Tutorials/The second day

This guide is intended for those who have read the beginner's guide first, and survived their first day and night.

A brief picture of a second day house is shown on the right.

Intro: Second Day
If you read the beginner's guide and followed it you should have at least a crude shelter, stone tools, and some cooked meat and other food. This day will guide you in building on that and setting up a better base.

When you venture outside after surviving your first night, be on the lookout for hostile mobs. Later, you will be hunting them, but that's after you get weapons, some armor, and a proper food supply. As you move around:
 * At this stage, creepers are deadly -- run away until they despawn or lose track of you.
 * Skeletons and zombies may survive in shady spots; lead them into the sun and avoid them until they burn to death. (Then collect their drops.)  If you're unlucky enough to encounter a husk, run away from it until it despawns, or try to kill it as best you can
 * Spiders will mostly be neutral, so you can avoid them; if one has targeted you, lead it into the sun and run it around until it loses interest.
 * Endermen will likewise mostly be pacified by the sun, but stay away from them, especial if they aren't in the sun (say, under trees).
 * Keep track of where you are, using the debug screen if needed.
 * If you do get killed at this point, you haven't lost much, and you're presumably still near spawn -- just head back to your death site to collect your few items.
 * Collect any loose items you see, including but not limited to bones, arrows, rotten flesh, eggs, and wool.  Almost everything will be useful later.
 * Destroy any tall grass you see and collect the seeds.
 * If you find mushrooms, break and grab some of them -- if you can get both kinds of mushrooms, you can make mushroom soup. You might also collect flowers for the dyes you can make from them.
 * After chopping trees, collect the saplings (and perhaps apples) that drop from the leaves.
 * As you're moving around the area, keep an eye on how the ground rises and falls. Over time, you will be fencing off more and more territory to keep monsters out, starting with the area right around your house (or cave entrance). If the terrain is uneven, you'll probably run your fences along ridges, avoiding places where mobs could jump over the fence from a hill or cliff.

Reviewing hunger and food
The "First Day" guide discussed hunger, but by your second day this will become more pressing, and you will surely need food. Basic points:
 * Besides the visible hunger bar, you also have an invisible hunger bar, called "saturation".
 * Whenever you do something that would make you hungry, the saturation gets used up first, which provides extra time before you get hungry again.
 * Most foods provide saturation as well as filling the visible bar, and the "better" foods provide more saturation compared to their visible effects. The general rule is that cooked steak and porkchops are best, followed by other cooked meats (or fish), bread, and vegetables.
 * The biggest drain on hunger is healing damage. You heal faster off saturation than "visible" hunger, and if your hunger bar is below 90%, you will not heal at all.
 * Otherwise, only certain actions cause hunger -- especially fighting, but other things that use up food include: Sprinting, jumping around too much, swimming long distances, and lots of mining.
 * If you are injured and/or hungry, it's best to wait out the night quietly in your home (perhaps doing some crafting or smelting) until daylight, when it will be safe to go out and find some food. (Sleeping works too, unless you're actually starving.)
 * If you get too hungry (30% left on the bar), you will also be unable to sprint.
 * If your hunger bar is completely empty, you will begin to starve, and take damage until you are down to half health (Easy difficulty), or a single hit point (Normal difficulty).
 * You shouldn't be on Hard difficulty for this first game, but if you are you can actually starve to death.
 * Therefore, if you are low on health or very low on food, getting food is be a priority. You can kill a few animals up front, but they'll run out quickly, and you need to save some for breeding.  Wheat takes a day or few to grow, and other vegetables will too, when you get them..  This does leave a few options:
 * If you have a fishing rod and a safe place to fish, fishing is a great way to get food, because it doesn't involve fighting, mining, or moving around much. You can smelt your first few fish while you fish for more.
 * If you're desperate, you can try breaking oak or dark oak leaves for apples. Be careful to not take damaging falls or jump around a lot in the process (hint: ladders), much less get attacked by monsters!
 * If you are really desperate you can also eat rotten flesh dropped by zombies, but this will usually give you "food poisoning", which would drain your hunger by almost as much as one piece of rotten flesh fills it. The trick is, if you have a lot of rotten flesh you can quickly fill up on that, then tough out the food poisoning and end up not too hungry.

