Minecraft Starter Guide (For Real Beginners), by Robby C.

Minecraft has endless possibilities.

INTRODUCTION

Minecraft is a very fun game, but can be very frustrating if you keep dying and losing progress. In order to survive for a long time, you have to learn the basics of the game and how to survive your first few nights, which are very important. This simple guide will tell you how to live through your first few nights in Minecraft. Let's start mining!

FIRST DAYS

Your first few days in a survival world are some of the most important. These few days are the time where you want to get as many essentials as you want, which will help you survive the next hundred days, or even more. The first item you want to get is wood. Look around. There should be a good amount of wood near you, unless you spawn in an unlucky biome that has no trees. If you do spawn there, take time to explore around your spawn point, until you find a good spot with many trees for you to chop down. You should not wander too far from where you spawn, or if you forget to set your respawn point, you will still spawn near your base. Now, start hitting the wood, until it drops. Mine as much as you can, and around 30 blocks should be a solid amount of wood to last you for a small amount of time. Now, try to find food before night. Ideally, you should find some sheep to defeat for food. First, make some wood planks. Then, craft a crafting table. (see picture below) and then make some tools, and finally a bed, if you have some wool. (crafting recipes below) now build a simple house to survive the night. The house should enclose you on all sides, but have enough space to have a crafting table. Dirt or wood is a good material to build with, but be mindful that wood can burn, which can burn you, and possibly kill you. 

NIGHT

When nighttime comes, it's time to go back to your house to sleep. At night, dangerous monsters spawn, like creepers, zombies, and skeletons. These mobs can drop valuable items, but for your first few days, they can easily overpower you. Once you have some armor, you can go fight them. Nighttime is the perfect time to do all the tasks you wanted to do, but didn’t get to do. For example, you should explore and collect materials in the morning, which is safer, and then you should smelt ores and cook food at night, which wastes a lot of precious daylight in the morning, but is perfectly fine to do at night, because it is too dangerous outside your base.

Mine wood to make essential tools.

A simple starter base for your first few nights.

Mine coal, an important ore, with a pickaxe.

DAY 2 (Armor/Weapons)

Now, you should be getting the hang of survival. As stated before, dangerous mobs that come out at night can have some very good loot that they drop if you defeat them. Now, if you want to have a better chance of defeating them and getting the loot, you should make some armor. The most basic armor is leather armor, but it’ll still give you enough protection from most basic mobs. To craft leather armor, you will first need to defeat some cows, which can drop leather for you to use.

Defeat a cow to get leather, which is used to craft armor and other items, as well as steak, which is a good food source.

A full set of leather armor.

Leather armor is not named the same as the other, higher tier armor types, but still has some protection effect. Leather armor is crafted by using 24 pieces of leather, so you will need to defeat a good amount of cows to collect all the leather you need. Leather armor is crafted as follows:

Helmet (Leather Cap)

Chestplate (Leather Tunic)

Leggings (Leather Pants)

Leather Boots

Now, you have your armor, but you still need your weapons to fight off the monsters. There are 2 main easily craftable weapons that can be made at the start of the game, a wooden sword and a wooden axe. Again, they are much weaker than their stone, iron, diamond, or, Netherite counterparts, but will be enough to get you far enough into the game that you can start upgrading your weapons. (ONLY FOR JAVA EDITION: A wooden sword can strike faster than an axe, but the axe deals higher damage per strike than the sword.) For Minecraft Bedrock Edition, you do not have to worry about attack speeds, since there is no cooldown for hits in Bedrock Edition. The axe in Bedrock Edition actually deals less damage per hit than the sword, but can attack at the same speed as the sword. The crafting recipes are as follows:

The wooden axe deals more damage, but has a slower attack speed.

The wooden sword deals less damage than the wooden axe, but can attack much faster than the axe.

Now, you have both your basic armor and weapons you need to start fighting monsters. Next time at night, don’t be afraid and stay inside your base. Instead, go outside, defeat some monsters, and collect that good loot!

DAY 3 (Mining)

At this time, you should have leather gear, and basic wooden tools. In Minecraft, surely you have heard of top tier tools like netherite and diamond tools, and they are obtainable, but you have to go step by step in order to get them. First, you have to make a wooden pickaxe, then a stone pickaxe, then iron, and finally diamond. Netherite gear is significantly harder to obtain than the other gear tiers, and you have to be pretty far into the game in order to get it without dying and respawning. To get a wooden pickaxe, the most basic mining tool, you will need 3 wood planks, and 2 sticks. To craft the higher tier pickaxes, follow the exact same steps, and just replace the wood planks with cobblestone for a stone pickaxe, iron ingots for an iron pickaxe, gold ingots for a golden pickaxe, and diamonds for a diamond pickaxe. Netherite gear can not be crafted on a crafting table, but instead has a more complicated recipe to create.

Crafting recipe for a wooden pickaxe. Replace the wood planks with other materials for the other better pickaxes, except netherite.

Now, you have your mining tools, and you’re ready to go mining. When you go mining, be sure to bring a weapon and torches to light up the cave, because many dangerous monsters will spawn in these ore-rich caves. First, locate a good sized cave. If you are a beginner, you should find a cave that is not too cavernous, but is instead about 5x5, and goes down like a twisted staircase. In these caves, there will be a fewer number of monsters, so you don’t have to do as much combat. Be sure to light up the place with torches so that no more additional monsters spawn. With a little bit of luck, you can find some valuable ores, like iron. First, there will definitely be some stone around you, so mine a good amount of that. Stone will drop as cobblestone, which is a very useful block. It can be used to craft the second tier of tools and weapons, stone tools. Stone weapons and tools offer better durability and damage than wooden tools. First, craft some stone weapons and tools, and then go back in the cave to look for more ores. If you find some iron ore, which looks like dark tan specks in stone, mine it with stone tools, or it will not drop as a block. Once you have a good amount of raw iron, you can head back out of the cave back to your base to smelt it, which will give you a whole new set of better armor, weapons, and tools. To make a full set of iron armor, weapons, and a pickaxe, you will need 31 iron ingots, although it is good to collect about 40 ingots to be able to make other tools, like a shovel and hoe. Another good item to make is a shield. Shields are incredibly useful in the game, and can deflect a skeleton's arrows, and other mob’s melee attacks. Now, you are ready to become a real knight.

Iron is incredibly useful in the game, and can be used to craft many items.

Caves can be full of valuable ores, but can also be very dangerous.

Defeat sheep for wool, which is used to make beds.

CONCLUSION

Now, you have pretty much everything you need to survive the first few dozen days in Minecraft. To get more food, defeat sheep, which can drop wool and mutton for you to eat. Cows can drop steak, which restores a lot of hunger. Now, use some of that stone you mined and make a better, stronger base. Add some chests to store your belongings, and finally, sit back, and enjoy the sunset as night comes, and you prepare for a battle with monsters! Good Luck!

Zombies and skeletons burn in daylight.

A good starter base for beginners.