Tutorials/Beginner's guide

This guide is intended for those who are not familiar with Minecraft.

It describes how to play and survive the first night of Minecraft's Survival mode, assuming you are playing in a difficulty superior to "Peaceful" and in single player.

Controls
If you are reading this while you are playing Minecraft, please go to that tab right now and press. It will save you from plunging into the darkness of night without any tools that you need to survive. Before you start, you should learn the controls for the game.

The default keys for movement are as follows:
 * moves forward (double-tap and hold to sprint)
 * moves backward
 * moves left (strafe)
 * moves right (strafe)
 * to jump
 * to crouch/sneak (hold to prevent falling off blocks and sliding down ladders)

Note that these are just the default movement controls. They can be changed by going to the Options screen from the main menu or pause menu (press to access).

Use the mouse to look around the world. Click and hold the left mouse button to break down (or mine) blocks. Just rapid clicking does not work. Right click to place (or use) the currently highlighted item from your inventory hot bar. The mouse wheel cycles through the currently held item in your inventory hot bar, or you can use the number keys -. opens your inventory window and will drop a held item. These can also be changed in the options menu.


 * will toggle all HUD (Heads Up Display) and darkness effects
 * will take a screenshot, which saves in the directory “ ”. Since Beta 1.2, it is possible to make screenshots using without holding  at the same time. It will keep the HUD.
 * will toggle 3rd-person view and pressed again will toggle front view

(previously ) will cycle through the levels of fog in the world. This sets the render distance and can reduce lag, however it prevents you from seeing as far as possible across the map. This will make it more difficult to see mobs and anything else.
 * There are four different view distances, which are represented by stages of fog:
 * 1) Far (No fog): You can see the maximum distance (around a 256 block diameter)
 * 2) Normal (Low fog): You can see about half of your maximum range. (around a 128 block diameter)
 * 3) Short (Medium fog): This prevents you from determining what time of day it is as it blocks the sun, so this is not suggested. If your Minecraft client is this laggy, try the Optifine Mod. You can only see about thirty-two blocks away from you. (around a 64 block diameter)
 * 4) Tiny (Heavy fog): Same as medium fog but you can only see sixteen blocks away. It is extremely difficult to play this way, and thus this fog distance is not suggested for any player except the very experienced for a challenge. (around a 32 block diameter)


 * Note: As of Beta 1.8, the deeper underground you are, the heavier the fog will be, this increases immensely in, and slightly above, the void, where it is nearly pitch black.

Initial Priorities
As Minecraft is a sandbox game, there is no defined or proper way and style to play the game. However, in Survival mode one common theme found for all players is the need to create ways to defend and fend off hostiles, or mobs that spawn either in dark places (e.g. caves) or when night falls.

A necessity for survival is to keep your food bar full. If it gets to 85%, you will not regenerate health, and if it goes down to 0%, you will begin losing health. The food bar depletes slowly though so it shouldn't be a problem on your first night. The primary danger will be mobs. It is a good idea to start gathering resources and construct a lit shelter immediately after you begin on the first day. It is advised that you, when starting off, do not leave the shelter and dive straight into attacking hostiles, since you will likely lack the resources to fend off large groups of mobs.

On the first day, it is a good idea to mark where the world's default spawn point is by building a landmark such as a tall pillar, it will allow you to orient yourself in the world, as well as locate your spawn point if you get lost. Since you are just starting off however, you should build a small pillar out of dirt or sand. Should the resources be available to craft a bed, a spawn marker is not necessary, as sleeping in the bed will move your spawn point to your bed. It is highly recommended to build your first shelter very close to the spawn point, so if you die, you can easily locate it again.

As of Minecraft Beta 1.8, there are small buildings or towns spawned called NPC villages. If you spawn near one, there are plenty of houses there. Explore the village to get a good idea of what the roads are. If there is a Forge, there will be a chest in it, which was added in the 1.1 update.

