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 more challenging than "Peaceful" and in single player mode.

Controls
If you are reading this tutorial while you are playing Minecraft, it's recommended that you go to the Minecraft window and press to pause the game. By doing this, you will have plenty of time to gather resources and create a shelter for the night, and monsters will not come up and kill you while you are away.

Before you start, you should learn the controls for the game. A full discussion of controls on all platforms can be found on, naturally, the Controls page. Here we discuss the default PC (and Mac) controls. Most of these can be changed in the Options menu (which can be reached from either the main menu or the pause menu.  There is one case (see below) where you really do want to change the default....)

The default keys for movement are as follows:
 * moves forward (double-tap and hold to sprint)
 * moves left
 * moves back
 * moves right
 * to jump. If in deep water, Hold  to swim upwards so you can breathe.
 * to crouch/sneak (hold to prevent falling off blocks and sliding down ladders)

As you do various things, you will see "items" appear and float just off the ground. As you move toward them (or if you're already very close to them), they will fly toward you and disappear into your inventory. Later you will have chests to store things in, but for the first day or so, your inventory will be plenty big enough for all the items you find.

Use the mouse to look around the world, and to act on blocks:
 * Moving the mouse changes the direction you are looking, without moving your character.  (That is, looking around is always safe, Endermen notwithstanding.)
 * Click and hold the left mouse button to break down (or mine) blocks. This is how you collect resources from the environment.  Just rapid clicking does not work.
 * Right click to place or use the currently highlighted item from your inventory hot bar. Blocks and items such as torches get placed where your cursor is pointing (if possible), while other (non-mining) tools will do their various "things".  Right-click and hold to eat food, or (when you have one) draw your bow.
 * 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, which lets you arrange your items and decide what goes on the hotbar. See the inventory page for full details.
 * will drop whatever item you are holding. You should probably change the drop key to something else, like .  This is because the Q key is right next to the movement keys, which makes it all too easy to throw away your tools, perhaps dropping them off a cliff, into the ocean, or even into lava.  Regardless of the key setting, you can also drop items by opening your inventory, and dragging the items out of the inventory window.


 * will toggle the HUD (Heads Up Display), including your hotbar, the various other "bars" (health, food, experience, armor), debug info, and the item you are holding. This gives you a clear view of the scene.
 * will take a screenshot, which is saved in the directory “ ”. If the HUD and/or debug info are visible, they will be included in the screenshot.
 * will toggle "debugging info". A lot of this will be cryptic and pretty useless, but the information includes your current coordinates in the world, and the biome you are currently in.
 * will cycle among first-person view (the default), third-person view (looking at the avatar from behind), and second-person view (looking toward the avatar's face).


 * + (previously ) will cycle through four levels of render distance. This chooses the distance you can see, with anything beyond that distance being enveloped by "fog".   Shorter render distance (closer fog) can reduce lag on a slow machine, but it prevents you from seeing as far as you potentially could, including mobs or distant territory.  It's perfectly fair to spend most of your time on Short or even Tiny render distance, and switch briefly to a longer setting when you need to look over the landscape.  There are four different view distances:
 * 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 short 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 or if your computer is slow and you want to minimize lag. (around a 32 block diameter)


 * Note: When you eventually go deep underground, you will see the Void Fog, which behaves similarly, but closes in the further down you go, and is unaffected by your view settings.



Overview
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 feed yourself, and to avoid (and later, fight) hostile mobs that spawn either in dark places (e.g. caves) or when night falls.

For your first night, you will need Wood, Cobblestone, and, ideally, Coal or Charcoal to have a fighting chance. Wool for a bed is optional, but very helpful -- it lets you skip the night and avoid the monsters that appear then. While you're working on the basics, collect any stray items you come across, as many of them will be useful later. (Notably eggs, seeds, and anything dropped by monsters e.g Zombie Flesh, Bones and Arrows.)

You need to get your resources and find or make either a bed or a shelter before nightfall, because that's when the monsters come out. It is best to work quickly, as a Minecraft day is approximately ten minutes and night is ten minutes, including dawn and dusk.

