Getting started with Minecraft

[Jeivar]

I will admit I am afraid of this game. I'm worried that given the chance it will eat my life. And that the knowledge that people have built the starship Enterprise, Minas Tirith and a working computer in Minecraft will make anything I make utterly inadequate.

Still . . . I can't seem to stop thinking about buying this and my summer vacation just started, so maybe I should just scratch my itch and hope for the best. How many other games will let me build a big evil castle with a skull face?

Any main tips for a first time player? I'll be going single player, Survival mode.

[Corlindale]

Do it!

Don't be intimidated by videos of gigantic projects, they are just one part of the game. For your first many hours of play, merely exploring the world offers plenty of fun (as well as the struggle to survive at night/when dungeon-crawling). I've played Minecraft a lot, but I've never built anything particularly impressive. The game can be about whatever you want it to be.

[Leon]

Jump on it and go.

There is a massive wealth of Videos on Youtube that will show you how to do stuff if you get stuck and the Wiki is good if you prefer to read it for self (and still is useful to refer to even after you have been playing for a long time)

[Jeivar]

Jump on it and go.

There is a massive wealth of Videos on Youtube that will show you how to do stuff if you get stuck and the Wiki is good if you prefer to read it for self (and still is useful to refer to even after you have been playing for a long time)

Well, Yahtzee did call it a game in which there is no shame in looking up walkthroughs. Is there really NO in-game tutorial?

[Triaxx]

There isn't but it's not really necessary. Keep the wiki open, and there's nothing more you need, or go modded and install Not Enough Items, and have the ability to search recipes in game. Everything else is stupidly simple.

Yes, the game will eat your life.

[AdmiralCheez]

Well, Yahtzee did call it a game in which there is no shame in looking up walkthroughs. Is there really NO in-game tutorial?

Well, there are hints on the general progression of things hidden in the achievements menu, but it doesn't provide recipes or anything. It's almost, but not really, kinda like a tutorial.

[factotum]

No tutorial in Minecraft, no. The best advice for any beginner is to punch trees, though. :smallsmile:

[Jeivar]

Well alright, I went and bought the game . . . and the mining is indeed surprisingly addictive. I guess I've also entered the Minecraft club by getting blown up by a creeper I never saw coming.

I spent my first night in a hole closed up with dirt, through a skeleton fell in when I peeked out to check for daybreak. The next evening I hastily cobbled together a tiny cabin out of whatever I had on me and started mining out a tunnel beneath, which has been my project for a couple of in-game days. My current problem is hunger. Going around punching rabbits doesn't seem like an efficient way of staying fed.

[NecroRebel]

My current problem is hunger. Going around punching rabbits doesn't seem like an efficient way of staying fed.

You'll probably want to make a wheat farm and ranch cows. Each cow will drop 1-3 raw beef, and once cooked each steak is worth a lot of food. A decent-sized farm and herd will provide more than enough food for your needs.

Personally, I usually dig a 2-block-deep 8x8 pit, put ladders around it on the second block up, and lure animals into the pit for ranching, usually 1 species per pit. This provides a more than ample space for a large herd, makes it impossible for the animals to escape, and makes it easy to get animals in and easy for me to get out.

[Jeivar]

You'll probably want to make a wheat farm and ranch cows. Each cow will drop 1-3 raw beef, and once cooked each steak is worth a lot of food. A decent-sized farm and herd will provide more than enough food for your needs.

Personally, I usually dig a 2-block-deep 8x8 pit, put ladders around it on the second block up, and lure animals into the pit for ranching, usually 1 species per pit. This provides a more than ample space for a large herd, makes it impossible for the animals to escape, and makes it easy to get animals in and easy for me to get out.

Hmm. So far all I've seen are rabbits, squids and monsters. But I'll keep the pit advice in mind.

[NecroRebel]

Hmm. So far all I've seen are rabbits, squids and monsters. But I'll keep the pit advice in mind.

Ah, that can be a problem. In that case, if you've gotten any potatoes, baked potatoes make a good food source. A full 9x9 farm plot of wheat will also provide enough bread for you to eat, though feeding the wheat to cows or sheep is better.

[Jeivar]

Okay, I've planted wheat.

Early observation: Losing hard earned stuff because of skeletal master archers is rather annoying.

[factotum]

The trick for dealing with skeletons is to hide behind something so they can't shoot you and wait for them to come to you. Once you're at point blank range you should be able to take them down pretty quick, especially once you get a decent sword and armour.

[Jeivar]

The trick for dealing with skeletons is to hide behind something so they can't shoot you and wait for them to come to you. Once you're at point blank range you should be able to take them down pretty quick, especially once you get a decent sword and armour.

You know what, I'm going to build a bunch of pillars around my area to use as cover.

[cobaltstarfire]

It's pretty fun to run circles around tree's when fight skeletons that's for sure.

