mobs have damage points. This makes SMP no more dangerous than creative is.

Players have speculated on how gameplay will turn out once the multiplayer mode is finally completed, including Player vs. Player (PvP), raiding parties, base defense mechanisms, and cooperative player towns.

History
This game mode was introduced on 4th of August, 2009 in Survival Test under Classic. During this time, players will experience permadeath, meaning they do not respawn and the level needs to be restarted unless a save file was created.

The inventory and crafting was only introduced in the Indev version while the Infdev version features infinite map generation. This version also drops the permadeath feature allowing the player to respawn. The Alpha version improves the map generation by intoducing biomes. The Nether is also made for fast travelling.

The Multiplayer variant of this game mode also takes place in the Alpha version. Originally, Notch has only allowed a limited number of people from the Minecraft IRC channel to participate in the first tests of SMP. These invitees can invite other people to test out this mode; however the password was leaked and the server was quickly filled up. Notch released the first version of the SMP server software on the 4th of August, 2010. The client was updated so that players could enter the IP of a server to join it.