Minecraft for Beginners: How to Survive Your First Three Days

What's the Deal with Minecraft?

Minecraft drops you into a huge, randomly generated world made of blocks. You can dig, build, farm, fight and explore anything you can see. There's no story you have to follow. In Survival mode you gather everything yourself and keep yourself fed and alive. In Creative mode you get unlimited blocks and can fly, so it's pure building.

This guide is for your first few days in Survival. Every recipe below works in both Java and Bedrock editions.

Day One: Punch a Tree (Seriously)

1. Get wood. Hold the attack button on a tree trunk to break it into logs. You don't need a tool for this, just patience.
2. Make planks. One log makes 4 planks in your inventory crafting grid.
3. Make a crafting table. Put 4 planks in a 2×2 square. Place the table down: it gives you a 3×3 grid for bigger recipes.
4. Make sticks. Put 2 planks one above the other to get 4 sticks.
5. Make a wooden pickaxe. Put 3 planks across the top row of the crafting table and 2 sticks down the middle.
6. Mine some stone. Stone breaks into cobblestone, but only if you use a pickaxe. Without one, you get nothing.
7. Upgrade to stone tools. Same pattern, with 3 cobblestone instead of planks. Make a stone pickaxe, a stone sword and a stone axe (the axe makes chopping trees much faster).

Light, Fire and Food

• Furnace: put 8 cobblestone around the edge of the crafting grid, leaving the middle empty. Use it to cook food and smelt ores.
• Torches: 1 coal (or charcoal) on top of 1 stick makes 4 torches. No coal? Smelt a log in the furnace to get charcoal.
• Food: your hunger bar matters. When it's low you can't sprint and your health won't refill, and if it empties you start taking damage. Cooked meat is a great early meal. Sheep, cows, pigs and chickens all drop meat, and cooking it in the furnace makes it far more filling.

Surviving the First Night

At night, hostile mobs spawn in the dark: zombies, skeletons, spiders and the famous creeper, which walks up silently and explodes.

• Build a shelter before sunset. A dirt hut with a door is fine. Nobody's judging. (Okay, we're judging a bit, but you'll survive.)
• Light it up. Mobs can't spawn in well-lit areas, so torches around and inside your base keep it safe.
• Make a bed. You need 3 wool (from sheep) and 3 planks. Sleeping skips the night, and the bed sets your respawn point.
• If you die, you drop everything you were carrying where you died, and you respawn at your bed (or the world spawn if you don't have one). Hurry back. Dropped items disappear after about five minutes.

Going Underground

The good stuff is underground:

• Coal and copper are easy to find with a stone pickaxe.
• Iron needs a stone pickaxe or better. Smelt it into iron ingots for better tools and armour.
• Diamonds, gold and redstone need an iron pickaxe. Diamonds are most common deep down, near the bottom of the world.

Bring plenty of torches, a sword and some food. Mark your way back out with torches, for example always on the same side of the tunnel.

Villages and Trading

Villages are full of villagers who trade with you for emeralds. Librarians can sell enchanted books, and farmers buy crops. Villagers don't fight back, but their iron golem protector will flatten you if you hit them. They'll also remember it and charge you more.

Redstone, Eventually

Redstone is Minecraft's electricity. You can make doors that open by themselves, hidden staircases, farms that work while you're away, and (for very patient people) actual working computers. Start small: a lever on a piston, or a pressure plate in front of an iron door.

Common Newbie Mistakes

• Digging straight down. You might drop into a cave or lava. Dig in a staircase instead.
• Fighting a creeper up close. Hit it, then step back. Repeat.
• Wandering off without noting where your base is. Press F3 on Java (or turn on "Show Coordinates" on Bedrock) and write down your base coordinates.
• Using a gold pickaxe for mining. It's fast but breaks almost straight away, and it can't mine diamonds.
• Forgetting food. A starving player can't sprint away from anything.

FAQ

Can I play Minecraft with friends?

Yes, online through Realms or servers, over your local network, or in split-screen on consoles. Java and Bedrock players can't play together directly.

What's the difference between Java and Bedrock?

Java is the original PC version, with lots of mods. Bedrock runs on consoles, phones and Windows, and players on all of those can play together.

How do I beat the game?

Officially, by defeating the Ender Dragon in the End. To get there, you'll need to visit the Nether and find a stronghold first. Most players take many hours to get there, and plenty never bother. That's fine.