First Shelter
The traditional advice is to build your first shelter as close as possible to the spawn point, so if you die, you can easily find it again, or even spawn in a now-protected area. However, recent versions of the game have altered the rules for respawning, so that this is not necessarily a good idea.

When you die in Minecraft, all items you were carrying or wearing in your inventory are scattered around your point of death, while you respawn elsewhere. In prior versions, a player in a singleplayer game (SSP) would reliably spawn at the same location they originally appeared. However, since version 1.3, even SSP players instead spawn somewhere within 10 blocks of the nominal spawn point (until they've slept in a bed). This includes the first time when you started the game, so it's much harder to know just where you'll be coming back.

Like any dropped items in Minecraft, your scattered inventory will disappear after 5 minutes unless you're more than 180 blocks or so away, that is outside of chunk update radius. The problem is that if you died at night, you will find yourself stranded without your weapons and armor, at night, so you are quite likely to get killed again, or at least find your stuff guarded by monsters. Meanwhile, some of the monsters can actually pick up your stuff and use it against you! And if you spawned near your death scene, that 5-minute timer can easily go by before you can actually get back to and keep your stuff.

Combining these issues leads to a new strategy, at least for single-player. You can still mark your spawn point, but realize you might end up anywhere within 20 blocks of that. Then, while getting your initial resources, move away from the spawn point, trying to get 200 blocks or so away before you build your shelter. (Using the debug screen can help with checking the distance.) That way, if you get killed at night, you might spend an unpleasant "evening", but if you wait until dawn comes and the monsters leave, you can trot right back and hopefully retrieve your dropped items.

Note the above only applies until you have made and used a bed in a secure shelter. Once you've done that, you have a new option: If you get killed at night, you will respawn next to your bed, so you can just go back to sleep, and wake up the next morning -- the items don't "expire" while you're asleep.. It still may be worth keeping your bed out of chunk update range from where you're endangering yourself, but at least you won't be stranded outside at night.

Note that in multiplayer, this is much less reliable, because if another player is nearby, they will keep the chunk loaded. Of course, they can also take the items to save for you... or to keep for themselves.

Early priorities
Once you have shelter, your next priority will be food. Hunger will take a while to hit, so it shouldn't be a problem on your first day, but you'll try to pick up some food for when it does. After you've been moving around for a while, your food bar will begin rippling and start to decrease. If it drops below 90%, you will not regenerate health, and if it gets to 30%, you can not sprint. If the hunger bar goes down to empty, you will begin losing health. Unless you're in Hard Mode (and a beginning player shouldn't be), you can't actually die of hunger, but you will go down to 1 hit point, which makes you very vulnerable.

For nighttime, the primary danger will be monsters. It is a good idea to start gathering resources and construct a lit shelter immediately after you begin on the first day. As a beginning player, do not try to fight monsters your first night, because you have lousy weapons (or none at all), and you have no armor.

Starting the game
When you begin the game, you will be standing in a landscape somewhere. Take a moment to look around. This is your "spawn point", where you will reappear if you get killed. It's a good idea to mark it immediately, by punching out an X of dirt and/or sand, then using the dirt or sand to build a pillar in the middle of that. If you're standing on rock, look around for some dirt or sand to use, remember where you are, and go get it to build your pillar. Before you move,you may want to hit to show the debug info, then hit  to pause the game, and write down the coordinates where you started. Also notice what biome you're in. Then go back to the game and hit again to get rid of the debug info until you need it again, as it's distracting and in the way.

This assumes you are playing single-player -- if you are entering a multi-player game, you will not be able to change blocks near the spawn point, and will have to move some distance away before you can start gathering resources. But for any number of reasons, you really should try a single-player world for your first game....

