Tutorials/Superflat survival

Living on a superflat world can be a hard task, even for experienced players. Although using a normal superflat world is fine, the best preset is Overworld, because it creates water and lava holes and tall grass. This guide shows how to survive and thrive in the classic superflat environment. However, it does not work for Bedrock Edition.

Step 1 - Materials
Getting materials is fairly easy. Whenever starting a world, it is recommended that you start with a bonus chest to assist you in obtaining the materials necessary to thrive in the world, especially for players who decide not to select the Overworld preset.

Step 2 - Pillage a village
As soon as you have spawned in the world, (make sure generate structures option is on) immediately look for a village. If you do find a village, run towards it as fast as you can. If you don't find a village, run straight in any direction until you see one. When you do arrive at a village, check all house chests for useful items. Although there can be a multitude of items found inside the chest, there are 6 buildings containing chests:
 * Small house with double door, but without chimney
 * Medium house, which looks like a conjoined house
 * Big house (house with 4 beds, which looks like a 2-story house)
 * Village tannery (building with cauldron which can be seen outside)
 * Village cartographer house (building can be recognized from outside be looking at 2 flowerbeds outside with 2 block wide for each flowerbed)
 * Village weaponsmith-shop (looks similar to a classic blacksmith shop)

Abandoned villages
There is a small chance that a village may be an abandoned village, see this tutorial for more information about what to do in this situation. With all other things aside, take: All of these items are useful in superflat survival. Take some wheat, beetroots, carrots and potatoes from the farms, and mine some logs from the houses. As soon as you have a few logs, make a single wooden pickaxe and mine some cobblestone and use it to create a stone pickaxe. Collect a stack of cobblestone and use it to create some stone tools (2+ axes, 1+ pickaxes, 3+ shovels and 2+ swords) however, you don't need to craft any sword or pickaxes if you find some in a blacksmith chest, as they are made out of iron. With these tools, continue to harvest some materials from the village. The materials you should harvest are:
 * Food
 * Armor
 * s
 * Gold (both nuggets and ingots)
 * s
 * Horse Armor
 * Flowers
 * s
 * s
 * s
 * s
 * es
 * s
 * s
 * s
 * es
 * s
 * s
 * s
 * Wool
 * Carpet
 * Glass Pane
 * (flower pot and dandelion)
 * Slabs
 * Stairs
 * Terracotta
 * Grass
 * Flower
 * Carpet
 * Glass Pane
 * (flower pot and dandelion)
 * Slabs
 * Stairs
 * Terracotta
 * Grass
 * Flower
 * Slabs
 * Stairs
 * Terracotta
 * Grass
 * Flower
 * Stairs
 * Terracotta
 * Grass
 * Flower
 * Flower
 * Flower
 * Flower
 * Flower
 * Flower
 * Flower

Note: Don't break
 * s as it is easier for zombies to wipe out villagers
 * Beds as it causes the villager to lose their house which could potentially can make them wander out of village for searching unclaimed beds.
 * Workstations as villagers need to work at their workstation to resupply their trades, breaking workstation blocks have a chance to transform the villager's profession into unemployed, who cannot be traded with.
 * s as it is required for villager to gossip during mingle behavior for iron golem spawning.

Alternatively, you can use three iron to make a bucket, take two water from the well meeting point, animal pens, farms, stables, fisher cottages, or from small house with farm to make an infinite spring, and take one lava from the weaponsmith and use the water and lava to make a cobblestone generator.

Leave iron golems alone at this point, as you would probably not be able to defeat them yet. Check to see if villagers have reasonable trades, especially the armorer, toolsmith, and weaponsmith villager. Also, be on the lookout for mineshafts because when they spawn in a Superflat, they generate at the surface (above ground). If the village doesn't spawn horses and you see any nearby, immediately corral them into animal pen, stable, butcher shop, or shepherd house. Search the village weaponsmith chest or tannery chest for a saddle. Tame a horse and saddle it to enable a very effective mode of transportation. Optional: in a weaponsmith chest you can find horse armor for your horse.

Wheat
Wheat can be one of your most valuable resources in Superflats. Apart from providing a stable food supply when made into bread, it can be used for breeding, and most importantly trading. Wheat is the best resource to trade with farmer villagers, as it is completely renewable, easy to acquire, and only 20 are needed to trade for an emerald, however not every farmer villager is able to trade for wheat. If the farmer village is not able to trade wheat for emeralds, break the composter until the trades are right, note that nearby unemployed villagers can also claim the composter. Through trading, you can acquire virtually anything you need. Wheat, therefore, makes items you trade with villagers renewable.