Note that when you die in Minecraft, all items you were carrying or wearing in your inventory are scattered around your point of death, and you will respawn at your original spawn point unless you have slept in a bed. Like any dropped items in Minecraft, your scattered inventory will disappear after 5 minutes if they are not recovered. If you are building far from your spawn point without a bed, it is generally a good idea to mark the spawn and make a marker over your home in case of death.

While you are making your preparations for nightfall, keep an eye on the sun. When you first start a new world in single player, it will be early morning. The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west; at midday, it will be directly above you. To better help you navigate, the Clouds in Minecraft always travel west.

In general, you will want to gather supplies in the day and build on your shelter in the night.

It is best to work quickly, as a Minecraft day is approximately ten minutes.

The Essentials
Multiplayer note: On most servers, only operators can destroy blocks that are near the spawn point.

However you approach your first night, you will need at least wood and ideally Coal or charcoal to have a fighting chance.

To collect resources, aim the crosshair at the block representing the resource and press and hold the left mouse button. This will instruct the avatar to punch the block repeatedly. Cracks will gradually appear in the block. Keep holding the left mouse button until the block breaks and drops. Releasing the button or looking away from the block will cause the avatar to stop punching it, and you will have to start over. You can collect the dropped resource by moving near its spinning representation. It will then appear in the inventory. Note that some resources, such as stone, only drop if destroyed with the correct tool.

To place resources in the environment, press on your keyboard to bring up your inventory and drag and drop the desired item to the quick access bar at the bottom of your inventory. Select the item by pressing the number representative of the box order (1,2,3 etc.) on your keyboard or scrolling with the mousewheel. Lastly, click the right mouse button to place the resource.

To drop resources in the environment, press on the keyboard when the resource is selected in the quick access bar, and 1 quantity of the selected item will be dropped onto the ground. Alternatively, open the inventory window and move a stack of items outside the window to drop the entire stack.

Spawn Point & Wood
First, mark your spawn point. This will be important in the first few days, as you will respawn back here if you happened to die.

Now, walk over to the closest tree (should there be no trees around, just roam a little and you'll eventually find one) and start punching wood blocks (you do not need a tool for this).Wood is a very important resource which is needed for basic crafting. One or two trees worth of wood blocks will be more than enough to get started. More is better, and allows you to make a larger house, more tools etc. Make sure to build your house near to the spawn point, or else craft a bed (requires 3 wool and 3 planks) to reset your spawn point. Do not destroy or return your bed to your inventory as this will cause your respawnpoint to re-default to your original spawn point, potentially taking you far away from where you were upon death. If you need to take a bed with you - make another one (Shears made of two iron ingots placed diagonally make collecting wool easier after the first day).

Craft a Crafting table
Crafting is core to Minecraft. While there are a small amount of items that can be crafted directly from the inventory, a Crafting table is required to craft tools and most other items.

To craft a crafting table, first open the inventory and click on a stack of wood:

Then place that in the 2x2 crafting square above your inventory. This will produce planks:

Left clicking on the plank icon will craft four planks for every one piece of wood you have, but if you hold down the right mouse button it instantly crafts the maximum amount (or a full stack of 64) that you can with the given materials, and places them in your inventory. Click on the remaining wood in your 2x2 crafting square and return it to your inventory. Click on the planks you just crafted and instead of left clicking, right click once in each of your four crafting squares. This drops one item instead of all items each click.

You should see this (with the exception of the 3x3 grid of slots, you will only see a 2x2 grid for now):

Click on the result and place it in an empty square of your hotbar.

Press escape to return to the world view and walk to a spot you think appropriate, select your newly crafted crafting table with either the mouse wheel or number key, point at a flat square of ground (not directly where you are standing) and right click. This will place your crafting table on the ground ready for use. If you wish to pick it up again to move it, left click and hold to mine it and then walk near the spinning icon produced to pick it up.

