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VOOZH | about |
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VOOZH | about |
This tutorial teaches you the basics of surviving in the first ten minutes of playing the game. Note that this guide does not go into much detail about the definitions or functions of blocks and items.
Wherever you spawn in the world, there are several different landscapes all around you. Your goal is to gather all the resources you need before nighttime comes and hostile mobs start spawning.
00:00–00:15
It is best to create a temporary landmark to indicate the spawn location before you move at all. This might help you in the future in case you ever get lost, so mark it in whichever way you can. If you spawn on land, the easiest way is to dig the blocks adjacent to the block you are standing on and then place one on top of the other to form a pillar below your feet. See pillar jumping for more detail. Build the marker on nearby high ground and build it high enough to be seen from a distance over any nearby obstacles. Next, look around and take note of your surroundings. See if there are any trees around you. (Pro-tip for direction finding: you are always facing north at the start of the game. Pressing in Java Edition (or +) on certain devices opens the debug screen, and looking on the left side of the text also tells you where you are facing, as well as your x, y, and z coordinates, which you might want to write down)
00:20–01:00
Walk toward trees. If you do not see any trees, pick a random direction (but note the direction; the sun has just risen and is directly east, which you can also check in the debug screen [JE only]) and walk. If you are on an island, surrounded by water, swim towards land. Throughout the first day, it's recommended to hit any short grass you come across as seeds are going to come in handy later on for hunger management (though it would be better to find a village because wheat can take a long time to grow especialy if you are not near water) ; and if in a forest, dark forest or wooded badlands, leaf litter for fuel. If you are in the jungle, keep an eye open for a big green melon and punch it if you see one. Also, take note of food sources such as animals, as well as small caves as shelter, as they become useful later on. If you have spawned in a plains, savanna, desert, taiga, snowy taiga[BE only], or snowy tundra biome, you may come across a village. Villages have houses and villagers that can be used for trading with later on. Villages may contain basic food supplies such as bread, seeds, carrots, potatoes, or beetroots. If it is a taiga village, their farms may contain melons and pumpkins. Hay bales can also generate which you can craft into wheat and then into bread. A weaponsmith contains a chest which can generate with potentially excellent chest loot like iron. Villages also contain beds that allow you to reset your spawn point and avoid the effects of insomnia. A village can be a good start to building your own shelter early or late game, particularly in challenging biomes like deserts or tundras.
01:00–02:00
If you still do not see trees, and particularly if you don't see any dirt or grass blocks, then start collecting sand (in a desert) or snow (in the tundra, although this requires obtaining a shovel, otherwise, nothing is dropped) as shelter materials, and try to get much as you can get for 20 seconds, then move on. If you are still swimming, keep at it. If you do see a tree, cut it down by holding down destroy (the very top back right button on all console and controlers) and collect all of the logs. After breaking down the logs from the tree, the leaves automatically decay after a few minutes; if you don't want to wait you can always break the leaves and collect the saplings and apples (note that apples only drop from oak and dark oak trees) that drop from the leaves, if any drop.
You should keep your eyes and ears open for animals such as chickens, cows, sheep, pigs, for food. You should see some animals in a couple of minutes. Wolves spawn in some biomes, which can be domesticated at a later point in time with bones. You don't want to punch the wolves by accident. If you do, they become hostile.
Achievements[Bedrock Edition only]
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Gamerscore earned | Trophy type (PS) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PS4 | Other | ||||||
| 👁 Image | 👁 Image | Getting Wood | Punch a tree until a block of wood pops out. | Pick up a log from the ground. | 10 | Bronze | |
02:00–02:10
The next step after finding wood is to make a crafting table. If you have not found trees yet (or a village), keep moving until you do. If you have not found either after 5 minutes, you should stop and make a basic shelter (see next section).
To make a crafting table, first open your inventory by pressing . Put one log anywhere in the 2×2 crafting slot near the top of your inventory. In the output box to the right of that, 4 planks appear. Take the planks and put 1 in each slot of the crafting area. The output should now be a crafting table.