Step 3 - Making your choice
At this point, there are 2 paths you can take. You can choose to continue moving from village to village to amass valuable resources, or you can settle down in one place to farm. The advantage of being nomadic is that you can continue to acquire valuable, non-renewable resources throughout the game, but if you choose to be sedentary, you can have a much easier time building and farming, at the cost of limited rarer resources.

Nomadic
When being nomadic in Superflat, you focus on nonrenewable, valuable resources that can be found in village chests and pillaged from the village. Early in the game, you can get far more diamonds, obsidian, and possibly gold than you would in a normal world. However, basic necessities such as wood, cobblestone, and iron can be hard to acquire in large amounts without settling down. Dismantle the village as much as possible. Take all logs, cobblestone, torches, wool, wheat, and other useful resources. Take all wheat to trade, and don't bother replanting, because you are nomadic, never return to that village. Kill the village's iron golem by towering up 3 blocks so that you cannot be hit. Once you have dismantled the village, take shelter in a house for the night, and in the morning take everything with you and repeat the first step: wander until you find another village. It may be a good idea to keep moving in one direction so that you don't end up at villages you have previously visited. In the cartographer's chest, you may find some maps and compass which can be useful. Live like normal nomadic survival, except using resources from the villages you encounter.

When you have pillaged enough obsidian and diamond from the chests, create an enchantment table. Enchantments are quite easy to get because of the abundance of slimes. Fight zombies whenever you see them for their iron, and skeletons for arrows. Make a diamond sword if possible, or else an iron one. Your next step is to defeat the iron golem.

Whenever you find a big village with an iron golem, kill it if you can. Because there are no ores in a superflat world, this is the most effective way to obtain iron, the other finding it in chests and killing zombies, which drop it rarely. Dropping sand on the golem can sometimes kill it, but this is slow and tedious. If you have enough arrows, sniping them can be an effective tactic. Never sword fight a golem without armor, as it deals heavy damage and can kill you in two hits. Whatever method you choose, get enough iron for a full suit of armor and all tools. Enchant everything at least level one, and your armor, sword, and bow higher. Alternatively, you can surround it in blocks or trap it in a pit and drop sand on it to kill it without risking death. This is an easy way to kill them, even in the early game.

Defending your nomadic village
Zombies can still do sieges as long as there's a way to get in. For protection purposes, surround the village with a 2 block high wall (to prevent skeletons attacking you and the iron golems), houses should not use wooden doors, as zombies break them on Hard mode. An iron/piston door with a lever or button is sufficient, but a pressure plate should not be used as mobs can activate them and get inside of the village.

Now you're ready for the next step: The Nether.

Sedentary
If you chose to be sedentary, you focus on renewable resources. You also can focus more on trading, as you have the potential to produce large amounts of wheat in a farm. Buy some melon seeds from wandering traders as soon as possible and set up a melon farm, as melons provide one of the most useful food sources in the game and glistering melons for brewing potions. Apart from wheat, there are six major renewable resources that can be farmed in Superflat worlds. These are beetroots, carrots, potatoes, wood, cobblestone, and iron. Make tools from these as you acquire them. However, keep in mind that just because you have a resource doesn't mean that you have it renewably. Mining wood and cobblestone from the village eventually runs out, as do chests of iron. To continually acquire them while staying in your village, you must acquire them from iron golems (build a pillar at least 3 blocks high to avoid getting hurt), saplings, a cobblestone generator, and iron golems, respectively.

Wood
Choose a home from the village, and put a chest, bed, and crafting table in it. Avoid dismantling the houses too much for materials, as zombies can easily get inside and kill villagers. Feel free, however, to dismantle the corners of the house and unnecessary ceiling pieces. Also, the wood surrounding the farms can get you a lot of wood as well. After finding shelter, your most important goal should be finding a sapling. They occur in the chests in the houses, if you didn't find one so you may have to look in several chests to find one. There is also another way to get saplings. You can buy from a wandering trader, who can sell you more types of saplings than oak. Write down the coordinates of your home, and continue out in a direction until you find a village. Take everything in its chests, return, and repeat until you have a sapling. Plant the saplings near your home and wait (or use bones for bone meal, as saplings quickly grow into trees). As the tree decays if you take all the wood, chances are it'll drop more than one sapling (and an apple) — making wood plentiful. Then set up a home in the village.

Put fences around farms, to keep the slimes from trampling it, or make a farm inside of your house. Make a furnace from cobblestone you have gathered, so you can smelt logs into charcoal for torches. Light up the village; you don't want monsters everywhere. Place some torches near your tree farm so that they grow faster (or use bonemeal for a quicker process). Now that you have a renewable source of wood, your next step is cobblestone.