I like to try and build a fenced area around my entrances, that way zombies can't come bang on my doors. and creepers can't wait next to my entrance and blow me up the moment I step outside. Light up the area with torches, including your roof that way monsters can't spawn on it and drop down into your fenced area. This won't help much with spiders though since they can climb.


If/when you get around to trying to build bigger projects the best tip I can give you is to make it bigger than you think it'll need to be, and make your walls more than one layer thick. That way you can get more fine details into whatever you're building if that's your goal.


Whenever I'm exploring underground I always put torches on the right side of the wall as well, that way I can always find my way out, with double torches on the entry way which leads back up (such as when you find several diverging caves or a large cavern). I sometimes use melons or pumpkins to help mark my path as well if I've gotten a hold of them. The same can apply above ground if you aren't using any mods, though I'd recommend finding a map mod that lets you add waypoints, even if you're familiar with the area surrounding you it's easy to get turned around or lost in the forests.

I'm not familiar with 1.8 (most of the mods I use are 1.7...and I haven't played in a few months) but I've heard you can breed the bunnies, though to be careful cause occasionally you'll get a killer one.

[Leon]

occasionally you'll get a killer one.

Seen one spawn naturally, thankfully it was while i was on my Creative Test world so it didn't maul me.

[Jeivar]

I finally ventured away from my starting shack and found a cliff hanging in thin air above another cliff, built a tower-ladder up it, then built a bridge to another cliff cloud. And now I've laid the foundations for a stately manor taking up the entire cliff's surface. It should prove interesting.

I'm not having much luck finding iron. I found enough to make a sword, but then lost it to a skeleton archer.

I'm . . . not liking the skeletons.

[Alent]

I finally ventured away from my starting shack and found a cliff hanging in thin air above another cliff, built a tower-ladder up it, then built a bridge to another cliff cloud. And now I've laid the foundations for a stately manor taking up the entire cliff's surface. It should prove interesting.

I'm not having much luck finding iron. I found enough to make a sword, but then lost it to a skeleton archer.

I'm . . . not liking the skeletons.

Something I find helps is putting down enough torches to fully light my mining area, then closing off the side tunnels with dirt, sand, wooden fences, or something else easily removed that can't be shot through.

Then once I have the area under control, and only then, do I actually mine the ores and such.

That said, you'll slowly find various movement techniques to deal with the Skeletons as you fight them, and once you have enough iron to make armor, life gets much easier. I also prefer to not use Iron on swords until I have an abundance of it.

I'm also quite fond of the three block tall barrier wall around my base. From the side it looks like this:


Cobble
Cobble



Cobblestairs



Cobblestairs



It isn't very asthetically pleasing, but if you orient the stairs to create a large hole you can see through it without being shot, and spiders can't climb over it because of the lip.

[NecroRebel]

I'm not having much luck finding iron. I found enough to make a sword, but then lost it to a skeleton archer.

Iron is quite common, so you're probably just simply not looking in the right spots. It doesn't spawn - at all - above y=63, meaning that if you've settled on a mountain or even a small hill you might not see it if you aren't digging down.

If you hit F3 you'll bring up an overlay that shows, among other things, your coordinates. Use this - I don't know of anyone who considers it cheating, and it's invaluable for navigation to know where things are in a world with few truly notable landmarks. If you dig down to y=11, you'll find every valuable material, and most caves you find will be lit by lava pools (which you should avoid falling into), making them safer than caves further up.

You might be frightened about going into caves, but don't be. A dark cave is actually usually safer than the surface at night, and skeletons in particular are easier to deal with in enclosed areas. Caving is the fastest way to get resources. Be systematic about it to help avoid getting lost. Speed and efficiency is a lesser concern than being able to find your way out with your loot. cobaltstarfire's suggestion about putting torches on the right-hand wall going in is a good one, and I would further clarify that torches should be on right-hand walls going in or on the floor only.

For my part, my first 3 iron goes to a pick (as you need it to mine diamonds, redstone, and gold), the next 3 for a bucket to irrigate a farm and cool lava, the 24 after that for armor, and only once I've gotten that do I start making other iron tools. An iron sword does only 1 more damage than a stone one, which, while significant, is less important than survivability.

A useful trick for digging straight down is to stand halfway on 2 different blocks and dig both out. This way, you won't accidentally fall into a cave, ravine, or lava, because you'll be able to see when you come upon one. This can make getting down to the deeper, more valuable parts of the world much easier. Bring ladders to get back up if you intend to use the shaft more than once. You can also make a 2x2 spiral staircase which is compact, but it takes more hunger to get up than a ladder because you have to jump.

[cobaltstarfire]

I personally can't recommend digging straight down (or up) to be honest, but I like to play things safe and dig stairs down. Falling into lava, or a chasm stinks. On the topic of falling though, if you hold shift you won't fall off of edges, and you'll stop moving on ladders too.

