Tutorials/Beginner's guide

The beginner's guide, "The First Night!"
If you have never played or don't know how to play Minecraft, then you should check out this guide.

The goal on the first day is to build a lit shelter before nightfall. So, the first thing you want to do is collect lumber from some trees. This is a crucial part in surviving, as most tools use this. You should collect anywhere from 10-20 pieces of wood. Next, you need to find coal, which is very important as well, because bad guys, such as zombies, creepers, etc. will spawn anywhere it's dark, especially at night when everything is dark without torches, so if your house is dark, then a lot of baddies will spawn there. to identify coal, find rock, and if it has a smooth surface, and a few black marks in it, that's most likely coal.

But in order to harvest coal, you need a pick axe, because for one, it takes very long to break down without one, and when you finally break it, nothing drops without a pick. So to make a pick, press the "I" key, and in the CRAFTING section, and click the lumber you collected in one of the 4 squares. When you do that, (put it in only ONE square,) you should get 4 planks. Keep clicking the planks until you are out of logs. You should get from 40-08 of these, depending on how many logs you collected.

Now, click these planks, and arrange them like so: Then, make as many sticks as necessary, but leave some planks, you will need those too. After that, you want to make a crafting bench, which you make like so: Click the bench, but it at the toolbar on the bottom, select it, and set it down.
 * PLANK* *EMPTY*
 * PLANK* *EMPTY*
 * PLANK* *PLANK*
 * PLANK* *PLANK*

To use a crafting bench, right click it and a bigger crafting square should show up, a 3x3 one. Not you make a pick like so: ...................*STICK*
 * PLANK* *PLANK* *PLANK*

...................*STICK*

Click the pick, and drag it to the toolbar, and select it to use it. Now, do the same as you did with the trees earlier, left click and hold, to break it down. Once you have mined all the coal, go to the bench or hit "I", because you only need 2 squares this time. Make torches, here's how:
 * COAL* *EMPTY*
 * STICK* *EMPTY*

Then, drag it to your toolbar to use later. You should now dig a small cave. it should have 2 rooms, unless you close yourself in, because if you don't, skeletons will shoot at you. Now select the torches, and set some sparingly, because anywhere it's dark, they'll spawn, and if you use all your torches here you'll have to go and find more coal to add an extension to your house.

And that's about it, you can wait out the night in the back room, make tools, and do whatever for the night! And BOOM! There's your first night!