Put the crafting table anywhere in your hotbar (the 9 slots at the bottom of your inventory), by either by dragging it or shift-clicking it, and place it down with a right-click, and right-click again to open it.
02:10-03:00
Make a wooden pickaxe. First, you need to make sticks. (1 log = 4 planks = 8 sticks) This lets you get cobblestone and progress to better tools. You can use the recipes below as a guide.
You should also make a boat if you're still on an island with very limited resources, which can be crafted with 5 planks.
Advancements[Java Edition only]
| Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 👁 Image 👁 Image | Minecraft | The heart and story of the game | Have a crafting table in the inventory. |
Achievements[Bedrock Edition only]
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Gamerscore earned | Trophy type (PS) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PS4 | Other | ||||||
| 👁 Image | 👁 Image | Taking Inventory | Open your inventory. | — | 10 | Bronze | |
| 👁 Image | 👁 Image | Benchmaking | Craft a Crafting Table with four blocks of wooden planks. | Pick up a crafting table from the inventory's crafting field output or a crafting table output. | 10 | Bronze | |
| 👁 Image | 👁 Image | Time to Mine! | Use planks and sticks to make a pickaxe. | Pick up a wooden pickaxe from a crafting table output. | 10 | Bronze | |
03:00–04:00
Dig downwards (it is usually not advised to dig straight down unless you are in danger; dig in a staircase pattern instead) or into hills using your fist on the dirt and then use the pickaxe to gather at least 19 blocks of stone, which drops as cobblestone when mined. This cobblestone enables you to build your first tools and a furnace.
This hole can be your first basic shelter if you want, so pick a suitable place. Remember to never mine straight down: this can get you into lava or a steep drop. Once you have stone tools, you can explore caves, so be on the lookout for a cave opening. These are quite easy to find, occurring in every biome, and contain ores, which give resources and are very useful. However, do not venture far into one this early in the game. If you see a monster in one, retreat right away, sealing the passage between you and the monster with basic blocks (dirt, sand, etc.) as you currently don't have any weapons or armor.
Once you have cobblestone, place your crafting table again (if you moved it) and use it to make a stone axe, a stone pickaxe, and a stone sword. In Java Edition, axes deal more damage than swords but have lower DPS (damage per second). You may have to convert more wood into sticks.
It never hurts to get more wood, so try to have at least 10 logs for the night or 32 for a cave as in a cave, as you cannot obtain logs unless you find a mineshaft and make sure to turn these into planks for four times efficiency. It's okay if you don't get enough. You can collect more in the morning.
Break the crafting table, collect it, and remember your spawn point. You can use the coordinates from the debug menu by pressing and/or take a screenshot.
Advancements[Java Edition only]
| Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 👁 Image 👁 Image | Stone Age | Mine Stone with your new Pickaxe | Have one of these 3 stones in the #stone_tool_materials item tag:
in the inventory. |
| 👁 Image 👁 Image | Getting an Upgrade | Construct a better Pickaxe | Have a stone pickaxe in the inventory. |
Achievements[Bedrock Edition only]
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Gamerscore earned | Trophy type (PS) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PS4 | Other | ||||||
| 👁 Image | 👁 Image | Time to Strike! | Use planks and sticks to make a sword. | Pick up any type of sword from a crafting table output. | 10 | Bronze | |
| 👁 Image | 👁 Image | Getting an Upgrade | Construct a better pickaxe. | Pick up a stone pickaxe from a crafting table output. | 15 | Bronze | |
04:00–05:00
Now that you have a weapon of choice (sword or an axe in Java Edition), you could start killing excess animals you see, and then collecting their drops, although food isn't a problem until your third day.