Writing Your To-Do list
For the second day, your main objective is to get the lay of the land, locate resources, and plan out further construction. You will be looking for at least the following things. Don't worry if you can't find all of them, right now you're just spotting the resources that are near your home:
 * A place to grow wheat:
 * Even before you have a bucket, you can till the ground next to a river or lake, and plant whatever seeds you have to get an early start. A handful of bread gives you a lot more options.
 * Later, you'll want a basically-flat area at least 12 blocks square, which you can reshape into completely flat. After fencing off a 9-by-9 square and placing water in the middle (that's what the bucket is for), you can till the square and make a farm that will serve you well for most of the game.  (Watch out for nearby rises that could let monsters jump over your fence.)
 * A place to build a larger house or lair. There are many options here -- the most popular options are to build on (more-or-less) flat ground, roof over a valley, or wall off and occupy a handy cave.  You will need at least a 5x5 space for your enchanting table, plus space for your crafting table, furnace, anvil, and lots of chests, and of course a secure place for your bed.
 * Different kinds of trees. Each kind of tree provides wood with a different appearance, and the various trees have different characteristics for farming them -- see the Tree article for full details. Collect the wood for crafting and building, and the saplings to grow your own.
 * Keep an eye out for for a pond or riverbank site where you can make a fishing spot. Fishing requires time and (for safety) some preparation, but can get you a lot of resources, some of which are difficult to get otherwise. It's also an early way to get good-quality food.
 * One or more cave entrances, to get underground and start collecting iron and stone in quantity. If you spent your night in a cave, this might be easy, but for mining you'll want a cave that heads deeper into the ground.
 * Any of the various crops.  You need to find each of these in the world before you can farm them, but then you'll have effectively unlimited supplies.  See their respective pages for how to grow each of them, but several of them can share space in your wheat farm.
 * Animals, for meat and other resources. You will eventually build pens to breed and slaughter them; as with farming crops, you're looking for large, fairly-flat areas that you can fence off and otherwise defend against mobs.  You can kill some of the animals now if you need more meat, but leave some of each type to later catch and breed.  Once you do start collecting and breeding them, you will have to go further afield to catch more, as they will not spawn near your farm.  (See the Spawn article for gory details.)  Note that deserts will not spawn any animals except the occasional rabbit.

Crops

 * Wheat is the original crop, used to make bread, cake, cookies, and hay bales.  The seeds will lure and breed chickens, wheat itself will do the same for cows and sheep.  Wheat and hay are also used to heal horses and llamas, and to speed their taming.
 * Sugar cane is important because it's needed to make paper, and you will need a lot of that (along with leather, see below) for enchanting. Look for it at the edge of any body of water.
 * Pumpkins appear wild in several biomes. They are mostly used for jack o'lanterns, but you can also make pumpkin pie.
 * Carrots, potatoes and beetroot are additional food crops, all of which are grown similarly to wheat (and can share space in your wheat farm). The first two are rarely dropped by slain zombies; only a single item is dropped, but by planting that one, you can multiply it until you have a respectable crop. All three can be found in the farms of a village.
 * All three of these can be used to lure and breed pigs.
 * Carrots can also be used to lure and breed rabbits.
 * Carrots, once combined with gold (as golden carrots) can be used to breed horses (see below).
 * Cactus is mildly useful for barriers and traps, and is also the source for green dye. It is only found in desert and mesa biomes.
 * Melons are found in jungles, though later you might be able to find the seeds in treasure chests or buy slices from villagers.
 * Cocoa beans are another jungle specialty. They're the only source of brown dye, and also you can make cookies!