Tough and Easy Starts

 * If you are standing on and surrounded by sand, you are likely in a Desert biome. After marking your spawn point, head for high ground and look around for green ground and/or trees (Cactus and sugar cane don't count).  Head that way to gather your wood.  If you can't see anything but desert, pick a random direction and head that way, occasionally going to high ground for a look around.
 * If you are on an island, completely surrounded by water as far as you can see, you are in an Ocean biome. This is a very tough start, but if you don't want to just delete the world and start over, you can just start swimming until you reach land (hold down  to keep yourself afloat), then continue.
 * In either case, "looking around" is a good time to increase your render distance to Far.
 * If, looking around, you see purple land and/or giant mushrooms, your game just got a lot easier: That Mushroom Biome will not spawn monsters.  Monsters can still come in from other biomes, but if you head toward the middle, you can spend the night in safety outdoors.  Also, with a wooden bowl, you can get free food from the Mooshrooms which live there.  However, one thing the Mushroom biome does not have, is wood -- so before you go there, head for green territory to get some wood and stone first.
 * If, looking around, you see houses and/or farms, you are near an NPC Village. Unfortunately, that's not actually a good place to spend the night -- they do have houses that shelter against nighttime mobs, but they also have zombie sieges, where zombies can appear inside the houses.  In fact, the villagers are likely to get wiped out before you have a chance to properly trade with them, but the destroyed village will still have a lot of resources for you, usually including farms that will immediately solve your food worries.
 * If sheep are not to be found anywhere nearby, then a bed will not be available for a while, so see the note above about putting your shelter away from the spawn area.
 * When you are looking around and if you see a swamp style area you are in a swamp biome. This is a potentially good but yet bad start. You will be surrounded by an island that has a sage green grass and trees with vines and ponds randomly scattered around the island. It is an easy way to obtain wood and normally animal mobs spawn as-well so that's useful but the downsides are you are most likely near slimes and witch huts.You are relatively far away from another biome but once you settled you can explore via boat.

First things first
Look around for a few things in particular, in order of priority: trees, visible stone (and especially coal ore), animals, and tall grass. As you move around, break any tall grass in your way, and collect any seeds that drop. For that matter, collect any loose item you see, as most of them will eventually be handy. Your first priority is to find a small tree, bash through the leaves if needed, and punch the wood until each block drops as an item. Don't bother with huge trees at this point, but also don't be upset if you can't reach the top blocks of wood -- you can always come back and collect them later. This first tree should give you at least 4 blocks of wood ("logs"). You'll punch more wood in a moment, but it's probably best to make a couple of tools first.

Your first crafting
As the game's name suggests, 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 in the game. Naturally, the crafting table can be crafted from the inventory!

To make your crafting table, first open the inventory and click on a stack of wood logs once collected from a tree:

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

The planks will be different colors depending on what sort of wood you have. Different types of wood don't stack together, but all work the same. With a couple of exceptions (slabs, stairs) you can mix and match different planks when crafting. In particular, sticks don't care what sort of wood they came from, they all stack together.

Left clicking on the plank icon will craft four planks for each click, using up one log. (If you hold down shift and click left mouse button it will convert all the wood you put there into planks.) At this point, you want to convert at least 3 logs into planks, and you can do more if you want. If you want to save some logs, 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.) Return the remainder to your inventory.

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 produced icon to pick it up.

Your first tool(s)
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 or fast, 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 use some of the planks and sticks you've just made. 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. At this point, you could go on to create a wooden axe, but you're better off going straight for stone....

The next level
Once you've crafted a pickaxe, you can successfully acquire cobblestone to make better tools. 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. Whack at the stone with your pickaxe; it will drop as cobblestone items. Mine at least 19 blocks of this and approach your crafting table. 19 blocks of stone lets you make a stone sword, a pickaxe, an axe, a shovel, a hoe, and a furnace, letting you complete the tool set. (If you're running a couple of blocks short, you can skip the hoe, since that won't be useful until you start farming.)

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 break 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.

More resources
Now, you should gather more wood, using your new stone axe. Don't turn it all into planks up front -- you may need a few logs for charcoal (see below). Although some trees (and their wood) look different than others, all wood functions the same. However, different kinds of wood don't stack together, which can take up extra inventory space. You might notice also that the tree's leaf blocks slowly disappear, or decay after you cut down all the wood. When the leaves decay when all wood blocks are destroyed, they can drop a sapling, or rarely an apple. Later on, you can use saplings to grow more trees, but just save them for now. For now, harvest a decent amount of wood (perhaps 16 blocks or so, but mind the sun). While you're at it, you should also dig (with the shovel) 16 or so blocks of dirt, in case you need to make a pillar or a quick wall when night comes.

