If you're new to Minecraft, check out a complete guide below with everything you need to know to start your journey and survive your first days in the world of cubes!
1. Understand the basic mechanics
Minecraft is a sandbox game, that is, you have a great level of freedom to do whatever you want. When joining a match outside of Creative mode (see more below), your objective is to explore the map and collect items. With them you can create a huge variety of items and equipment to help you feed, explore and fight the monsters on the map.
The interface is very simple. Following the image above:
- 1: Life Bar. It decreases when you are hit, fall from above, burn, drown, and when you get hungry. It can be regenerated in a variety of ways, either through items or over time.
- 2: Hunger Bar. It decreases when you perform various actions like running, fighting, digging, etc. The bar is regenerated when you eat some food. When the Hunger bar is completely full, the health bar slowly regenerates. When halfway through, the player can no longer run (only walk). When it is zeroed, the player will slowly lose Health.
- 3: Experience Bar. It increases as you kill monsters on the map. When it's full, you level up and the bar resets.
- 4: Inventory shortcuts. You can place one item in each "slot" on the screen to use them faster.
Accessing the inventory
By pressing the "E" or "I" keys, you will access the inventory. As per the image above:
- 1: List of items equipped on the character, being head, chest, legs, feet and shield.
- 2: Crafting menu. Dragging items into these squares will result in a new one if you follow the "recipe".
- 3: Cookbook. Where all the ways to build items that you learn along the way are saved.
- 4: Inventory. This is where all your collected items are stored.
2. Understand the different game modes
Minecraft has 4 game modes with different mechanics that you need to understand before starting a game:
Survival
It is the traditional and most popular mode of Minecraft. Here, you appear at a random point in the world and your objective is to survive, that is, to manage your Health and Hunger bar. For this you will need to collect resources, build items and equipment and explore a lot. When you die, you can return to several different places.
In Survival mode it is possible to obtain Achievements if you do not have server privileges or cheats turned on. The mode also has an "ultimate goal" which is to defeat the Ender Dragon in The End dimension. Beating him will not end the game and you will be able to continue as normal in the world.
Creative
Creative mode is fully dedicated to player building and imagination. Here you are immortal, you don't have a Health or Hunger bar, you can fly freely, destroy blocks with just one click, move much faster and still have immediate access to all blocks in the game.
With all these freedoms, Creative mode lets you build and create anything you want without any other worries.
Adventure
Much like Survival mode, but with some extra restrictions. Here you can only destroy blocks with the right tools and not all blocks can be built everywhere. It is also possible to interact with NPCs (non-playable characters) and use some items that are not present in other modes. Unlike Survival mode, you always respawn in the same place after dying.
Hardcore
Same as Survival mode, but with a much higher difficulty level. If you die, the game ends and the world ceases to exist, meaning you lose everything.
3. Collecting resources and building your first items
The resource gathering logic in Minecraft is very clear: everything you “break” becomes a material. If you cut down a tree, it will give you wood. If you kill an animal, it will give you meat. If you break a rock, it will give you stones or ores. If you burn wood, you get coal, &c. To interact with the map, just get in front of the block and click.
At the very beginning of the game you will have to destroy blocks with your own hand, so the process will be a little slower. Therefore, it is very important that you collect everything that is around you, as you will be able to combine these items to create tools that will make everything easier.
building items
The first item you need to build is a bench of Work, which will allow you to build most items in the game. For this you will need to collect a block of raw wood and drag it to the crafting menu in the inventory. This will generate 4 Wooden planks. Then fill in the crafting blocks to get the Workbench:
Use the new item anywhere on the map to position your Workbench. By interacting with her, you will enter the real Minecraft build menu:
Note that the Workbench has dimensions of 3x3. It is with it that you will build all the necessary items to survive the first days such as Pickaxes, Torches, Swords, Furnaces, etc.
4. Surviving the first night
Minecraft has a day/night cycle that you can clearly track according to the in-game sun. When it sets, the sky turns dark and this is where the difficulties begin. At night, monsters and zombies appear to attack you if you're not in a well-lit shelter. So it is very important that before sunset you have these things arranged.
torches
Torches provide the lighting needed to keep monsters at bay and allow you to continue exploring through the night. You can carry them like a weapon or place them wherever you want. To get Torches at the beginning of the game, you need to match 1 Gravity e 1 coal:
To get Coal you will need a Furnace, which is formed with 8 Boulders like this:
Boulders can be found at lower levels on the ground. Just dig deep enough and you'll find them. The Furnace allows you to cook food and burn items for a variety of purposes. To get Coal, simply use any Wood as fuel. The Stick is obtained by positioning yourself 2 Wooden Boards one on top of the other.
Coat
Shelters can be made in a variety of ways. For starters, you can just open a "cave" in a mountain to use the floor itself as a wall, and then build just one Port:
The Door prevents monsters from entering your shelter, so it's important that the doorway is 1 Block wide so it can protect you. To craft it, you just need 6 boards of any Wood as follows:
At the shelter you can wait for dawn or sleep in a bed so that time automatically advances. To build a Bed you need 3 boards of any kind and 3 wool:
You can get Wool by killing Sheep or by combining 4 lines (obtained from Webs or from killing Spiders) as follows:
5. Progressing in the game
Minecraft has no mandatory missions or objectives for you to complete. After the first night, you choose how to explore the world and what to build. The possibilities are almost endless, but some ideas of what to do are:
Build bigger and better equipped shelters
You can build real mansions with lots of fun items inside.
improve your equipment
It is very important that you "upgrade" your equipment, replacing it with better materials. The revenue of the equipment always remains the same, changing only the material. As a rule, all equipment can be built with:
- Madeira Island
- Pedra
- Iron
- Gold
- Diamond
All these materials can be obtained through mining, that is, digging deep and looking for caves.
have a farm
There are many ways to keep animals and grow food to have your own food source. The size and organization of your farm is up to you. For this you will have to make Fences, Doors, Ropes, Buckets and much more.
use imagination
The image above is just one of the endless ideas you can run in Minecraft. Of course, depending on the complexity, they will require resources, time and a lot of dedication. You decide!
That's it, now you're ready to start your journey in one of the best games of all time!
See also:
- How to make Minecraft faster!
- Know the main commands (codes) of Minecraft!
- Best Minecraft PE seeds to create worlds on mobile!
- Minecraft Seeds: Worlds You Can Create Without Cheats
