Tutorials/The third day

Survivin' and thrivin'!

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 you're 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.

Gathering Resources- Supplying Your Tools And Safety
Resources aren't just the blocks that make up the very world you reside in (I'm talking about Minecraft, not Planet Earth, of course). Resources are the blocks that helped you survive your first night, protected you from the hordes. Resources are the blocks that helped you survive, thrive, mine, and craft. Resources are everything. They're not only supplies for your tools, but also your safety. So it's important to make sure that you NEVER run out of resources- either get used to farming day and night, or try to find rarer, non-renewable resources. Sure, you can walk out and the very first thing you step on is a non-renewable resource- soil. But we're talking about the more serious stuff- dungeon loot, rare metals (iron, gold etc.).

So it's best to prepare.

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. You can also cook porkchops in a furnace to create cooked porkchops.
 * 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.
 * Optional: Compass (If you get lost a compass is the easiest way to find your way back) Constructed from iron and redstone. NOTE: Compasses only lead to your spawn point, if your house is far away from your spawn point a compass is almost useless.
 * Optional: Map (If your close enough to home and you crafted it at your base it is better than a compass) Constructed from paper and a compass.

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 or Lava pool, at most a Dungeon, nearby. If the drops are Wool then there are likely Wolves nearby, great rewards in their own right.


 * Moss Stone, Cobblestone, or Chests: These three (assuming they weren't 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 occurring 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. This is always mistaken as a sign of Herobrine, but it's not. (He's probably fake!)


 * 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.


 * Square, even, dry basins on the ground. No, that's also not the work of Herobrine, that's the work of a Dungeon, which never spawns with a roof.


 * Floating Blocks: Sometimes off of high stacks, a small clump of dirt or occaisionally stone can be seen in the sky, seeming to be common in seasonal forests and rainforests. Once again, not the work of Herobrine.


 * Lakes: These can indicate a life save if you are on fire, or a central landmark to mark the directions of other areas.

Add more, if you would like to!

Midas' Touch
When you have found a suitable area for finding resources, mine! Dig down and you might find valuable resources, like gold and redstone, or the precious diamond. With these materials, craft new tools, prepare yourself, and mine some more!

Expansions to Your Shelter- A Shelter Within Your Shelter
On your first night, you either built a shelter, and cowered in there, waiting for first light, or you went berzerk, trying to fight Creepers with your bare hands. Well, I'm assuming that you built a shelter. Speaking of Creepers, what if one managed, through the lines of code that make blocks solid, through your defenses, through your wall, through your epic human intelligence that built this shelter...what if a Creeper managed to get in your base and blow everything up?

It's best 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.

Also, 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 1.) You can sleep through the night, minimizing monsters), 2.) bring your health back up and keep it up, and 3.) 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 For Dummies
The first thing you'll want to check out is the time of day. It should be preferably morning. That's right, you're in for a day of renovation. Hurray! This is because unless your base is underground, hostile mobs may spawn and attack you. Expanding requires you to expose yourself to the outside.

After that, think about your extension. Would it be made of dirt or stone? Mine a few stacks of the material you're going to build your extension of.

Or, you could forget the blocks, and dig deeper, gathering cobblestone and perhaps a few precious ores along the way.

In Conclusion
As the sun sets on the third day, you have made a lot of upgrades and extensions. You also mined lots of resources if you chose not to extend too much. Now, you are either sleeping in a bed (Post Beta 1.3!) to fend off monsters indirectly, or feeling adventurous and fighting those monsters. Now, once the moon is high in the middle of the sky, our beginner's guide ends. If you wish to learn more, look at the rest of the wiki!