Tutorials/The third day

General
This guide focuses on Survival Mode, on the standard NORMAL difficulty setting. Be warned.

On the first day, you built your shelter and gathered your basic resources. It was close. On the second day, you ventured out from your sanctuary, braved the lurking Creepers, and gathered more resources, improved your shelter.

Today's the third day.

What will you do?

The Third Day
Now you've got a safe shelter. You've got resources, but you're not sure how long they'd last. You're not sure if your shelter is safe enough. Now it's time to build them higher and/or improve your house (Ex. Getting a sunroof). Or if your adventurous, you can go find caves/dungeons to fight monsters and/or finding ores to build more durable materials. If you don't like to go into the depth, you can just explore in the overworld.

Note: Since Minecraft is a very open and often personal game, you should decide what to do yourself. A whole bunch of gameplay methods exist at this point of your adventure, try doing different things and look for your favorite activity.

Preparation Before Exploring
Before you even think about exploring, you should craft the following items:


 * A bed, these are useful as you can very quickly dig a hole in a hillside, and block it off for a shelter.
 * Weapons (You never know when you're going to encounter monsters)
 * (Stone/Iron)* Pickaxe
 * (Stone/Iron)* Shovel
 * Food. One of the most efficient types of food is porkchops, collected from pigs. These heal 1 and a half hearts. Light pigs on fire to collect cooked porkchops, which heal 4 hearts.
 * Place any unnecessary items in a chest. (Just in case you die)
 * Optional: Clock (If you're in a cave and you want to see what time it is) Constructed from gold and redstone.

Searching for Landmarks
To avoid wasting valuable daylight time, Search for certain landmarks, blocks, and formations. Things to look for include:


 * Congregations of mobs/mob drops: This means that, at the least, there is a cave entrance, at most a Dungeon, nearby. If the drops are Wool than there are likely Wolves nearby, great rewards in their own right.


 * Moss Stone, Cobblestone, or Chests: These three (assuming they werent placed by you) are all positive indicators of a Dungeon. Beware, however, as there is always a Monster Spawner guarding the loot. Cobblestone can also indicate the presence of Lava, but Lava is a reward as well.


 * Mountains: Mountains may contain caves, which in turn likely hold resources. It is even possible, though unlikely, that the mountain may contain a path to a cave network. Again beware, as darkness allows hostile mobs to spawn.


 * Fire: Fire is an indicator of either a burning mob (see above) or something flammable. The only 2 naturally occuring sources of fire are lightning or Lava. If it isn't storming and you happen to have a bucket, by all means check it out. A conspicuous lack of trees in an otherwise heavily forested area (clearings in a rainforest, for example) can indicate the same thing.


 * Beaches: Beaches are a source of water, sand (obviously), Clay, and the occasional Cactus. If you have any need of these (though cacti are better found in deserts) a beach is a good place to look.