Craft a Pickaxe
In order to collect stone and coal, the next staple resources, you will need a pickaxe. Your first pickaxe will be made of wood; not very durable, but until you collect some stone, which is why you need a pickaxe in the first place, it's all you have.

You will need at least five planks to make one wooden pickaxe. Use your crafting table by right clicking on where you placed it. Your crafting table view is similar to your inventory view, except you now have a more useful 3x3 crafting space. First we need to make a handle for your pickaxe. To do this, pick up a stack of planks and place one above another anywhere in your crafting square. Two planks produces four sticks:

To create your pickaxe, you'll have to make some new planks. Once you've done so, arrange them in positions shown on the picture below.

You may have noticed that in order to craft a pickaxe, you more or less draw it with its components in your crafting square. Other items are crafted in a similar fashion.

(Note: Unless you need to hurry for any reason, it is advised not to make a wooden sword, because stone is better and easy enough to get.)

Gathering Resources
Once you've crafted a pickaxe, you can successfully acquire cobblestone. Start by finding stone in the world; it should be fairly easy, as it's extremely common. If you don't see any on the surface, dig down in a staircase fashion - it is highly recommended not to dig straight down. Mine 9 stone blocks (after mining it will become cobblestone) and approach your crafting table.

Using sticks and cobblestone, you can now make some stone tools:

Swords can be used to more effectively slay mobs (animals and monsters).

A stone pickaxe is more durable and more efficient than a wooden pickaxe. You will use it to mine stone (and other "rocky" blocks).

Shovels are mainly used to destroy dirt, grass, sand, clay, and gravel blocks quicker than by hand.

Axes make the process of gathering wood (and most other wooden blocks) much faster.

Now, you should gather more wood. Although some trees look different than others, this is purely an aesthetic difference; all wood functions the same. You might notice also that the tree's leaf blocks slowly disappear, or decay after you cut down all the wood. When the leafs decay, they can drop a sapling, (or rarely an apple). You can use saplings to grow more trees, but it's not recommended to grow back trees in the wild, as trees obstruct your view. Save the saplings in order to farm trees later (you can build a tree farm under your house with torches, saplings, a pickaxe, and dirt). For now, harvest a decent amount of wood (such as a full stack).

If the sun is still in the sky, explore your close vicinity for some stone with black specks in it. This is coal, another essential item in Minecraft which can be used to create torches and more. (You aren't too much in need of iron right now, but most certainly, if you find any iron ore, unless it's over a deep ravine, cave, ect, go for it, most certainly! Iron has peach-ish speks in it.) If you cannot find some, don't worry: you can use other methods, as shown below.

Animal Resources
You should gather 3 pieces of wool to craft a bed. (Any more is redundant.) You can get wool from killing sheep. To find a sheep, just walk a little in one direction.

You will probably encounter other animals, such as cows, pigs and chickens. Kill a couple of these to get a bit of food. Use a sword to do this much quicker. You can eat it raw or cook it later. Cooking offers several times better food bar replenishment and also prevents raw chicken from making you sick. You can cook it while building your house, provided you craft a stone furnace immediately after mining your stone, ensuring you have enough left over for your tools, and placing it where you home is/will be. Cows also drop leather, but it is fairly useless, besides being craftable into very weak armor. Pigs don't always drop food, cows always drop something, but it won't always include food, and chickens always drop food, sometimes with feathers - keep the feathers, you'll want them after your first day.

Remember: Animals rarely spawn as of 12w04a. Remember to capture two of each kind to breed.

A Word about Digging
An important rule of thumb is:
 * Never dig straight down.

It is possible to stand on a block while destroying it. Once it's destroyed you will fall down one block to whatever is beneath it. The problem is, you might stumble upon a cavern and take fall damage or more unfortunately, fall into lava. Of course, it doesn't have to and usually isn't. If you do land in lava move to water immediately, if any is available, to save your life. You will then have to mine your way back to the surface.

