Tutorials/Surviving in a single area indefinitely

If you are planning on staying in one area of the Minecraft world for a long time and don't want to deplete all your resources, read this tutorial.

Basic Survival
The first item you need to survive is wood. Once you have wood, you will need to make farms as quickly as possible. You first need to make sure you have the following items:


 * 1 or 2 buckets, which require you to find iron (by mining or raiding a weaponsmith's chest) to craft
 * at least one sapling of some type (except dark oak saplings, in which case you need 4)
 * access to at least one source of lava and water (a village with a weaponsmith shop has a lava pool and water from village farm or fisher cottage)
 * melon or wheat seeds

After you have the basic survival supplies, the first thing you need to do is create a 'safe zone' (i.e., somewhere lava cannot set things on fire). As cobblestone is an important resource in the game, create a cobblestone farm. See the following steps:


 * 1) Make a 4 x 4 hole in the ground.
 * 2) Dig an additional block down for each block in the 2nd row of the hole.
 * 3) On each block in the 1st row of the hole, place water.
 * 4) On each block in the 4th row, place lava. You should see cobblestone forming in the 3rd row.

You may notice that sometimes when you mine the cobblestone, the cobblestone item goes into the lava and burns up. If you have sufficient iron, placing hoppers underneath where the cobblestone generates, all leading into a chest, so the mined cobblestone ends up in the chest. You could also use pistons to automatically push cobblestone away from the lava, letting you mine it without having to worry about any of it burning.

A tree farm should also be set up so as to gain maximum yield harvest, so place your saplings around 3 - 5 blocks apart, with the exact distance between saplings depending on what tree you're planting. You now have a rather steady source of wood for repairs and pickaxes or other needful things. Now, if you're on any other difficulty except for peaceful mode, you will need to have a crop farm. If this is a wheat farm the best way to go about doing this is to make an infinite water supply.

A wheat farm should be set up as large as you care to take it so as to have max yield. If it is a melon farm, the following should be used:

(Note : diagonal placement of the same crop decrease the growth speed by half, to avoid it, alternating rows of melons with rows of pumpkins is a solution)

Another great way to obtain infinite supplies such as food, wool, leather, and other passive mob drops is to create a Mob Farm. First, create a penned in area with fences and fence gates. Then, lure two of each species you want into the pen using their preferred food item (such as carrots for pigs, wheat for sheep and cows, seeds for chickens, etc.). Once you have two of each mob you want, you can breed them at any time you want- provided the parents have a five-minute cooldown period. You can slaughter the mobs at any time, just bear a couple of things in mind. First, the mob will run around and try to get away if hit, so you may hit different cows, for example, without knowing which is the one you hit originally. Second, if you use a sword, you may hit more than one mob at once. And last, remember to keep at least two of each animal so you can use them for breeding and supplies infinitely.

Once you have these basic farms, you should be able to live in a single place indefinitely.

Iron Golem Farm
For additional common resources, such as iron, special advanced farms can be built. An iron golem farm is the best way to go pre-1.8. For that, you need to gather at least 2 villagers (using minecarts or similar tricks) and breed them using houses (a door with a block above counts as a house).

With 1.8, villager breeding has been changed, so now you need to trade with at least two of them to make them "willing". This can be considerably harder at times.

With 1.14, iron golem spawning has been changed. Now villagers will attempt to spawn a new iron golem if a mob hostile towards villagers such as a zombie approaches.

The best strategy to get easy villagers on maps without villages (such as Skyblock) is to get a blaze rod from the Nether. You then craft a brewing stand and brew a splash potion of Weakness. Then, capture a zombie villager and make sure it can't escape or get harmed by another zombie, but that you can still reach it. (In Skyblock, glass bottles can be gathered by killing witches that spawn occasionally). First, throw the splash potion of Weakness at the zombie villager. Then, you only need to feed it a golden apple and wait.

Do this again to another villager because at least two villagers are required for gossiping, then craft and place a grindstone, smithing table, or blast furnace to let the villagers adopt the professions of weaponsmith, toolsmith, or armorer. Trade with them till they reach apprentice or journeyman level, after which you can buy a bell. You need to trade several times and allow villagers to resupply at their job site block when their trades get locked. They can unlock their trades twice per day. If you don't have emeralds, you can trade coal. Once you buy a bell, place it near beds so villagers will recognize it as gathering site. Now you have all the supplies needed for an iron golem farm.

Alternately, one can build an iron golem farm directly in a village, eliminating the need to transport villagers. For a tutorial on how to make an iron golem farm, see Tutorials/Iron golem farming.

In SkyBlock
If you're in a SkyBlock world, gathering resources is a bit different, due to limited space and resources. The biggest thing is to never craft items or blocks unnecessarily, make farms out of any renewable resource before using up that resource, and being careful, since a careless player could easily fall into the void in SkyBlock. There are some items and block that need to be acquired differently than normal Survival, however.

For making potions, you will need glass bottles. This may seem to be a problem however, as glass bottles require glass or sand. Neither are feasibly renewable pre-village and may not spawn at all in a SkyBlock world. What you will have to do is get witches to spawn and drop a glass bottle, or fish up a water bottle. Keep in mind that witches are rarer than other mobs. The only way to acquire gold in SkyBlock is to kill zombie pigmen, find a river biome and farm drowned, or smelt gold equipment. Wandering traders, however, can spawn anywhere and sell most items or blocks needed for skyblock. But, their trades can be useless as a player need emeralds to obtain them and most of the prices are somewhat expensive just for a single item.

One of the hardest parts of SkyBlock is finding a nether fortress. This is because SkyBlock only consists of a few blocks, which is not enough room for a nether fortress. However, mobs that only spawn in nether fortresses will spawn where a nether fortress would be if it were a normal map. One way to do this is to keep building platforms outwards, until nether fortress mobs start spawning. Note that this may take a very long time, as nether fortresses are often very far away from each other. Another way how to find a place where nether fortress mobs should spawn is to find seed of your skyblock world using /seed and then create a normal world, using the seed. Then enter the nether portal, find nether fortress, memorize the coordinates of it and then build a platform at the skyblock world exactly on these coordinates.

教程/如何在一个地区中长期生存下去