When collecting meat, exactly six of the same type is best for efficient cooking. Go after sheep if they're available because they drop wool, which is needed for a bed, and also give mutton for food. Horses only drop leather which can be used with an iron ingot to craft a saddle, an item required in order to control horses when tamed. Leather is better acquired from cows as they also drop raw beef. Don't bother attacking wolves; they don't have any item drops, and are rather dangerous if you attack them when starting out, though they can be tamed with bones dropped from skeletons, turning them into wolves that can protect you. Note that wolves will take a varied number of bones to tame, so make sure to have a good number of bones if you plan to tame one later one.
If you are lucky enough to run into cats in a village, then don't kill them either, as their only drop is string which is virtually useless at this point in the game, however, they can be tamed with raw cod or raw salmon, and can be useful in fending off creepers and phantoms, though, phantoms won't be an issue unless you don't sleep until day 3, and will stay away as long as you sleep. Also, always make sure to leave at least 2 of every animal, so that you can breed them for later. If you don't leave at least 2 of every animal, you will have to wait for more of that animal to respawn, which can take time.
Try to find coal and a place for your first shelter. Hillsides are best for both. If you do not see coal, collect some more logs (and craft an axe if you skipped that earlier). If you are planning to grow crops at this shelter site, ensure there is water nearby, otherwise, they will turn back to dirt, and while farmland with crops on them won't transform back into dirt, they'll grow considerably slower.
Advancements[Java Edition only]
| Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 👁 Image 👁 Image | Adventure | Adventure, exploration and combat | Kill any mob, or be killed by any living entity. |
05:00–06:00
There are many possible solutions for a shelter in Minecraft.
Look for a hill or mountain near your pillar, as it lets you easily make a shelter and give you resources along the way. Be aware that you'll encounter zombies, and you will have to punch them if you haven't crafted a weapon this late into the game. If you want to prevent this from happening again, place torches or other light sources in your shelter so that zombies don't spawn. You can craft a torch by putting coal or charcoal on top of a stick on the crafting table.
Although time and resource consuming, you can build your own shelter. This is useful if you don't find a mountain or hill right away. Having the necessary resources in your house is key!
Many materials work for a home, but some don't. For example, if you use sand, the roof will fall down and spiders can climb up the house and attack you if you're in it. In general, gravity-affected blocks should not be used to construct a shelter.
Find a village. If you see one, enter it, and you should see at least one house. Choose a house in the village as a shelter. You'll see you quickly progressed in house resources, having a bed, walls, a roof, and maybe a crafting table and furnace if you're lucky.
It will be annoying with all the door opening and villager sounds. You could also lose access to sleep if you don't have an extra bed, as a villager will sleep in your house—which exposes you to phantoms who attack players when they have been staying up awake— though you can also awake the villager and back into bed. However, you'll easily have access to trades if you have a lot of resources in your inventory.
However, don't feel very safe. If you drink an ominous bottle, you'll get bad omen. Bad omen will spawn waves of pillagers called a raid when you enter any village, leading to pillagers at your house. There is also a tutorial on the Minecraft Wiki on what to do in advance before a raid, listing gear you'll need to kill all the pillagers.
As a final resort, you can try living underground. Craft a ladder by placing seven sticks in an H shape, as shown below, so that you can get out of your shelter easily.
Then, craft a wooden trapdoor by putting six matching planks in a 2×3 shape on a crafting table, and then place it on top of the hole above ground where the ladder starts so that hostile mobs won't break in. You can try other materials (copper and iron), but those are accessible later in the game, and you'll need a redstone signal to open an iron door.
You can also try creating a staircase into your underground shelter.
After entering your underground shelter, it will be hard to tell the time, which is crucial in preparing for hostile mobs, so you might have to craft a clock. In the overworld, clocks show the time on its item icon. Craft a clock by surrounding redstone dust with four gold ingots.
If you see sheep, kill three of them, but ensure they're same color, to gather 3 blocks of wool. If you have a hard time finding the same-colored sheep, you can dye the wool you've gotten with dyes acquired by flowers you find into the same color. If you want to have an easier time later on by breeding sheep, leave at least 2 sheep alive.