If the sun is still in the sky, explore immediate 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. If you cannot find some, don't worry: you can make charcoal from wood blocks in a furnace. Charcoal has the same properties as coal.

You aren't too much in need of iron right now, but if you do find any iron ore (looks like stone with tan specks), go for it (you do need the stone pickaxe first). Don't be greedy -- if it's over a large cave or ravine, much less next to lava, leave it for later.

Animals
If you see animals around, you can use your new sword to kill a few of them. Chickens, Pig, and Cows (or Mooshrooms) all drop meat, which you can cook later, while sheep drop wool, which you can use to make a bed and skip the night altogether. (Later you will be able to make shears, to get wool from sheep without killing them.) Don't slaughter too many critters (they don't come back quickly), but try to get 3 pieces of meat, and (if there are sheep) 3 pieces of wool. If you do get the wool, immediately pull out your crafting table, and craft a bed:

The type of wood or color of wool doesn't matter (and won't change the appearance of the bed).

Heat before light
Initially, your sole light source in caves and at night will be torches. These are made from coal and sticks. If you haven't found coal, you will need to make charcoal instead. Either way, you will also want to cook your meat before you get hungry.

To do this you need a furnace. To create a furnace, arrange eight cobblestone blocks in a ring on your crafting table.

Place your furnace somewhere (say, next to the crafting table) so you can work with it. If you have coal, you can skip making charcoal, and go straight to cooking your meat, but that uses the same system.

To make charcoal, you have to smelt blocks (logs) of wood. right-click on it and add a fuel in the bottom slot and the wood in the top slot. At this point your fuel of choice is probably wooden planks, two of which will smelt 3 items (logs, meat, ore, etc). When you place both fuel and something smeltable in the furnace, fire will appear and smelting will start immediately. You don't need to wait for it to finish, you can hit to exit the furnace window and do something else while smelting continues. When the furnace's fire dies down, right-click it again to retrieve the results.

Once you have your first pieces of charcoal, switch to using that as fuel -- each piece will smelt 8 items (just like mined coal), and you have other uses for planks.

Make 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 and make torches. Ration out a piece of coal/charcoal for the food, and cook the food just like smelting the wood above: food in the upper input box, fuel (coal) in the lower one.

and turn the rest (plus some wood) into torches. You don't actually need your crafting table for this one, you can do it in your inventory's 2&times;2 crafting space:

Now you're prepared to light up your shelter.

Bed and shelter
If you have made a bed, nightfall is easy: As soon as sunset begins, place your bed, sleep in it by right-clicking on it, and continue with crafting and smelting the next day. (Hint: Music plays at dawn, noon, sunset, and midnight[which?].)  It's probably good to set up a shelter anyway, but if you run out of time, you can sleep anywhere, as long as there aren't already monsters near you. However, the other thing a bed does, is to set your spawn point (where you reappear when you die), but that part only works if you leave the bed there. So for the first night, you might just use the bed and then take it with you, but eventually you will want a safe shelter where you can sleep in your bed and leave it there permanently.

If you have no bed, and you didn't have time to build something secure, you will probably have to spend your first night in an emergency shelter. For some of these options, you can make torches and cook food overnight, but for the underground options, you really want to have some torches handy before you close yourself into the darkness.

Here are some options for quick shelters:

Getting above it all
Build a tall 1x1 column under you, by pillar jumping: look straight down, jump up, and place one of your 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. 10 or 12 blocks will usually be enough, but 16 or 18 is more certain. You will then need to wait until morning. You can also use "crouching" (holding ) to lean over the edge of your pillar and place an extra block or two as a ledge. Then you can put your crafting table (and soon, your furnace) on the ledge and work overnight. (Remember to retrieve them before you come down.)

Once it is light enough, and the undead have burned, simply dig out the blocks you're perched upon, until you're back on the ground. (Check for nearby creepers first!) Don't just jump off your tower - if you're high enough to avoid mob detection then you're high enough to take damage if you jump, or even die if you're 22 blocks or more up. Also keep an eye out for spiders, which can meet you halfway and knock you off the tower.