Cobblestone
Using iron that you have found in chests and got from killing zombies, make a bucket. If you don't have enough, go searching more chests for more, or if all else fails, kill more zombies until you have at least three iron ingots. Go to a village and take water from the well and lava from the smithy to make a cobblestone generator. Now you have a renewable source of wood and cobblestone. Dig for dirt, and smelt logs in a furnace to make charcoal for torches, and you'll have everything you need. Your next step is getting renewable iron.

Iron
Now it's time to move out of the village. Make yourself a home that is a short distance from the village to keep it safe from the occasional iron golem, and it is advised to have a small doorway so that in the event of a large group of slimes getting inside the outer gate, so they cannot get inside the actual building. Build an outer moat 3 blocks wide to capture slimes and other mobs. A dry moat works, as you can kill the mobs in it. Be sure to make it large enough for big slimes. Make sure to include a variety of farms in your house, such as (wheat, melons, trees, cobblestone, and cows) to make the need for a risky venture to a village unheeded. You can also work on an iron golem farm, using one of several methods. Make it big enough to spawn several at a time for a more effective trap. At first, it may seem like a good idea to just kill them, but this is dangerous and time-consuming, so in the long run, it is better to make a trap to kill them. There are a variety of ways to do this; see the iron golem page for more detail. Once this is completed, you can sit back for a while until you have enough iron for a full suit of armor and all tools. Before you can move on to the Nether, you need at least ten obsidian. If you don't have this, go exploring more nearby or not-so-nearby villages for it. Press F3 and write down your coordinates, or make a compass by trading for one or with redstone and iron ingots. If possible, get 4 extra obsidian and at least 2 diamonds so you can make an enchantment table. You can save diamonds by buying your diamond sword and other tools from a blacksmith villager. Surround your enchantment table with bookshelves from the libraries, and with experience gathered from slimes or mobs at night, it is possible to reach very high level enchantments. However, you need lapis lazuli, which you can get from cleric villagers. Use this to your advantage.

Other
Another way to find wood is by dismantling pillager outposts, specifically the watchtower and the logs (only if structure generates a pile of dark oak logs). However, this way is dangerous for the early game, due that the outposts are heavily guarded by pillagers who are armed with crossbows, and also can respawn indefinitely around the structure, even when the structure is completely destroyed. On the other hand, pillager outposts also contain a chest with valuable loot and a massive amount of wood in the structure. When finding pillager outposts, look out to see if there are any trapped iron golems in cages. Free them, and these golems help fight against pillagers, if you're lucky enough to get iron from the chest, heal the iron golems periodically to keep them alive, otherwise, you'll need 36 iron ingots and a carved pumpkin (which is inaccessible). If you find a tent, utilize it for cover from arrows shot by pillagers. Also, never kill outpost captains (unless you want a challenge), but let them get killed by iron golems or from arrows shot by other pillagers and you won't get bad omen.

Killing the outpost captain causes the bad omen effect, which gets raised by the number of captains you kill. Pillager outposts usually spawn 1-3 pillager captains. During bad omen, if you enter a village, a raid occurs. A raid is an event where illagers come to a village to kill villagers and the player(s). So if you don't want a raid, you can drink milk to remove bad omen or stay outside the village for 100 minutes.

Step 4 - The Nether
Before venturing to the Nether, make sure you have a diamond sword, a full suit of armor (preferably iron or diamond), and of course, at least 10 obsidian. If you have 10 obsidian, you need 4 other blocks to use as placeholders, because you can't place blocks on the corners or edges of other blocks. It's also a good idea to make an enchantment table before the portal, as enchantments greatly help the player in the Nether.

To light the portal, you can place wood planks in front of the portal, and place lava nearby (but not in the portal), since blocks inside the frame obstruct the area for the portal blocks themselves. The lava sets the wood planks on fire, and spreads inside the frame, activating it.

Build the portal in your house if playing sedentary. Contrary to popular belief, ghasts do not spawn near a portal, so you are safe from them. Zombified piglins may be nearby, but they do not attack you unless provoked. Piglins are hostile unless you are wearing at least 1 piece of gold armor.

If you are being nomadic, portals pose more of a problem for you. The good news is, you have several options. If you have enough obsidian, you could make new portals as you move, to have continual access to the nether. Building the portal from the Nether saves you a lot of walking (as each block there is 8 blocks in the Overworld). Also, that way you always know where your portal is. To save obsidian, you can mine it from the corners of the portals that spawn, or go mine the whole portal and go back through to regenerate it. This creates renewable obsidian that you can use for more portals. Your other option is to gather lava from the Nether and turn it into obsidian where you are building your portal. However, this technique cannot be used in the Nether, as water evaporates, making obsidian impossible to create.