After killing your sheep, find a tree (if you don't already have three wood planks). Break the tree until you have three wood planks.
On a crafting table, place wood planks (type does not matter) on one row. Place wool (color has to be same) on the row above. Drag the bed out of the output. You can now place your bed in your home and sleep in it to place your respawn point on the bed, spawning you at your home if you die.
06:00–07:00
Dig into a hill, or if you're in flat terrain, into the ground. Don't worry if there aren't any animals or trees in sight because you won't be using it for more than one night. (An especially desperate shelter is a 3×1 hole in the ground with one block covering the top.) If you find a village, you could stay in one of its houses. Be careful if you are on Easy to Hard difficulty, as you may have to deal with zombies, or husks if you are in a desert. These mobs will either kill the villagers on Easy, have a 50% to turn a villager into a zombie villager on Normal, or always turn the villager into a zombie villager on Hard, which will become hostile towards you and will remove the ability to trade with them.
07:00–09:00
Build a basic shelter (worry about the size and looks later, focus on functionality). For now, build it with dirt and/or planks. If you have spawned in a desert biome (and collected sand during Minute One) sand walls and a sandstone roof as sand will fall if used as the roof.
If you are in tundra and have a shovel, you can build with snow blocks.
After shelter, food, and a bed, your highest priority on day 1 is a source of light. With light, you can work usefully during your first night. Without it, it is possible but if you leave, mobs could spawn, and it is also hard to see what you are doing in the dark.
If you found and mined coal, craft some torches to light up the shelter.
If you did not find coal, build a furnace and make some charcoal from logs. This is a higher priority than food, as you shouldn't get too hungry until later in the game. However, you should avoid excess sprinting and jumping.
Place the crafting table and make a furnace.
Make your first charcoal (if needed) by smelting a log in a furnace.
Use this charcoal to cook up to 8 more logs. You can keep using this method to get charcoal until you find coal ore. The charcoal is used to make torches in the absence of coal (see the earlier torch recipe.) Make at least one batch of torches to keep your shelter lit at night, so you can work through the night. Make more batches if you plan on mining.
Make some torches as per the preceding section. Once you have a source of light, you can stop worrying about the impending darkness and do other tasks all night long.
Earlier, you hopefully collected some meat by killing animals – "...at least three pieces of meat, exactly six is best." Now it's time to cook it in a furnace with some planks:
If you have extra planks to spare, craft a couple slabs.
They are a much more efficient fuel source than planks in Bedrock Edition.
If you spotted coal earlier, go and mine it while waiting for the meat to cook.
A furnace batch always takes ten seconds to complete. (Except for Ancient Debris which takes 20 seconds.) Coal and charcoal last 80 seconds, and so do 8 batches. Planks last 15 seconds, so two can do three batches. This is consistent for all furnace recipes, even ones late in the game apart from netherite.
See Smelting for the details.
If you have additional wood, make a wooden door. Zombies have the ability to break doors on hard mode, but if you are a beginner, you shouldn't be playing on hard mode anyway. Please keep this in mind when building your entrance/exit to your shelter. Place the door outside and place it on the outer side of the block of your entrance to the shelter.
If you are out of wood, just place a couple of cheap blocks in the doorway until morning. You can make a door tomorrow.
Advancements[Java Edition only]
| Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 👁 Image 👁 Image | Husbandry | The world is full of friends and food | Consume anything that can be consumed, except for cake. |
Achievements[Bedrock Edition only]
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Gamerscore earned | Trophy type (PS) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PS4 | Other | ||||||
| 👁 Image | 👁 Image | Hot Topic | Construct a furnace out of eight cobblestone blocks. | Pick up a furnace from a crafting table output. | 15 | Bronze | |
| 👁 Image | 👁 Image | Renewable Energy | Smelt wood trunks using charcoal to make more charcoal. | Smelt a wooden log with charcoal as the fuel. | 10 | Bronze | |
09:00–10:00
Get ready for the night and craft a bed if you gathered wool. You need three wool blocks of the same color.