Note - if something is taking a long time to break, stop hitting it unless you just want to remove it; it will disappear when you finally break it - return to it after you have the right tool to retrieve the item. 3 important rules to note are:


 * The better the material a tool is made of, the faster the tool retrieves and breaks items
 * Wood-related items requires no tools to break and obtain the resource, but axes may be used to speed up the process.
 * Coal and stone can be mined with a wooden pickaxe, but iron and  lapis lazuli require a stone pickaxe, and all other ores require iron tools or better.

At this point, if you have some daylight left, you can kill more animals, collect some things or just explore. If you don't feel like it, just skip to Night time (the section after the next one).

If all else fails
Sometimes, you won't have the luck to spawn in a forest or near coal. Maybe you fall into a hole and it takes you 5 minutes to get out. If this happens, you can still survive, but if this is your first day and you have not done anything important, you should make a new world. There are many methods of survival.

Option A: Dig a hole in the side of a cliff or hill. Make it at least 3 blocks deep. Then go inside the hole. You can keep digging as far as you can, if you want. But when you see the sun start to set, fill in your entrance. If it is at least 3 blocks high and you are a good distance off the ground (8+ blocks) then you can leave a one-block window. Otherwise, it is safer to wait until night is over. If you don't have a window, mine one of your blocks every now and then, and check if it is still night. If it is, fill it back in and repeat. To pass time, you could try extend your makeshift shelter but make sure you don't hit a cave or make any openings. If it is daytime, then congratulations: You have survived your first night.

Option B: Swim out to sea and just wait for dawn. Hostile mobs will only spawn on solid blocks (besides ice) so you don't have to worry about them. Just make sure you are sufficiently far from land that they can't spot you.

Option C: Find a large single tree; and use dirt to pillar up to the top and stay up there till day arrives. Mobs will not spot you if it is a large enough tree and if they do, just take evasive action and move to the other side of the tree. Spiders could give you a problem, but hopefully, they won't see you. A word of advice if you do this, trees obviously contain wood, so you can use it to your advantage.

Option D: Build a tall 1x1 structure by pillar jumping: jump up while looking straight down, and place one of your soil blocks in the space you've jumped up from. By doing this repeatedly, you can get high enough above the ground that the mobs will be unable to detect you. You will then need to wait until morning.

Once it is light enough, and the mobs have burned, simply dig out the blocks you're perched upon until you're back on the ground. Don't jump off your tower - if you're high enough to avoid mob detection then you're high enough to seriously deplete your health bar or even kill yourself if you jump. Avoid using sand or gravel to make your tower because if a creeper does happen to notice you and blows up at the base of your pillar, the sand/gravel of your pillar will get blasted and all blocks above it will come down with you on top: and the next monster will find you - provided you aren't already dead - and it might be another creeper. This usually happens when you build a tower of sand/gravel thats too low, a creeper comes and you start to pile your tower up but the creeper explodes, blasting your tower and bringing you down to earth to be meat for his buddies.

Dirt and other blocks will not collapse like sand/gravel; your blocks will remain suspended if the lower ones get blasted, leaving you on a floating island, provided your topmost block is above the blast radius. If you are in a desert with only sand and cacti all around, dont try to use cacti (they'll kill you), instead gather some sand, press E, and in the four boxes at the top place sand in each one. This will yield sand stone which isn't very strong but won't collapse like sand and gravel (4 sand = 1 sandstone, so be sure to gather enough). There will also be natural sandstone and stone under the sand, but you may not have had time to dig for it, so this is an emergency option. A creeper blast will alert skeletons of your position, who will then come close and shoot you with arrows and kill you. To prevent repeated creeper blasts beneath you add more blocks to your tower to get yourself higher than you were before. Watch out for climbing spiders and spider jockeys (you almost certainly won't see a spider Jockey). To help with this, break one of the blocks below you or build a lip around the block you're standing on by walking to the edge, holding shift, far enough to see the sides of the blocks and placing blocks on those edges, but be careful not to fall off (you cannot fall if you are holding shift unless attacked). If there are mobs nearby, then it's not worth the risk to do this, just be prepared for the spiders.

