Ever wanted to try Minecraft but gave up on its seeming difficulty? Well, perhaps you are not far from the truth. The world of Minecraft can really seem intimidating and incomprehensible if you just log into the game and have no idea what to do. There is practically no game help (apart from the tutorial mode in the Xbox 360 version), and trying to learn something by trial and error is unlikely to be crowned with success. And so that life does not seem too easy, with the onset of night – after 10 minutes of real time – hostile monsters will appear on your soul.
After reading this tutorial, you will learn how to get materials for your first tools and shelter construction, where you can wait out the night in comfort and safety.
Note: After completing the Xbox 360 tutorials, get some wool by killing some sheep and make a bed as night is coming soon. After waking up, be sure to inspect the area around for the presence of hostile mobs.
Step 1. Create a workbench
First of all, you will need to create a workbench .
To do this, you will need to collect some wooden blocks by simply attacking the nearest tree. Walk up to it and hold down the left mouse button or the right trigger on the Xbox 360.
After about 15 quick punches, the tree will break and the necessary blocks will fall out.
Do not forget to collect all the fallen seedlings and plant them. After a while, they will become new trees. Also try to break as many blocks of leaves as possible: they may drop apples that will be needed in the future.
Collecting 16 wooden blocks will be enough for now. Trees are always easily accessible and you can get more if needed.
Note: This may seem obvious, but be sure to hold the button while mining. This way, you will destroy the block, and not just strike.
Now you need to get boards from the extracted wood. Open the inventory window (“E” button on PC, Mac and Linux), find the crafting grid there and place a wooden block in one of the slots.
The workbench is needed in order to create various items for survival in the game
It’s even easier on Xbox 360: press the X on your controller and select boards. When the corresponding inscription appears in the crafting window, just press “A” and your wooden blocks will turn into boards. Planks are the more versatile material in the Minecraft world and are used in many recipes. On PC / Mac / Linux, clear the crafting area from the remaining wooden blocks, place one board in each of the slots and make a workbench. On Xbox 360, open your inventory, select a workbench from the crafting menu and craft it. Place the resulting item in the bottom row of your inventory.
Leave the crafting menu by pressing “E” on the PC or “B” on the gamepad and take the created workbench in your hands. Find a suitable location and place it by right-clicking on PC / Mac / Linux or left-clicking on Xbox 360. After setting up a workbench, you can right-click or left-click with your controller to open a menu for more advanced crafting.
Note: if you want to move the workbench to another place, just break it with your hands and pick up the dropped block: it will reappear in your inventory.
Step 2. Create tools
Now that you have received your workbench, you can move on to creating various tools, such as a wooden pickaxe. With the help of these items, you will be able to obtain materials more efficiently. To get started, open the crafting menu (in your inventory or on the workbench) and place two boards in it vertically in adjacent cells. As a result, you will receive four sticks. Craft some sticks, but don’t use up all the boards.
Enter the crafting menu of your workbench and place three blocks of boards in the top row of cells, and use sticks in the two free slots under the middle block of the board. At the exit you will have a wooden pickaxe.
In the case of the Xbox 360, everything is much simpler, since there is no need to correctly position objects in the window and all actions are done directly from the menu. Although the wood pickaxe has the lowest strength, it is absolutely essential for making more advanced tools.
Start digging the ground, going deeper until you come across a rock. Armed with your new pickaxe, break a few stone blocks (if you try to do this with your bare hands, you will spend a lot of time, and in the end you will not get a stone). Collect the dropped material and use it on the workbench to create a stone pickaxe, placing three stone blocks and two sticks in the top row of cells, similar to the previous recipe. On Xbox 360, to access other pickaxes, find a wooden pickaxe in the crafting menu and use the left stick to move up and down to select the one you want. Until you find better materials, the stone pickaxe will be your main tool.
Other instruments are created in the same way. Despite the fact that the pickaxe is your main tool, you will most likely need more wood for further construction. For faster extraction, an ax is best suited. To make it, place two sticks as when creating a pickaxe, and place boards or a stone in the upper left cell and two adjacent to it on the right and bottom. You can also make a shovel by placing one board or rock in the middle slot of the top row and two sticks on the bottom. It can be used to extract sand and clay to make glass or bricks, although you won’t need them for now.
Step 3. Building a shelter
Dig a hole in the ground and close the passage behind you – this will help you hide from the monsters that go out at night to hunt
If you have chosen a difficulty level other than “peaceful”, then it’s time to take care of your safety. When the music begins to play, it means that the onset of night is close, and after sunset, zombies , creepers and skeletons begin to appear in the world . Indeed, it would be nice to have a place to ride out this turbulent time.
One of the simplest cover options is to dig a hole in the ground or a small niche (then you don’t need to take care of the roof). Using destroyed blocks (or any other), you can surround yourself with a wall. Or make a depression in the hill and wrap yourself up in it with the rest of the earth. This way, you can wait until morning safely, although this option is quite tedious. In the morning, you can go out to collect more different materials and make new tools.
To do this, place in the crafting area coal and stickunder him. Charcoal can be used instead of regular coal.
To make it, place a block of wood in the upper slot of the furnace, and in the lower slot any combustible object (part of the fence, boards, wooden ladders and tools).
With the received torches, you can illuminate dark areas so that monsters cannot appear in them. Torches will also help you better navigate in the dark.