You can make the pillar out of dirt, wood planks (remember, 4 planks to a log), or even cobblestone, but avoid using sand or gravel to make your tower (see below).

Watch out for climbing Spiders or even (unlikely) a Spider Jockey. To fend off spiders, you can break one of the blocks below your top block, or build a lip around the block you're standing on. You do either of these by holding, sneaking far enough over the edge to see the sides of the blocks so you can break one or place blocks on their sides. You will not fall unless you let go of while leaning over the edge... or unless you are attacked. If there are mobs nearby, then it's not worth the risk to do this, just be prepared for the spiders, with your stone sword in hand. (Attacking them will knock them down, and they will also take damage from the fall.)

The reason not to use sand or gravel, is because unlike most blocks, they are affected by gravity: You won't be able to place a ledge with them (it will fall to the ground). Also, if a creeper does notice you, and blows up at the bottom of your pillar, the rest of sand you're standing on will fall closer to the ground, taking you with it... and apparently, you were already low enough for monsters to notice you.

If you are in a desert with only sand and cacti all around, and have no other blocks available, don't try to use cacti (they'll kill you). If you have time, try to gather a lot of sand. If you got at least 40 or 50 by nightfall, you can make enough sandstone for a pillar: Press E for your inventory and crafting window, divide the sand among all four boxes of your crafting grid, and take the result. Sandstone isn't very strong, but isn't affected by gravity either. Unfortunately, you need 4 sand to get each block of sandstone. If you could only get 15 or 20 blocks, you can make a sand pillar and hope it's tall enough.

Three block high hut
By making four three block high walls around you, you can simply hide from most mobs. You can make this out of almost anything -- cobblestone is more secure, you can use wood planks if you have enough, but even dirt will do in a pinch. You'll need at least a dozen blocks for a bare minimum, but two or three times that, or even a whole stack of 64, will let you build something you can actually move around in, and do some crafting and smelting overnight (Keep a block or few in your inventory as spares). You will have two main risks: One is Spiders, which can both sense you through the walls, and climb the walls. However, they can't fit through small holes, and if you make a roof with only a one-block hole, spiders can't get through (but you can still tell when day returns). The other hazard is if an Enderman wanders by and takes a block out of your shelter. Wait for the Enderman to wander away a bit, then replace the block, with one of your spares, if possible without letting your cursor cross the Enderman ("looking at them"). When full daylight comes, mine a door in your wall, and exit.

Out to sea
If you are near an ocean, you can make a boat and sail out to where you can barely see land (in any direction). If you can't make a boat, you can just swim out, holding the space bar all night to keep yourself afloat. Either way, you won't be getting any crafting or smelting done.

Up a tree
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. If the leaf canopy is big enough, you can actually dig up into the leaves, where monsters can't reach you. When night's over, you can chop down the tree.

Hole in the wall
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 try to get at least 7 or 8 blocks in from the entrance (to hide from creepers) 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 (you can wait 8 minutes clock time). 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. quickly, and don't try digging too deep yet. If it is daytime, then congratulations: You have survived your first night. To pass time, you could try extend your makeshift shelter, but be ready to seal up holes if you break through into a cave or out to the night. Also, avoid too much jumping, which spends your hunger quickly.

In a cave
If you found a cave system you can fix it up into a lair -- a good one can make a base for the rest of your game. If it ends quickly, then cap off your entrance. If it does not end, then build a little shelter around you [usually by capping off any extra exits or openings into the depths. Don't worry too much about the natural walls of the cave, zombies can still be heard through the walls pretty loudly, which can give you a hint where not to dig.

To block the cave off, for your first night you can use walls of dirt or cobblestone similarly to the "hole in the wall". If you have enough wood, you may be able to craft fences and a fence gate and place them across the entrance. Make sure you place the walls or fences behind the upper lip of the cave (or extend the ceiling over the barrier), or monsters are liable to "drop in" inside your barrier. Likewise, remove any stray blocks, within two spaces outside the fence, from which monster could jump onto the fence (try the jump yourself). If using fences, also make sure you can retreat into the cave and away from the entrance (out of sight or 16 blocks away), or a creeper may drop by and just wait for you to come out. Later, you can be more sophisticated about sealing off and fortifying your lair.