Option E: If you found a cave system you can spend the night there. If it ends, then cap off your entrance. If it does not end, then build a little shelter around you [usually by capping off both open ends], keeping at least 7 feet/blocks away from yourself and the outside of the shelter [outside on either end, meaning the entrance to the outside on one side and the continuation of the cave into the ground/mountain on the other side], or creepers wandering by will sense you through the wall [6 blocks in any direction]. Dont worry about the natural walls of the cave, they're usually thick enough that creepers won't sense you, but zombies can still be heard through the walls pretty loudly, so don't let this make you feel the walls are too thin to initiate a creeper blast. Just, if you're going to dig, do it in a different direction than the zombies. You can dig into the cave's wall while waiting in either of these cave situations, but keep building blocks handy to patch up any openings you might make into another cave while digging, which might have a hostile mob in it. If you place your pickaxe in the quickslot bar (used to navigate quickly between items you are carrying in your inventory) and e.g. dirt is placed right next to it, you can quickly switch between your tool and that block type in order to close the hole you just made. This can be extremely handy when you stumble upon an opening which contains mobs.

Night time
The first thing you need is a shelter to do some night time chores safely. You can dig into the ground, mountain side, climb on treetop, or just close yourself off in a natural cave.

Initially, your sole light source in caves and at night will be torches. These are made from coal and sticks. You probably don't have any coal, so you will have to resort to using charcoal.

To make a charcoal, you have to smelt a block of wood. To do this you need a furnace. To create a furnace, arrange eight cobblestone blocks in a ring on your crafting table.

After you have placed your furnace, right-click on it and add a fuel (at this point preferably wooden planks; one piece is enough to smelt 1.5 piece of material smelted/cooked) in the bottom slot and the wood in the top slot. If you have Coal and Torches already, you do not need to do this.

Acquire about 6 pieces of charcoal. Each piece of charcoal (and coal, they are equal) can smelt 8 blocks, so it pays off more to use them, rather than wooden planks as a fuel. Now you can cook your food. Ration out a bit of charcoal for that and turn rest into torches in following manner (you don't need your crafting table):

Now, the final thing you need is a bed. You make a bed like this (color of wool doesn't matter)

While venturing out in the middle of night is an option, try to avoid it as much as you can. If you do not have enough wool, (you can get wool from killing sheep) you will have to do so, but take extreme care. Next item deals with mining. If you don't think you missed anything in the overworld, keep on reading.

Mining
Players argue about the most optimal way of mining, but one thing is certain: the quickest and most reliable way to gather resources (which is generally what you want, if you don't want to stay beginner forever) is cave exploration.

Finding a cave
You have no problems if you have just spent your night in a cave. If you haven't, the easiest way to do so is to roam the overworld a little and look out for exposed cave entrances. Sometimes they end immediately, but sometimes they develop 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 (8ish blocks back and down, squared [meaning 8 blocks in a row each layer dug]) will reveal this if it is the case. If you can't find any all day, just sleep away the night, replenishing your resources like wood and food as you use them. If you hear suspicious, hostile noises, just try to listen and follow them.

Cave exploration
Cave exploration is pretty straightforward: 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. It also helps to put your torches on either the right or left(always one side only) all the way down so you don't get lost.

Ores and Minerals
There are certain materials that can only be found underground and are crucial to gameplay.

Coal is an important material used to make torches and to smelt/cook items. You have to mine it in order not to run out of torches while cave exploring. One stack (64 lumps) should be enough, more would never hurt, though.