Animals
In order of priority, note the locations of these animals (see their respective pages for full details):
 * Chickens provide feathers as well as meat. (You will need those feathers to make arrows.)  These are the first animals you can capture and breed, since you will have seeds long before wheat or carrots.  Chickens are especially easy to breed,  because besides breeding them "normally" with seeds, you can hatch them from eggs.   With patience, you can start with a single captured chicken, breaking its eggs until you get a second chicken for normal breeding.  Or you can start with no chickens, but two or three stacks (16 each) of eggs!
 * Cows provide both beef and leather. Cooked beef is one of the best foods in the game, and leather will be important when you prepare for enchanting -- you will need quite a lot of leather to make a complete enchanting setup. A live cow can also be milked, by right-clicking it with a bucket. Drinking a bucket of milk will not feed you, but it will wipe away any status effects such as poison or food poisoning.  (Alas, being on fire does not count as a status effect.)
 * Sheep provide (mutton and) wool. Wool is necessary for the all-important bed, but it is also useful for decorative uses such as carpets. Once you have shears, you will not need to kill sheep for their wool, but you will want to keep a lot of them around to provide quantities of wool in a variety of colors. A warning:  If there are wolves around, they will tend to slaughter any sheep in the area, so you may need to go far afield later to find surviving sheep.
 * Wolves, unlike the other animals, are not bred for slaughter. Instead, you will tame them with bones, after which they will become "dogs" which follow and protect you.
 * Pigs are the odd child here -- pork is as nourishing as beef, but pigs provide no other resources besides the meat. (Well, you can ride them after a fashion.)  Worse, luring and breeding them (or riding them) requires crops that you won't get until you start killing zombies (or find a village).
 * Rabbits are even less useful than pigs -- they only have a 50% chance of dropping (second-tier) meat, and a separate 50% chance of rabbit hide. If you accumulate four of the hides, you can craft them into a single piece of leather. You can lure and breed rabbits with dandelions, as well as carrots.
 * If you are near or in a jungle, you may see ocelots. Once you begin fishing, you will be able to tame these into "cats", which can be helpful in fending off creepers.
 * Horses can be tamed to ride, but to control them you will need a saddle, and breeding them requires gold.  (Again, see their page for full details.)   Until you start finding underground treasure chests, your best bet to get a saddle is by fishing.   Donkeys are a horse variant; they can be ridden, but can also carry cargo.
 * Llamas are tamed like horses. They can't be ridden (effectively), but they can carry cargo, and if you use a lead on one, the rest of their herd will play follow-the-leader to form a caravan.  They do drop leather, and breeding them for strength will give reason to breed and cull a lot of them.

Resources and mining
The foundation of everything is mining (though farming is pretty important too). By now, you should have mined at least enough stone to make your basic stone tools, and you hopefully have some wood left over. You will soon need more of both materials: Wood for various utility items, stone for more durable construction. Over the next few days, you'll be mining a variety of ores as well, but for now, concentrate on the basic materials:

Basic Materials
Dirt: As you explore your world, you are likely to pick up some dirt blocks. These are not very good for building, but they are quick to place and remove, so you can use them for temporary staircases, pillars, and such. More importantly, you can use them to modify the landscape, making it easier to get around near your home. If you've had a creeper explode nearby, you can also use your collected dirt to fill in the hole. (Immediately after the explosion, there will be dirt and perhaps stone items left in the crater. Pick those up, but don't expect to get enough to fill in the crater.)  Note that mining grass blocks (that is, full blocks with a green top, not "tall grass" plants) will drop dirt -- don't worry about the difference for now. If you place the dirt next to grass blocks, the grass will eventually spread to the dirt, cleaning up the "scars" of your work.

Sand and gravel:

You will also encounter sand and gravel. These have special uses: Sand is used for making glass, which is useful for windows and even transparent walls. However, note that glass is very fragile -- a creeper blast will simply destroy any glass in range. Glass also can't be recovered once placed (without the appropriate enchanted tools) -- if mined or blown up, it won't drop anything. Gravel is used to produce flint, which is a key material needed to craft arrows.

Both sand and gravel, unlike most blocks, are affected by gravity: If either block is placed without something directly beneath it, or if whatever's beneath it goes away for any reason, it will fall to the ground beneath. If it falls on you such that your head is buried, it will cause suffocation damage until you get free or mine your way out. (They can also suffocate mobs, which can be useful for traps and such.)

You may see shelves of "floating" sand or gravel, which the game generated without support (that is, a player couldn't have placed them like that). Be careful around these, as they are natural traps: Mining them or any block next to them, will set off a chain reaction that can bring down the whole shelf. Sand shelves will appear in deserts, while gravel shelves can appear underground.