As with "Hole in the wall", you can dig into the cave's wall while waiting for dawn, but keep some 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.

Break The Golden Rule
Remember the golden rule we talked about before? Well, when you're desperate, you can break it a little. Dig three blocks down, and put a block above you that is not sand/gravel. Congrats, you just made the fastest shelter in Minecraft possible. Since you probably don't have a Minecraft clock yet, you may want to use a real-world clock to time the night (7 minutes, with up to 3 more to allow for dawn/dusk). If you have dirt or stone next to you, you can dig out a couple of blocks there, and place your crafting table and furnace. A torch will make your little hideyhole feel a little less like a tomb....

Changing The Rules
If you're desperate, you can press the Escape key to pause the game, go into the Options menu, and turn on peaceful mode. Though many players consider it cheating, it's a sure-fire way to make sure mobs don't spawn.

Dawn
Wait for full light, wield your sword, and carefully emerge from your shelter. Hopefully, it will be sunny, but even so, watch out for any remaining monsters -- this may well be your first fight. If you see spiders, don't panic, they will hopefully have become peaceful in the sun (or you can try to kill them for their string). If you see a creeper, your best bet at this point is to run at least 16 blocks away from it, and wait for it to go away (or explode, if it got too close before you got away). If you see any skeletons or zombies (hiding under trees or in water), retreat -- if close enough, they will follow you out from shade or water, and then burn. Once you're out and clear of monsters, look around for and collect bones, arrows, or rotten flesh which may have been dropped by burning skeletons and zombies.

If it is not sunny, you may have worse problems: You may need to kill zombies or even skeletons (or just retreat back in your shelter until the sun comes out). Zombies are traditionally easy, but in version 1.5 have gotten rather more aggressive; skeletons are already tougher, got even more so in 1.5.

Assuming you made it out of the shelter, congratulations! You've survived your first night in Minecraft! Within a day or two, you should have acquired some iron armor and better weapons, which will take a lot of the terror out of nighttime. You can also make a more secure shelter, and hopefully a bed.

Animal Resources
If you haven't already, you should gather 3 pieces of wool to craft a bed. (Any more is redundant right now.) You can get wool from killing sheep. In most biomes, you will find sheep wandering around as you explore. (Later, you can make shears to get wool repeatedly from the same sheep, as they can grow their wool back). If you can't find any sheep around you, but you have a sword (preferably stone or better), you can wait until nightfall and kill some spiders. They usually drop strings, which can be used to make wool in the crafting grid by putting four of them in a square.

You will probably encounter other animals, such as cows, pigs and chickens. Kill a couple of these with your sword to get a bit of food (if killed by fire a cooked version of their food is dropped). However, don't kill too many animals yet, as they don't replenish themselves. Also, you might use up your sword's durability, which can leave you with no weapons at night! You can eat the meat raw if you're starving, but otherwise save it to cook later as cooked food is better than raw. Cooking offers several times better food bar replenishment, and also prevents raw chicken from making you sick (poisoned). You can cook it while building your house, in your furnace. Cows also drop leather. which can be crafted into leather armor, books and Item Frames. Chickens sometimes drop feathers as well as meat - keep the feathers, you'll want them later to make arrows. Collect and stash any eggs you find -- you can't eat or cook them, but later you can use them to start off a possible chicken farm.

Note: In recent versions animals rarely spawn during the game, so it's quite easy to "hunt out" your area. Once you've gotten your feet under you, you'll want to make some fences and fence gates, and capture two of each kind to breed. NOTE: Do not worry about animal genders, there are no different genders in Minecraft and any two animals of a type can breed.

A Word About Digging
The golden rule of Minecraft is:
 * Never dig straight down or up.

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, there is a significant chance you will either stumble upon a cavern and take fall damage or more unfortunately, fall into lava. If you do land in lava move to water immediately, if any is available, to save your life. (Even if you can't save your life, try to get away from the lava before you die, so it won't destroy your possessions.) If you survive falling into a cavern, you will then have to mine your way back to the surface. If you dig straight up, then you can dig out a block holding back lava or sand/gravel and also die. Even water could kill you if you aren't able to get away quick enough.