If you hear a weird kind of creepy echoey noisy there's a cavern nearby, it's much easier to find ores in caves. You can also hear lava, and see it dripping from the ceiling if there's some above you and the wall is only one thick. (same applies to water, but water is less bad to have fall on your head)

To add onto necrorebel, y=63 is one block bellow sea level if I remember correctly. So if you don't want to use F3, you can use the environment for reference somewhat.

[Winter_Wolf]

Mining obsidian should only be undertaken after you're really good at judging where is safe to stand and probably only if you've moved it to a safe place with a bucket. That said, I often just dump a water pail near a lava lake and then stand on the surface and mine adjacent blocks. It IS kind of dumb, but oh well. Managed to mine several hundred obsidian blocks this way and bank lots of lava buckets because there was a whole lot of iron ore in the area as well as diamond. That was a particularly good seed and good spot to mine around. As it happens I built a massive wall around a smallish town and turned it into a pretty big (by minecraft standards) fortified town. Then I think I spent a good deal of time making a borehole mineshaft about 10x10 down to y=7 and placing layers of glass blocks every 6-10 levels to break falls while allowing sunlight down for part of the day at least. It was an especially juicy bit of land with lots of every ore, and I went a little crazy with redstone lighting and whatnot after hauling everything up and forging and crafting.

also I still detest the Nether because I got buried in a lava flood and lost good diamond equipment trying to find an open area as I spawned inside a large solid block of nether rack and lava pockets. TNT in the nether is a rather bad idea, but I like blowing things up and spend rather a lot of redstone making really big booms.

[factotum]

I find the most enjoyable (even if not the most efficient) way to find iron is spelunking--e.g. search the deep caves. Strip mining is more efficient, unquestionably, but *boy* is it dull!

[Winter_Wolf]

I find the most enjoyable (even if not the most efficient) way to find iron is spelunking--e.g. search the deep caves. Strip mining is more efficient, unquestionably, but *boy* is it dull!

Ive actually found spelunking more efficient, but I have issues with getting ganked from behind when I'm roaming caves. I play with sound off, so that probably has something to do with it. Bore holing often ends up connecting to a massive cavern complex in my seeds anyway, but I prefer to have the option of walling off/boobytrapping choke points and I get lost a lot in natural caves.

oh speaking of which, I consider getting a compass and clock ASAP mandatory if I'm to do any kind of exploring. Sadly I haven't mastered the fine art of useful maps.

[Leon]

Don't forget you can burn logs to make charcoal if you have a lack of coal. Way too many times ive been watching some big name YTber and they are out of torches or some such and have pile of lumber sitting there and never think of it.

If your going to Dig down directly make sure to do it in at least a 2 wide shaft in a step down fashion as to not immediately fall into something nasty ~ be it a hole or Lava. Either have a stack of ladders with you as you go or just pillar up with the cobble you dug out.

A Good practice when you find Diamond is to mine out completely around it as to check if its not going to drop into some hidden lava as you do.

[t209]

Well, one way I played is City-Sim, as in the one where a kid would do in sandlot.
Like imagining myself as building (horribly built) apartments and amenities for (non existent) inhabitants.

[Triaxx]

I keep conquering and then tearing down villages. But only ones in deserts. I much prefer the look of sand, sandstone and smooth sandstone to cobble.

[KillianHawkeye]

Well damn, this thread actually got me playing Minecraft again. This game has changed so much that I barely recognize it anymore!

[Leon]

The Combat changes for 1.9 look interesting

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Considering the last update for Minecraft will be 1.9, I hope it lives up to hype. 1.10 is confirmed to be a new version which is Win10 compatible ONLY. Considering I run Linux... that's pretty much end of the line for me. There's been rumors of addendums to the EULA et al but I care not since I won't bother with it.

[Leon]

i thought you quit for good when Microsoft bought it

[ShneekeyTheLost]

i thought you quit for good when Microsoft bought it

I still dink around privately, I just don't do any public packs or anything anymore.

[cobaltstarfire]

Considering the last update for Minecraft will be 1.9, I hope it lives up to hype. 1.10 is confirmed to be a new version which is Win10 compatible ONLY. Considering I run Linux... that's pretty much end of the line for me. There's been rumors of addendums to the EULA et al but I care not since I won't bother with it.

Where did you hear that? All I can find is a thing about Minecraft Windows 10 edition, which explicitly is not replacing the current minecraft, and will have Linux support.

[Leon]

As long as my Realm keeps running im fine with them stopping after 1.9, still plenty of stuff to do and great things to be built and given the time between updates anyway it wont really be noticed all that much. A Win 10 ed can do what ever, if some day i upgrade to Win 10 i'll care about it then.