Beneath sand, you will find sandstone. You can build with this and craft it into various forms, but remember that it it much more fragile than "real" stone.

Wood: You can build with wood, and converting the logs to planks will quadruple the number of blocks you have to work with. However, wood has two liabilities: Firstly, it is flammable, and lava or lightning can start a fire which will burn up much of your house. Secondly, it is not very resistant to creeper explosions, so if a creeper goes off near a wooden house, it can demolish a good deal of your work and perhaps damage the inside of the house as well.

If you are in a forest, wood will be plentiful, but if trees are scarce around you, you may want to plant some replacement trees: You may have noticed when you chopped down trees, that as the leaves decay, some of them drop saplings, which you hopefully picked up. You can plant them on any dirt or grass block where there's room for the tree to grow. Once you plant them, don't hang around waiting, just go do other things and come back later when the trees have grown (it can take up to a day or more). Once you have spare torches, you can put one of those a couple or few blocks away from your saplings, as this will help them continue growing overnight.

Stone: As you've seen, mining gray ("smooth") stone, drops a mottled block called cobblestone. This differs from smooth stone only in appearance and what you can craft with it. Once you start mining in earnest, stone will be plentiful, to the point where you will be making chests just to store your accumulated cobblestone. However, don't throw it away, as stone will be a major building material. Stone is not flammable, and is much more durable: If a creeper goes off right next to your stone wall, it may break a couple or few blocks, but not much more than that. For your early houses, you should be making most of the walls out of stone.

Once you have coal/charcoal to spare, you might want to use your furnace to smelt some cobblestone back into smooth stone. With this you can fill holes in underground caves without leaving unsightly patches of cobblestone. You can also make various decorative blocks such as stone bricks, which will let you build more attractive houses and other structures. Any variation of stone bricks will be just as strong as smooth stone or cobblestone.

You may also find pockets of other "rocks": Granite, Andesite, Diorite. These are fine bulding blocks and are as strong as stone, but are less flexible: They can be converted into a slightly more decorative form, but otherwise can't be used for crafting.

Coal: This is a major resource, with two main uses: It is used to make torches, (your major source of light), and to smelt or cook items in your furnace. Smelting items not only lets you cook your meat for better nutrition, but is also necessary for making use of iron (see below). A stack (64 lumps) of coal is a fairly large amount for the beginning, but over time you will need a lot of it. Fortunately, it is common: You will see it everywhere underground, and even some on the surface. Coal is the only ore you can mine with a wooden pickaxe. Coal is not strictly necessary since you can make charcoal from wood, but it is common, and you have plenty of other things to do with wood.

Iron: Iron is probably the most important and versatile resource you can find underground. You can use it to craft good quality tools, armor and a variety of other things. For your second day (or whenever you venture underground), your initial goal is to get at least 33 pieces of iron ore (see below for what to craft with that), and more will be useful. Once you have some of the ore, use a furnace to smelt it into iron ingots, that you can then craft into other items.

Cave exploration
Cave exploration is pretty straight forward: you light up your way with torches, mine up ores as you see them (check ores and minerals) and kill enemies as you encounter them (see Tutorials/Combat for details). There are also some important techniques that might not be obvious to a new player, such as using waterfalls to descend into shafts, and/or swim back up from them. There are also many options for marking your trail and not getting lost. Also, note that sneaking (on PCs, the  key by default) prevents you from falling over the edge of a block, which is useful if you are caving near a long drop, especially a drop into lava. Sometimes such caves end immediately, but often they continue into big cave systems. If they seem to end right away sometimes there will be a continuation about 2-8 blocks farther back and below the cave's end; mining in these directions (8 blocks back and down, exploring somewhat to the sides) will reveal this if it is the case. Digging away gravel or dirt can also expose cave extensions, but you may go through a few shovels that way. When exploring caves and mining underground, make sure to thoroughly light up the caves and tunnels as you go. If you don't do this, monsters can spawn in the darkness, even in places where you've already been through (meaning, they can come up behind you, or block your exit!).

