By coming over to Xbox One, Minecraft has a whole new audience to contend with so whether you’re a hardened veteran or complete newbie, it’s perhaps useful to highlight some of the key things you should be looking out for during your first few nights in the blocky world of Minecraft.
It’s easy to feel like there’s just too much to think about with Minecraft, after all; after being plopped into the centre of a procedurally-generated landscape, you’re probably going to be a bit overwhelmed. It was incredibly popular on Xbox 360, but there are still a hell of a lot of you that somehow haven’t gotten started, and now is the perfect time to learn.
There area lot of tasks you will need to think about and complete during those early moments, but if you think smartly, act quickly and plan wisely you can have everything you need to create a solid (and most importantly, safe) base from which you can start.
Once that’s sorted, you can make the decision on how you want to progress and what you want to concentrate on Minecraftis very open ended like that. These are guidelines, then, tips to help you quickly and efficiently knock out the simple tasks of the early days so that you can have somewhere to call your home with all your necessary tools and amenities. We’re going to assume you’re playing on Survival of course, because it’s unlikely you’ll need much in the way of help when using Creative mode. So grab that pickaxe and get ready to swing, with our beginner’s guide to Minecraft.
GET WOOD
Unless you’re really unlucky, chances are you’ll spawn into your randomly-generated world in a fairly grassy landscape with trees of varying types. First things first, chop some down. While wood won’t be the most important resource you will find, early on it is the most vital. It’ll be used to make your crafting table, tools to make resource gathering quicker and if you get enough of it a solid, aesthetically pleasing material to build your first home out of. So find a tree and punch it until you’ve collected all of its wood.
TOOL UP
Now you’ve got your wood, build a crafting table and use it to make a pickaxe, a spade and an axe. This will make it quicker to collect stone, dig up earth and chop down trees respectively. They’re only made of wood so are fairly quick to deteriorate, but are useful to have especially in the case of the pickaxe, which is necessary to collect stone-based resources. Once you’re done, you can ‘destroy’ the crafting tableagain to pick it up which is useful should you want to move it to wherever you plan to build a base.
BUILD YOUR HOME
About now is a good time to find a place to settle down. It likely won’t be your first structure you’ll probably want to make that one a bit more impressive but it will be where you return a number of times, so it’s worth finding somewhere you’re comfortable with. It might be on top of a hill, to see everything around you. It might be built into the side of a cliff face for a unique visual treat. Or it might be next to a cave, with access to all the resources you could dream for. Wherever it is, remember night won’t be far away and you’ll need shelter if you want to survive the darkness.
MUD HUTS CAN WORK TOO
When you’ve yet to identify your ideal location, remember that building a temporary hut out of any material (mud is quick to collect) will also save you from the monsters of the night. Simply build a 3x3 cube (though slightly bigger would be better) with a two-block tall gap to allow you to enter and, when night falls, hop in.
You’ll want to cover the two block gap up again, and periodically destroy a block so you can check on whether it’s daylight yet. Most beasts will burn in sunlight, so at
that point you’ll be safe again.
WHEN HUNGER STRIKES
At this point you’ll likely have noticed your stamina bar slowly degrading, and the more you do, the faster it will decrease. Once it is emptied, your health bar will then drop to half a heart one hit and you’re dead. It’s not vital to resolve at this stage you’ll want to avoid fighting but if you happen across some pigs then, as cruel as it might sound, you’ll want to batter them. They’ll drop pork chops, which will recover stamina when eaten either raw or (better) cooked. And at full stamina, you’ll auto-recover health.
YOUR FIRST IMPORTANT RESOURCE
Once you’ve got a pickaxe even a wooden one you’re going to want to look for coal. You can often spot this on stony hillsides, detectable through its telltale black specks dotted into stone. Coal can be used in furnaces to smelt ore or cook food and combine with sticks to create torches. These are important to any Minecrafter since it’ll let you light the way in the darkness of a cave, track where you’ve been, and prevent monsters from spawning. While beasts can enter lit areas unharmed, they
won’t spawn there.
LIVE BY THE SWORD
As with the tools, once you have wood you can make a weapon. You can make a sword, with a stick and two planks of wood or pieces of cobblestone. It’ll be enough to defend yourself in the early days as long as you remember to keep moving. Stepping backwards after each hit is a good strategy, since it’ll distance you from a counter attack and any potential explosions from Creepers.
Skeletons are tough since they can shoot arrows, but they’ll try and predict your movement so jump a lot, and swerve left and right.