Iron is probably the most important and versatile resource you can find underground. You can use it to craft good quality tools, armor and plethora of other things. Gather as much of it as possible. Once you have quite a bit of iron ore, make a base to smelt it into iron ingots, that you can then craft. First of all craft a sword and a bucket and fill it with water, then craft iron armor, after that craft iron pickaxe and shovel and lastly some spare buckets to hold second water source or some spare lava. Crafting recipes can be found here.

Gold, Lapis Lazuli, and Redstone are more specialised ores that you don't really need at the beginning, so you don't have to mine them at first. They are only found in deeper parts of the caves and can be mined only (with the exception of Lapis Lazuli) by a iron or better pickaxe.

Diamond is a very rare mineral, sought after the most, due to the fact that it can be crafted into very durable and quick tools. They can be found at the very bottom of the world, more commonly 10 to 16 levels above bedrock. Once you hit bedrock (unbreakable blocks) climb back up about 16 levels and mine around for a while before slowly making your way down one level at a time. Diamonds become less common below level 10 so it is a good idea to keep above that to avoid wasting valuable tools and time.

Home Safety
Main article: Trap

By the end of the first day the shelter will likely be primitive and small, in the days after it's easier to build a 'home', in whatever shape or form you can imagine. In the first shelter it's likely you only have 1 entrance, therefore it may be wise to add a crude 'defense' or trap to stop monsters from 'grouping up' at the door. For example, when you do not use a bed to skip the night and get disturbed while you are building, it would be best to have an alternative to fighting off the mobs. A simple and effective defense is to dig a small 3 block deep trench on both sides next to the door. The monster will have a hard time not falling down when it's following you to the shelter. However, due to the improved AI of hostile mobs, it is less likely for them to fall into trenches and other dangerous traps.



Next Day
A tutorial for your next day is available here: the Second Day.

The Shopping List
This is a quick reference for what you will need to survive your first night.


 * Bearings
 * Mark spawn.


 * Gather and craft [amounts are close to minimal, and are barring any additions or extras]
 * Get 10 logs: See note below
 * Get 3 wool blocks
 * Make a crafting table
 * Make a wooden pickaxe
 * Get 11 cobblestone*
 * Make a stone pickaxe
 * Make an Iron Pickaxe, and shears after that (If you hit Iron)
 * Get about 4 saplings (these are found when you chop down a tree)


 * Shelter
 * Make a bed
 * Start on shelter (materials depend, not counted)
 * Create a front door for your shelter and include a back door as well if at all possible (back door not included in above material count).
 * Create a storage chest and place it in the shelter
 * Create a furnace
 * Smelt 1 log to make charcoal unless you found coal (3 logs and 2 planks will most efficiently use these materials [also not included in the material count])
 * Create some torches and place them

9 logs equal 32 planks and a leftover log (logs do not have much use, so you might as well make 36 planks as long as you already have torches.)
 * Resource usage
 * 4 planks for crafting table
 * 4 planks for sticks for pickaxes and some torches
 * 3 planks for head of pickaxe
 * 8 planks for storage chest
 * 6 planks for door
 * 3 planks for bed
 * 1 log + 1 plank for furnace (plank as fuel, log for charcoal)


 * Multiplayer
 * a few Wooden Pressure Plates. You never know when they may come in handy, perhaps saving you from a devious Iron Door trap!


 * Tip: Gather 3 cobblestone first, then make a stone pickaxe; use it to gather 8 cobblestone for a furnace.

Tutorial Videos

 * The First Day in Minecraft 1.0.0 (SecretRevelation)
 * The First Day (Beginners' Essentials) (Minecraft Tutorial)
 * Minecraft The First 10 Minutes (Minecraft Tutorial)
 * Your First Shelter in Minecraft (Tutorial Machinima)
 * Minecraft: Building a Starting House (Minecraft Tutorial)
 * Minecraft Efficient Farm (Minecraft Tutorial)
 * Getting Used To The Minecraft Crafting List 101

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