If there are few nearby caves, or they seem too dangerous, you can explore more advanced mining techniques. Remember, if mining, never ever dig a single-block shaft straight down -- you are likely to fall into a deep monster-infested cave, if not into lava! You can, however, dig a mineshaft in a pattern, such that you always have a safe block to stand on as you mine a different block. Such patterns can range from a simple 2x1 pattern (standing in the middle so one of the blocks always supports you), to a 2x2 or larger staircase into the depths. A simple diagonal staircase works too. Just keep a careful eye out in case you break through into the top of a cave or lava pool. If you do dig a vertical mineshaft, bring a lot of ladders to get back up!

As you explore caves. you may run into dungeons or abandoned mineshafts. Don't get near these until you have at least full iron armor, sword, plus bow and arrows. Once you are properly equipped, these will be a challenge, but also contain treasure chests with rare and valuable items.

Other ores and minerals
You probably won't be finding these your second day, but it's worth knowing a little about the more advanced ores. Gold, lapis lazuli, and redstone are more specialized ores, only found in deeper arts of the caves. Diamond is the top-tier crafting material, while emerald is used to trade with villagers. Lapis can be mined with a stone pickaxe, but the remaining ores all need an iron pickaxe. Some key uses:
 * Gold works like iron, in that you mine the ore blocks and smelt them in a furnace to get ingots. You can make tools and armor out of it, but don't: Golden items are somewhat more powerful than iron, but their durability is abysmal, so they will wear out very fast.  There are more advanced uses for gold, but for now the important one is that four gold ingots and a bit of redstone (see below) lets you make a clock.  This key accessory lets you know the time of day, even when you're deep underground, which is very helpful to avoid coming up to the surface to find a monster-filled night.  Later there will be other uses for gold, such as the golden carrots mentioned above.
 * Lapis lazuli will later be needed for enchanting. For now, don't worry much about it, but if you happen to find a vein, mine it and save it for later.
 * Redstone is found quite deep (watch out for lava). It is mostly used for redstone circuits; for now you only need a few pieces, which a single block of ore can provide. Besides the above-mentioned clock, 4 iron ingots plus redstone lets you make a compass, to help you find your way around.   Once you find and start growing sugar cane, you can make another compass and craft it into a map (paper+compass) to keep track of your explorations and help avoid getting lost.
 * Diamond is a very rare mineral, probably the most-sought resource. It can be crafted into very durable and quick tools, and vastly superior armor. The ore is found at the very bottom of the world, the bottom 15 layers of the map, and (again) requires an iron pickaxe to mine. Other guides will give tips for finding and safely mining diamond, but for now just note that if you're seeing diamond ore, you're very close to where you can encounter lava, which is dangerous.
 * Emeralds are normally gained (and used) by trading with villagers, but scattered blocks of emerald ore can also be found beneath extreme hills biomes. Emerald ore is found at the same depths as gold ore, and likewise requires an iron pickaxe.
 * All these minerals including coal (but not charcoal) and iron, can be crafted into "storage blocks" at the crafting table, 9 pieces or ingots to a block. You can build with these blocks for show, but that risks losing them to a creeper blast.  For now, just use this trick to save storage space.  It's trivial to get the individual pieces back, you can even do that in your inventory's crafting grid.

Repairing tools
To fix a tool, put two damaged tools of the same type and material in a crafting grid (you can use a crafting table, or your inventory's smaller crafting grid). This will combine the two old items into a new item that is either unused, or has slightly more remaining uses than both the old items together. This applies to any tool that has durability, including swords and bows. Later you'll have enchanted tools and/or weapons, but don't use this method for those -- you'll need an anvil to preserve the enchantments.

Iron Equipment
Iron is one of the most important resources in Minecraft. Your first half-stack or so will equip you to take on the world, but you'll need ongoing supplies to replace worn-out equipment. Get used to collecting, smelting, and stockpiling it, because you will need to replace equipment, and the more you advance in the game, the more uses you'll have for iron.