While you have this extra time, it would be a good idea to craft a chest to store unwanted and unnecessary items to carry around at all times such as seeds, eggs, leather, or extra food.
Go to bed. If you have not gathered enough wool for a bed to sleep in, or do not want to use one, first check to see if your base is secure (has all four walls, has a roof, a door or at least a blocked doorway, and ideally is lit). It is not recommended to add decorations to your house on the first day.
If you don't have enough wool (or wood) for a bed to sleep on, then, as long as you have a light source, you can use the night time more usefully by crafting or by starting to make a mine. From mines you can get lots of useful items such as iron, coal, redstone, gold, lapis lazuli, and even diamonds and emeralds. Never dig straight down, as it is very dangerous. You could fall into a mob-filled cave, into lava, or fall into a large ravine. Mines are also a good way to find caves.
If you don't have enough coal or charcoal to make many torches for the mine, you can organize your items and house to make finding and moving easier. Also, if you managed to gather some leather (at least 4 pieces for at least boots) by killing cows or rabbits, you might craft some leather armor. It's weak but better than nothing.
Advancements[Java Edition only]
| Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 👁 Image 👁 Image | Sweet Dreams | Sleep in a Bed to change your respawn point | Lie down in a bed. The advancement is granted as soon as the player is in the bed, even if the player does not successfully sleep. |
If you decide to start making a mine, there are many methods to dig for resources. While a safe method would be to simply dig a large room, lighting it up as you dig while looking for ores, you could also strip mine in which you leave 2 blocks between eack line of mine so that if you see anything worth mining you can mine it, a more lucrative (and risky) decision would be to look for a cave and start exploring. If you decide to find and explore caves, a sword or in Java Edition, an axe, food, enough wood (20 to 30 logs) and a light source (presumably torches) are absolute necessities. If you come across any ore other than coal or iron, get an iron pickaxe before you mine it, as using an inferior pickaxe not only takes longer to mine it, but it also breaks the ore without dropping the resource. You need ladders and a crafting table, just in case you find a good cave and decide to stay underground for long.
Ladder crafting recipe:
If you run short on food, you can survive on rotten flesh dropped by zombies, but it is not as nutritious and can inflict you with Hunger for 30 seconds. If you are living on rotten flesh, it is best to wait until the hunger bar is low and then eat multiple rotten flesh in quick succession, because the hunger penalty doesn't stack (if you do get the Hunger status effect, stand still to prevent hunger loss or drink milk).
Be prepared for hostile mobs, as it is a common but fatal mistake for starters to think that the moon spawns hostile mobs, and not simply darkness. If you come back with enough iron, you can experience many more features of Minecraft, mainly redstone, pistons, diamond, and much more. You have started on your path to your success in Minecraft, whether you have found iron or not.
One good idea is to chop an extra log and burn it for charcoal. With practice, you can start a new game and as long as you are near trees when you spawn, you should be able to make basic tools, a furnace and have enough wood for torches before midday (5:00).
People often would rather use up or throw wooden tools before switching to your newly made stone tools, but if you don't want to "waste" the wooden tools, you can use them as fuel to smelt single items.
If possible, and if you can spot a position where you would like to build a house when you spawn, try to gather the resources from nearby, and only dig where you would otherwise dig to construct your house to save time later. Replant all saplings (which have a chance of falling when tree leaves are mined) as soon as they fall if this is the case so that you have less distance to walk later.
If you are more adventurous, find an ocean. As soon as you have a lot of wood blocks, build the crafting table and wooden axe as above, then build 3 or 4 boats and go sailing. Spend nights at sea while perusing the coastline for a nice place to make your base. Once you do, put ashore at dawn and proceed with the guidelines above.
