Tutorials/The third day

Once the player have survived the first and second days of Minecraft survival, gathered some basic resources, and made a shelter, it's time to start making farms and gathering more resources. This tutorial will give you some tips of what you can do on the third day of playing Minecraft.

Note that this guide assumes that the player are playing in survival mode and on normal difficulty. If playing in a separate mode or difficulty, things may be slightly or significantly different than this guide.

General
By the third day, the player should have a basic shelter and basic resources, though you probably don't have enough resources to last for a long time just yet. Now it's time to gather more resources and/or improve the house (e.g. getting a sunroof). If you're adventurous, you can also go find caves, dungeons, strongholds and/or mineshafts to fight monsters and/or find ores, which will both be very useful for various reasons. If you don't feel safe encountering caves and similar structures just yet, the player can just explore in the Overworld and look for villages and temples, as they contain various loot. Try to make a few various farms, and use some redstone.

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

Tips to the full Minecraft experience
If you are still looking for a common path to follow, start crafting more materials. Use the advancements list or the list below as goals to help you progress, ensuring that you also take breaks to enjoy the sandbox!

These are the basic activities that you can do on your third day. Remember, don't do too much because you have very limited resources. Also, make sure to always stay close to your shelter.
 * Start a farm of some type to always have food and other materials on hand, such as a wheat farm.
 * Start a mine down to the bedrock, create a mineshaft if possible, and stockpile ores.
 * Craft a Book and Quill to jot down important coordinates and keep it on you as an alternative to maps. Some players use text files in their PCs in place of this.
 * Make a mob trap and get resources (gunpowder, string, arrows, etc.)
 * Return to your home and further expand it and craft new items.
 * If you go mining and see lava, gather it with an empty bucket, as lava buckets are a very good fuels source – they can smelt over 12 times as many items as coal can. However, be sure to empty the furnace, as once 64 items are smelted and they are not removed, the furnace will still be using up the fuel but will not smelt anymore items. Just remove the stack and it will continue until it runs out of fuel. This is extremely useful if you are making smooth stone as you don't need to keep adding coal.

Gathering Resources
Resources are very important in Minecraft. Resource are not just the blocks that make up the world, but they can also be very beneficial to the player, as they can make tools, armor, and much more. Because of this, it's important to make sure that you never run out of resources. For materials that are rare and non-renewable, use them very sparingly, only when you absolutely need them. It's recommended to use common or renewable materials whenever possible. However, note that renewable materials are usually only renewable when a farm of that material is made, so don't use up all of any type of material in one area before you've made a farm of that material.

Preparation Before Exploring
It is highly recommended to bring the following items before exploring:


 * A bed: these reset your spawn point and skip the whole night without having to fend off monsters.
 * Weapons
 * A shield
 * Iron Armor: at least 1 piece, preferably the chestplate
 * (Stone/Iron/Diamond) Pickaxe
 * (Stone/Iron/Diamond) Shovel
 * Cooked Food
 * Torches: they give off a light level of 14, preventing monsters from spawning in your house during the daytime, or nighttime.
 * Place any unnecessary items in a chest. Any items placed in a chest will not be lost if you die.
 * [Optional] Clock: If you are in an underground shelter due to having no time to create a shelter with windows and doors, you can use a clock to see what time it is outside without opening a hole, risking a monster spotting you.
 * [Optional] Compass: This tool can help you find your way back to the spawn point.
 * [Optional] Map: This shows a top-down view of the area and can be more useful to find your way home than a compass.
 * [Optional] Empty Bucket or 2-4 Milk buckets: Milk Buckets will help you negate any effects inflicted on you, which is extremely useful if you encounter a witch or a cave spider which gives you poison. For Beginners: to obtain milk buckets, just go up to a cow and use an empty bucket on it and the bucket will have milk in it; this milk can then be drunk to negate any status effects.

Searching for Landmarks
To avoid wasting valuable daylight time, search for certain landmarks, blocks, and formations. Some of the features in the world you may want to look for and mark are the following:


 * Farm animals (cows, chickens, pigs, sheeps): You'll want to use wheat, seeds or carrots to round up at least two of each kind you see, and fence them in for breeding. Later you can collect any you're missing from neighboring biomes. In particular, if there are wolves about, you want to round up some sheep before the wolves clear them out of the area. If the sounds animals make annoy you, make a pen at least thirty blocks away from your shelter.
 * Wolves or Ocelots: If you see either of these around, tame a pair and breed them a bit so you'll have them if you need them. Ocelots can be tamed with fish, and wolves with bones. One way you will know if wolves are nearby is if you see drops of wool on the ground, as wolves attack sheep.
 * Miscellaneous Plants and seeds: Seeds come from breaking tall grass. Even if you don't want to make a full farm yet, you can simply use a hoe to till some ground near water, and plant a few seeds for leading and breeding animals, and eventually making bread. Sugar cane, pumpkins, cactus, and cocoa plants can all be found in appropriate biomes. Dungeon chests can provide seeds for pumpkins, and cocoa beans, but they're not the only source for pumpkin seeds. They can also be crafted by putting a pumpkin into the crafting grid. Each plant has different needs for farming; see the Tutorials list for more details. In all cases, once you get a solid farm going, you'll have an effectively unlimited supply of that material.
 * Cave entrances: Good places to find coal and iron ore near the surface, and perhaps better stuff further down. They may lead into larger networks of caves. Make sure to be cautious when exploring these, see various tutorials for tips.
 * Ravines and shafts: Make a waterfall with a water bucket to get down into these safely. These can give easier access to deep underground levels, where you can find gold, redstone, and even diamonds. Ravines especially are almost certain to open into more caves.
 * Mountains: Besides being landmarks, mountains may contain caves, or sometimes even a path to a cave network.
 * Fire: Fire is an indicator of either a burning mob or something flammable. The only 2 naturally occurring sources of fire are lightning or lava. (Undead will burn in the sun, but won't set other things afire.) If there isn't a thunderstorm going on 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 jungle, for example) can indicate the same thing.
 * Beaches: Beaches are a source of water, sand, clay, sugar cane, 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.
 * Dungeons: Repeated appearances of one type of mob, or collected drops of one type close together, may indicate a dungeon nearby. Square, even, dry basins on the ground may also indicate a dungeon beneath. The dungeon itself will have walls made of cobblestone, chests, and flooring including moss stone. Beware, however, as there is almost always a monster spawner guarding the loot. These will spawn one of skeletons, spiders, or zombies. You can also find Chests in abandoned mineshaft, or (eventually) strongholds. Most dungeons can easily be converted into small mob farms for experience and drops. If, when exploring an abandoned mineshaft, you see a room full of cobwebs, watch out! This is probably a cave-spider spawner. so be very cautious when approaching. (Note that these aren't dungeons, and won't have the treasure chests.) Unlike dungeon spawners, cave spider spawners are usually better if destroyed (use a pickaxe).
 * Floating Blocks: Sometimes off of high hills, a small clump of dirt or stone can be seen floating in the sky. This was originally a glitch, which Notch decided not to fix. They're useful as landmarks.
 * Lakes: These can be used as landmarks or handy water sources. Also useful if you are on fire, as stepping into water will put out the fire.
 * If you happen to come across a village, do take advantage of this. First of all, make a bed (tip: lampposts have wool), and use it every night until you've thoroughly secured the village. Your first priority should be to build a fence around the village (to keep out wandering mobs), and place torches to light up the area, especially inside buildings. You may also need to place stairs or blocks so that villagers can get into houses, due to bugs in village generation. Likewise, fence off any cliffs, cave entrances, lava pools, or similar hazards, as villagers are very stupid and prone to killing themselves off or getting trapped in caves. Even after doing this, you will need to defend the village from regular zombie intrusions, but this will usually help minimize the spawns of other dangerous mobs, such as creepers. Also, to protect village houses from zombies, it may help to break down the doors and replace them the other way around—that is, flush with the outside wall.

Once you've secured the village, you will find many resources within, ranging from crafting tables and pre-built wheat farms, up to chests of treasure up to and including diamonds. You'll be able to trade with the villagers as well.

Expansions to the Shelter
On your first night, players must have a shelter before the sun goes down, otherwise build strong tools in time to combat the enemies relentlessly hunting the player down, or get to a place where the enemies cannot reach the player. Although, no matter what precaution is taken, there is always some strange possibility that a creeper could get inside any shelter and blow everything up. This could open a few opportunities to expand.

Improving your Shelter's Safety
Although building your shelter out of dirt and wood may seem convenient, easy, and simple, it is not safe, so is certainly not advisable. Once you have enough of it, completely rebuild your shelter (only if your shelter is above ground, and rebuilding the design is not necessary) out of a stone material, preferably cobblestone. If you do not have enough cobblestone, either try and find some lava so as to build a cobblestone generator, or take the construction in steps until you have enough. Rebuild the walls first, then the roof. This is to improve resistance to creepers first. Adding glass windows to the home will allow you to look outside of the shelter and identify dangers, especially creepers, so you are not surprised by one. Overworld (the world you spawn in) hostile mobs do not climb ladders so you can use height to your advantage. Also remember to avoid looking at endermen (which means placing your cross hairs on it). This will cause the enderman to turn hostile for a short while, if you "look" at them.

Consider building a safe room, which is a simple room underground with a bed, a chest full of food, a bow and arrows (and/or a sword, if you have no bow or arrows), and a door opening. This is so that you can sleep through the night, minimize monsters, bring your health back up, and kill off the monsters keeping you in.

This is all in case a creeper blows up the side of your house and monsters come flooding in.

Expanding Your Shelter
The first thing to do is check the time of day. If you're planning on lots of work, make sure it's morning. A good idea is to renovate. This is because unless your base is underground, hostile mobs may spawn and attack you. Expanding requires you to expose yourself to the outside.

Choose a good technique for your extension. A good idea for your early days in Minecraft is cobblestone, for obvious reasons (Note: Because cobblestone has higher resistance values than dirt/planks, and a creeper can't blow it's way in, but for a planks/dirt shelter, a large part or all is blown up.). Any form of shelter should be as strong as possible.

An alternative would be to dig your base deeper, possibly collecting ores you may come across along the way.

Many players also choose to start a mine from inside their shelter (that is, start the initial shaft or stair from a convenient indoor spot). This will allow you to mine through the night without danger of mobs coming in. (If it's a stairway, you'll want a fence gate at the entrance.)

Conclusion
After choosing your next course of action, progress to the more advanced tutorials.