In the Nether, you can find many useful resources, but some have fewer uses than they do in non-superflat because other crafting ingredients are not available. Nether wart, magma cream, and ghast tears are not completely useless because of the trading system, which is the only way to get glass for potions beside killing witches which are almost as rare as endermen, as there is no sand unless you bought it from a wandering trader. Buy enough to make several bottles, but splash potions are wasteful as it is rather costly. For this reason, gunpowder is only useful for fire charges and TNT. Blaze rods can be moderately useful to make a brewing stand, for fueling it, potions, and fire charges. Glowstone is useful for decoration, potions, and redstone lamps by trading for redstone or glass. Gold can be crafted with traded redstone to make a clock, and you can still use it because its highly enchantable tools and golden apples. If playing nomadic, you should have more than enough gold found from the chests. If sedentary, however, you may want to make a zombified piglin farm to obtain your gold. Zombified piglins are immune to lava, water cannot be placed, and cactus cannot be acquired unless you bought it from a wandering trader, so the best form of death is fall damage. If the piglins are almost dead and you deal the final hit, you get experience as well as a chance for a rare mob drop or two, out of a gold ingot, sword, or their worn armor. Build the trap out of cobblestone to protect it from ghasts, and make sure that it is protected from wild zombified piglins.

If you're really low on coal, kill some wither skeletons because they drop coal and bones, but watch out for blazes because they also spawn in nether fortresses.

The End can be accessed by finding a stronghold, they will generate in the sky so you'll need blocks.

Video tutorials
After this video, you should be prepared to live in a village, so that you don't have to go search for resources in other villages.

This video helps you defending your village against zombie raids and more.

Tips

 * By placing lava from weaponsmith shops using a bucket and pouring water over it, you can form obsidian. This way, it is possible to form a portal without ever having a single obsidian block in your inventory. However, you would need to find at least 5 weaponsmiths to have enough lava, so the best way may be to 'mix and match' by using some obsidian blocks and some formed from the aforementioned technique.
 * If you place a trail of blocks on your journey from village to village, you'll easily be able to find your way back to previously visited villages.
 * It's possible to acquire rare items such as gold, emeralds and diamonds, and other precious items by trading wheat to villagers. Get all the wheat you can for trading resources.
 * If you have difficulty finding a certain resource, remember, you can usually buy some from a villager. This is especially useful for acquiring diamond swords, tools and armor, as well as redstone.

Extreme challenge
The Extreme Challenge is the superflat survival challenge without enabling the generated structures option. This is the identical situation to survival in a Flat world in Bedrock Edition. It's still possible to survive with this condition.


 * Notes:
 * Lava and obsidian cannot be acquired in this challenge, making the Nether inaccessible. Also, you cannot make a cobblestone generator, which means no furnace and no smelting. However, there are other ways to obtain stone tools and cooked food.
 * Expect frequent deaths, because obtaining any equipment requires a lot of time and patience.
 * If you play on, note that versions after 1.14.2 removed the spawning of vindicators during patrols, but it is possible to obtain emeralds from villagers you cure.

This extreme challenge is the only available choice for flat survival $$, because no structures generate in the flat world type in this edition. If you play on Bedrock Edition, just create a world, because the game forces the player to spawn in creative mode. Activate cheats, and remember to only use commands once, just for changing your gamemode to survival, otherwise, it won't be an extreme challenge.

If you play on, just create a world with survival mode, generated structures off, and "Classic Flat" preset.

Make sure to enable the "Bonus Chest". Your bonus chest should have a minimum of 2 apples, and either a sapling or 4 planks (or 1 log) to make a crafting table. Without the bonus chest, it is impossible to obtain emeralds and future saplings.

It is possible to create a village by accomplishing a difficult sequence of goals:
 * Kill enough zombies to get enough iron to craft a cauldron and a bucket, kill witches until you get a bottle.
 * Wait for the cauldron to fill with rain, get the water from it, place the water, use the bottle to refill the cauldron; then you can make an infinite water source.
 * Use water to drown zombies; kill the drowned to get copper ingots to make a lightning rod.
 * Collect or breed pigs around the lightning rod, wait for lightning to strike to turn them into zombified piglins, which you kill for gold ingots (about 200 zombified piglins are needed to get enough gold for two golden apples).
 * Craft golden apples and use them to cure two zombie villagers you have trapped in a boat by contriving to get a witch to throw a potion of Weakness at the zombie villager.
 * Breed the villagers after you get two of them.