The very first things you should make are (in order):
 * A shield. This will need several wood planks, and a single iron ingot. Shields were introduced fairly recently, but have seriously changed the balance of power against mobs: You can use them to block skeleton's arrows, and hold off most other mobs' attacks.
 * An iron pickaxe. This will let you mine more advanced ores (see below) as you encounter them, which are key to proceeding through the game.
 * An iron sword, which will let you attack monsters much more effectively than your stone sword.
 * A bucket. This lets you pick up water source blocks and place them elsewhere. This is a key ability for making a farm, and it also lets you remove inconvenient waterfalls, or place your own waterfalls for easily getting up and down steep hills, in and out of ravines, and so on. It also lets you create your own ponds and rivers, which can be useful for fishing, protecting against creepers (water keeps explosions from destroying blocks), and more complex purposes.
 * Iron armor, which will give you much more protection against monster attacks and most other damage. The full set will take 24 ingots. If you don't have that much yet, make the various pieces of your armor set as you get more, starting with the chestplate.
 * At this point, you have used 33 ingots. If you have iron left, go on to make shears and a second bucket (to hold a second water source, milk a cow, or get a bit of lava out of your way).
 * Set aside half a stack or so (that is, 30-odd ingots) for when you need to replace some or all of your equipment.
 * If you still have plenty of iron, you can start switching over to iron tools for everyday work: An iron pickaxe, shovel or axe will work faster and last longer than the stone tools.  Extra buckets come in handy too.
 * Once you have redstone, make a couple or few compasses (the extras are for map s). (Go mark your spawn point before you forget, and maybe buiild a shelter there.)

Beds again
If you haven't already made a bed, you should get some wool to make one! This lets you set your spawn point someplace safe (and stocked with spare equipment), and also lets you skip past dangerous nights and storms.

When placing a bed, make sure you have a solid block (not glass, slabs, fences, or the like) to stand on next to the bed. If there is no place to stand when you actually die and respawn, your bed will be considered "obstructed". If your bed is missing or obstructed when you actually (die and) try to respawn, you'll go back to the default respawning behavior (that is, random within 20 blocks of the world spawn point), until you not only place, but sleep in a bed again.

For this reason, if your home is not very near the world spawn point, you should eventually use a compass to locate the exact point, and build a shelter there. Once you've done that, you can carry a spare bed with you as you explore, and skip nights and storms by sleeping in it and breaking it in the morning to carry along. If you happen to die, you'll at least have a shelter nearby when you respawn. You should also place an extra bed in that spawn-point shelter, in case you die and respawn at night or during a storm (see below).

When trying to sleep, make sure it's either night-time or storming (not just rain), and there are no monsters around you. If there is a problem, you should get a status message explaining what's wrong. You also can't sleep if you are currently starving, poisoned or on fire. If trying to sleep at sundown, you may need to wait a few seconds for night to officially begin, and try again.

When you die, all your possessions will be dropped at your death site. Dropped items disappear after 5 minutes of game time.  Accordingly, you need to get to your items quickly, or you could have to start over gathering resources! However, if you sleep in a bed, the time you skip does not count against the timer. So, if you die and respawn at night or during a storm, immediately sleep, and then go fetch your items by daylight. (If the sun is already going down when you respawn, you might need to wait up to a minute or so until you can sleep.)

Slabs and stairs
You can craft most kinds of stone, or any wooden planks, into slabs or stairs. Slabs are half-height blocks that can be placed in either the top or bottom half of a block space. A floor made of "bottom" slabs can help prevent monster spawns, as mobs can't spawn on bottom slabs, and individual bottom slabs can be used as an easy step up to the next level of blocks. (Admittedly, it's awkward to place furniture on such a floor.) A ceiling made of top slabs can give you a little extra headroom, and double as the floor for a level above.

Stairs, naturally, can let you move up and down an incline without jumping, which is much more convenient, and for an often used path it can save a lot of food.