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.
 * Obsidian, however can only be mined by a diamond pickaxe.

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 to make a bed you may have to do so, but take extreme care. Wool can come from two sources: Sheep drop wool when killed; once you have a little iron for shears you'll be able to get the wool without killing them. If sheep are not to be found, it is also possible to make wool from string, which you can get from killing giant Spiders. You will need 12 pieces of string to make 3 pieces of wool. (You can also get string from cobwebs, but those are only found in underground structures such as Abandoned Mine Shafts which are rather dangerous in their own right.)

If you have a couple of logs (or 8 planks) left over after making torches and bed, you can also make a chest to stash items you don't want to carry around just in case of death:

Next item deals with mining. If you've got what you need so far from the surface world, 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. Digging away gravel or dirt can possibly expose other cave extensions, but you may go through a few shovels that way. 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) will be an ample supply, but in practice, you can start with less and mine more as you go. Long-term, it's worth accumulating a stack or few, as once you get seriously into mining, you'll be using a lot. 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. This is the only ore that appears above sea level (anywhere there is stone), and it is often visible in stone outcrops on the surface or even on mountains.

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 plethora of other things. Gather as much of it as possible, but it needs a stone pickaxe or better to mine it, so be careful not to use a wooden pick on it. Once you have quite a bit of iron ore, make a base with a furnace to smelt it into iron ingots, that you can then craft. First of all craft a sword and a bucket (fill it with water), then craft iron armor, after that craft an iron pickaxe. This will take a total of 32 ingots, half a stack. If you have extra, optionally make an iron shovel, perhaps some shears, and lastly some spare buckets to hold a second water source or stray lava. Crafting recipes can be found here.

Gold, Lapis Lazuli, and Redstone are more specialized ores—gold and redstone need an iron pick, and lapis benefits from one. You don't really need them much at the beginning, so you don't have to mine them at first. Also, they are only found in deeper parts of the caves. Once you do have a little gold and Redstone, probably the first things you'll want to use them for are a compass (iron+redstone), a clock (gold+redstone), and some golden apples (gold+apples). Once you find some sugar cane, you can add 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 in Minecraft. It can be crafted into very durable and quick tools, and vastly superior armor. The ore can be found at the very bottom of the world, the bottom 15 layers of the map, and requires an iron pickaxe to mine. Once you hit bedrock (unbreakable blocks letting off floating gray particles) climb back up about 10 levels and mine around for a while before slowly making your way down one level at a time. At levels 5 and below, you'll be working around bedrock, so it's better to keep above that -- indeed, it's safer to explore at level 11 or above to avoid lava. A good way to check what level you are currently on is to press F3 on your keyboard and read the Y-axis value. Note that the player's eyes are 1.62 units above his feet, but as of version 1.3.1, the F3 screen shows both eye and foot heights.

Emeralds are normally gained (and used) by trading with villagers, but scattered blocks of the 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. It is not used for tools, or much else besides trading.

Home safety
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. Most likely, you will be sleeping outside (if you found sheep) in the first few nights. 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. Note: you can surround the top blocks with signs, mobs will think the sign is a block and will attempt to stand on top of it, causing them to fall into the pit. Ladders do this as well. Just be careful to avoid your own traps when you walk out the front door.



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

Important things to remember

 * Do not dig straight up or down.
 * Do not have a Flint & Steel equipped when operating equipment (E.g. doors, switches etc.)
 * Do not have TNT equipped near any item that can emit a redstone signal (E.g. Switches, Redstone torches etc.)
 * Always use the key when working near dangerous areas (E.g. Long Drops, Lava, etc.)

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 or more 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
 * If you didn't find coal, smelt a few logs to make charcoal. Smelting 3 logs with 2 planks for fuel (also not included in the material count) will be most efficient.
 * Create some torches and place them


 * Planting
 * Plant four saplings (they will grow into trees), so you won't have to go exploring and get lost.

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