Step 4. Food and hunger bar
Without food, your character will constantly die, so take care of this beforehand
Now that you have acquired shelter and tools, it remains to get the last item necessary for survival – food . Walking, running, jumping and, in general, any activity consumes the energy scale, which is displayed as “pieces” of meat in the upper right part of the screen. Having lost two “pieces”, you will not be able to restore health, and if the scale is reduced to three, you will lose the ability to run. The only way to make up your hunger bar is to eat.
Depending on the chosen difficulty, the hunger scale behaves differently. On “peaceful” difficulty, it decreases only when you perform any actions. At the “easy” and “medium” level, it decreases constantly, which consistently leads to the loss of the ability to restore health and run, and if it is completely depleted, it reduces the health reserve to half for “easy” difficulty and up to one and a half “hearts” for “medium” … When choosing maximum difficulty with an empty hunger scale, you will lose health until death.
To avoid this fate, your character needs to eat. At first, your main food source will be the wild animals around you (cows, pigs, chickens). It is enough just to kill one of them and collect the fallen meat. Of course, you can eat it right away, but for the full effect it is better to cook it. This is especially true for chicken meat, which, when eaten raw, has a small chance of having the opposite effect.
The furnace, like the workbench, is the main “item” in Minecraft, with the help of it useful and necessary things are created (ingots, glass, food, etc.)
Also, if you manage to find coal, you can make torches .
The first thing you’ll need is a furnace: place eight stones in the crafting grid, leaving the center slot empty. Take the resulting oven in your hands and install it.
Next, place a lump of coal in the bottom slot of the stove, and on top – raw meat and wait ten seconds (one coal is enough to cook eight pieces of meat, so don’t waste fuel). Remove cooked meat and eat it, filling the hunger scale much more efficiently than eating it raw.
Later, when you are already comfortable and collect the necessary materials, you can build farms to grow wheat, mushrooms or even melons.
There are a huge number of recipes in the world of Minecraft, but at first you should focus on the most affordable ones.
What’s next?
The bed will be useful to you in order not only to sleep on it, but also to make a spawn point – the place where you will appear after respawning
Now that you’ve successfully dealt with the dangers of your first night in the game, you’re ready to start exploring the world around you in search of new materials, as well as food and wool to create a bed.
A bed can save you tons of time as you can sleep on it at night, but for that you need the materials to make it and a safe place to set it up.
Of course, you can get all the ingredients before the first night, then you don’t have to wait it out.
To make a bed, you need three blocks of wool of any color, which can be obtained by killing sheep (although killing them brings one block of wool, this is not the most optimal way: using scissors allows you to get three to four blocks from each sheep, but still you don’t have them yet). Using a workbench, arrange three blocks of wool horizontally in a row and three blocks of planks below them.
Note: a bed placed in a full-fledged safe cover will move the spawn point in which you spawn after death to this place. If you do not have a bed yet, then you should place your shelter as close as possible to your initial spawn point. A hiding place far enough away can be difficult to find if you die or get lost.
Note: Don’t overdo it when killing sheep. Since animals can now be bred in Minecraft, they no longer reappear. And if you end up exterminating all the sheep nearby, you will have to look for a new group, which may be very far away.
If you are no longer comfortable with a hole in the ground, try the following. Enclose a 5×4 area with a block wall. Any material can be used, but brick will be preferable as it is stronger than earth or sand, for example. Make a roof or ledge on the outside of the wall to prevent monsters from crawling over it. Place the bed not in the corner, but in the center. If you don’t have enough time or materials, you can make a platform three blocks high and place the bed on it. This height will be enough so that no one can reach you while sleeping.
Useful Tips
- If by the first night you have made the torches, but there is no bed yet, start digging. This way you will get more materials and not waste time.
- Do not dig under you all the time – you can fall into a cave with monsters or, even worse, into lava. Break blocks in the form of a ladder (one forward, one down) or in a spiral. And always look under your feet: you do not want to lose all your belongings at once?
- Also, using the above mining method, you can completely collect blocks from a 5×5 site. After clearing one level, install the ladder block to climb later. This way you can dig out all the surrounding blocks, getting even more valuable materials.
- Always mark your path with blocks or torches to find your way back. An alternative way is to leave a huge sign on the ground, but this takes a long time and is ineffective when traveling in hilly or mountainous areas. Moreover, you simply may not see it due to too large a distance, if you have not set the distance of drawing the world to the maximum.
- Leaving somewhere for a long time, leave all valuable items (ore and expensive tools) in the chest. If you are going to the mine, take only the essentials with you: a set of tools, a workbench, some food, torches and a stack of sand or any other easily destructible material. There is always a risk that you will perish and it will be impossible to return all your valuables.
- When you think of building something big, start with more modest projects. So you will gradually get to know the game and the many different materials available, without catching yourself once thinking that your brainchild looked much better performed, say, from a stone.
- When playing on any difficulty, except for “peaceful”, you should take care of preparing a shelter for the night in advance.
- Be sure to save and back up your files, especially when creating large projects or just after a particularly successful trip into the mine. It never hurts to be careful.
- Be careful when playing in split-screen mode on Xbox 360. If other accounts are logged in as guests, they will not be able to save their items and inventory without putting them in the chest. To log in with an account not tied to Xbox Live Gold, uncheck the “online” box when loading the world.
- And remember that playing Minecraft with friends is always more fun and fun.