Monsters
As you build up your equipment, you'll be able to fight the basic monsters more easily, and start to take on the more dangerous ones as well. A quick (and incomplete) list of the usual Overworld monsters:
 * Zombies you know by now -- individually they're slow and easy to defeat. However, if you're fighting them at night or underground, remember that they can summon more zombies when attacked.  Zombie Villagers are a variation.  They mostly drop rotten meat, but can also drop a few bonus items:  A carrot or potato for farming, or even an occasional iron ingot.  As you continue to play, you will start seeing zombies with weapons and armor.  Naturally these are more dangerous, but they also drop more experience, and sometimes they drop the weapons or armor, which may be enchanted.  In deserts, you might meet the Husk variant, which does not burn in sunlight.  Watch out for the baby zombies, which are much faster and also don't burn in the sun.
 * Skeletons are dangerous because of their ranged attack; they mostly drop bones and arrows, but sometimes they drop their bow as well. Later they will also show up with armor (and enchanted bows), which they can also drop.  The bones are useful not only for taming wolves, but for making bone meal which can make crops grow quickly (this is especially handy for multiplying that carrot or potato).  During or after storms, be wary if you see a skeletal horse standing around -- this is the rare skeleton horse trap, which can confront you with a whole squad of mounted and armored skeletons.  In icy areas, you may meet the more dangerous Stray variation.
 * Creepers are the iconic cute-but-deadly suicide bombers of Minecraft. They drop gunpowder, which is mostly used for making TNT.  The safe way to kill them is to shoot them from a distance with arrows, but it is in fact possible to sprint up and hit them, sprint away, and repeat until they're dead.  Note that water will block the destructive aspect of their explosion, but not the damage -- a creeper that explodes in water will damage you but not the landscape or your base.  Once you have iron armor or better, their blasts will be much more survivable.  (Point-blank range is still pushing your luck.)  Beware:  In caves or ravines, they can drop in on you as you pass under them, and explode without the time delay.
 * Spiders usually become peaceful during the day, but can still counterattack after you attack them. They have two special abilities:  They can see you through walls, and they can also climb those walls (including fences, but not glass).  They drop string, (used for bows, fishing rods, and more advanced crafting), and sometimes spider eyes (not very useful until you start brewing potions).  Underground in abandoned mineshafts, you will also meet cave spiders, smaller but more dangerous because they can poison you (not to mention slipping through small openings).
 * Slimes are found in swamps and occasionally underground. The slimeballs they drop will let you craft a number of useful items, especially leads to capture animals and move them around.
 * Endermen won't attack unless you meet their eyes or attack them, but once you do fight them, they're much more powerful (and faster) than other monsters. They sometimes drop Ender Pearls, which you can use to teleport.  They can also pick up some blocks and move them elsewhere, which can be... inconvenient.  Hint:  being 3 blocks tall, they can't follow you under a low ceiling  Even a suspended 3-by-3 platform will let you stay out of reach while you attack them.
 * Witches attack by throwing various potions at you, and they can also drink potions to heal themselves or protect themselves from fire. They drop a variety of odd items, occasionally including the potion they were drinking.

Next Day
Here's a tutorial of sorts for The Third Day, but at this point you're past the very beginning of your game, and can choose what to do next. Some ideas:
 * Build a bigger house, with room for storage chests and other things. With your new resources you can make this one nicer looking, with glass windows and various decorative blocks.
 * Build more farms for your various crops -- sugar cane especially will need a different sort of farm than the other crops.
 * Explore your world, discover new biomes, and find those ores, crops, and animals you haven't already.
 * Dig mineshafts and collect more ores, up to and including diamonds.
 * Breed up your animals to a decent number for food, leather, and other resources.
 * Build a place where you can go fishing overnight or during storms without being pestered by monsters.
 * Fight monsters for experience and useful items.
 * Collect more resources for building and crafting, and learn about the various things you can craft.
 * Find a village and sell your crops and meat for emeralds, then use those to buy more advanced items
 * If you come upon an ocean, craft a boat to explore that and find new lands.
 * Make a fence or wall around your territory, and light up the whole area, to create a monster-free base where you can wander around at night.
 * Explore the possibilities of redstone circuits and mechanisms such as pistons and dispensers.
 * Eventually, you'll probably want to move into more advanced activities: Enchanting lets you add special abilities to your armor and tools, and a trip to the Nether will let you get the supplies for more advanced items, including brewing potions.

Tutorial videos

 * The Second Day in Minecraft 1.0.0 (SecretRevelation)

Návody/Druhý den Anleitungen/Der zweite Tag Tutoriels/Le deuxième jour pt-br:Tutoriais/O Segundo Dia 튜토리얼/둘째 날 教程/第二天