SLEEP TIGHT
It is worth knowing about in your early moments with Minecraft that if you see sheep, you should kill them for their wool. You’ll only need three pieces (to combine with three planks of wood) to craft a bed, which has two hugely beneficial effects. Place it in your well-lit house and you’ll be able to use the bed to sleep, skipping the tedium of night time so you can get back to digging in safety.
Doing so will also reset your spawn point so, should you die, you’ll reappear here rather than your initial spawn point. Handy.
TEACH A GAMER TO FISH
If you’re feeling confident with your skills, it might be worth taking on some spiders. Killing these has a chance to drop some string, and if you can collect two pieces of this, you can combine it with three sticks to make a fishing rod. At that point all you need is a bit of water and you can gather up unlimited amounts of fish meaning you’ll never need to go hungry again. It’s a fairly low gain food (even when cooked in a furnace) but it’s easy and better than nothing, especially if you’re struggling for other food sources.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
And while we’re on the matter of food, it’s worth talking about becoming self-sustained at least in terms of gaining food. Fish is one thing, but if you craft a hoe then you can till the earth and plant seeds into it, growing wheat after a couple of days providing the ground has water next to it. The seeds for the wheat are collected by destroying tufts of grass, and appear very commonly.
Three pieces of wheat then makes one bit of bread, but you can grow as much wheat as you can fit around a lake or stream. And bread is much better sustenance than fish.
STORAGE HUNTERS
By now you’ve probably amassed a small mountain of various pieces of raw resources and crafted items, so it’s probably time to store them somewhere. Crafting a chest only takes eight pieces of wooden planks, so it’s easy to build. You’re better off placing it within a secure structure (presumably by now you’ll have one), and if you place a second directly next to it, you’ll double its capacity. It’s good to be organised about these things, though, so try using multiple chests to store different types of objects.
IN SEARCH OF ORES
At this point you should be safe, secure and well-fed. Armed with torches, a sword and pickaxes, it’s time to go spelunking. How you choose to look for caves is up to you, but the most efficient method is to look for holes and openings within the world. These are often the start of naturally formed caverns, and as you delve deeper underground you’ll find increasingly rarer ores. Initially you’ll be looking for iron ore, which can be smelted into iron ingots to use in crafting improved equipment, armour and other items.
THE BEASTS OF MINECRAFT
Though you’ll encounter a wide variety of enemies during your time with Minecraft, there is a selection of monsters that you’ll only encounter early on. Here’s what they are, and how to fight them.
SKELETON
These undead archers are one of the biggest annoyances in the game, mostly because of their range. Get up close and it won’t take too much to defeat them, but you’ll need to avoid and sidestep their arrows first. As with the zombie, these guys disappear during the day.
CREEPER & SPIDER
The Creeper is one of Minecraft’s most frustrating enemies. Silent up until it’s in-range (at which point you’ll hear the ‘Sssss’ of it about to explode), your only real strategy is awareness. Repeatedly striking it and then stepping backwards is key.
Spiders are agile, making them tough enemies. There is a strategy to fighting them, and that’s all about timing striking themat the right time will cause their leap attack to fail. But don’t fight themin the day; they’re neutral then.
ZOMBIE & ENDERMAN
This typical enemy is probably the easiest foe you’ll encounter. Slow and shambling, it doesn’t take much to beat a zombie to death, though be wary if there’s more than one in the area. They’ll also burn in sunlight, so come daytime you’ll be fine.
These lanky creatures won’t appear immediately, and are neutral for the most part. That is until you look them in the eyes, where they’ll rush towards you and attack unrelentlessly. They are easy enough to avoid, just be careful.
QUICK GUIDE TO CRAFTABLE ITEMS
With so many options available right away, it can be tricky to know what to do. There are some smarter choices to help you get set up quickly, however, so here’s what you should be aiming for initially:
USING WOOD
Wood has the widest of uses, so initially you’ll be using it to build a structure, a crafting table, various tools and equipment, chests, torches and if you have an abundance of the stuff luxury items like doors. Remember you can replant trees with saplings.
USING COAL
As we mentioned, coal is valuable for its ability to make torches but also as fuel for furnaces to smelt ore, sand (for glass) and cooking food. If you can’t find coal, however, you can ‘smelt’ wood in the furnace to produce charcoal for a similar but weaker version.
USING IRON ORE
Once you’ve got your iron you’re going to want to smelt it into ingots. With this you should craft a bucket (three iron pieces) to carry water, upgraded tools for mining and if you’ve got enough some armour to reduce the damage you take.
A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS
It’s worth remembering that Minecraft can be played with friends, either in local multiplayer or online. The addition of an extra pair of hands means not only that you’ll be able to collect resources quicker, but that you’ll be able to build fantastic buildings together too.
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