Minecraft survival guide: your first night and first week, step by step

TUREFF• •0

Your first night in Minecraft survival is when most new players die. Monsters spawn in the dark, and you have nothing. The good news is that a few minutes of planning on day one makes you safe, and by the end of the first week you can have iron tools, a farm and a proper base.

Day one: wood first

A Minecraft day lasts about 20 real minutes, with roughly ten minutes of full daylight. Use them.

Punch a tree to collect logs. Get at least 10 to 15.
Turn logs into planks, then make a crafting table.
Make sticks, then a wooden pickaxe.
Find stone and mine cobblestone. Make a stone pickaxe, a stone sword and a stone axe. Stone tools last much longer than wooden ones.
Make a furnace from eight cobblestone.

Food

Your hunger bar drains as you work, and you only regenerate health when it is fairly full.

Kill passive animals (cows, pigs, sheep, chickens) for meat, and cook it in the furnace: cooked meat restores far more.
Pick up apples dropped by oak leaves.
Collect seeds by breaking grass, to start a wheat farm later.

A bed, if you can

Kill three sheep for wool (or shear them), and craft a bed with three wool and three planks. Sleeping at night skips straight to morning and sets your respawn point. It is the single most useful thing to get on day one.

Shelter for the first night

If night comes before you have a bed, dig into a hillside, close the gap behind you with a block, and you are safe. Otherwise, build a small hut of planks or cobblestone with a door. Monsters cannot open doors, except that zombies can break wooden doors on Hard difficulty.

Place torches inside and around your shelter. Monsters spawn in darkness, so light keeps them away.
Torches need coal (or charcoal, which you can make by smelting logs).
Use the night to smelt, craft and organise chests.

Mining safely

Never dig straight down: you could fall into a cave, lava or a drop.
Never dig straight up under gravel or sand, which can fall and suffocate you.
Mine in a staircase pattern so you can always walk back up.
Carry torches, and light every tunnel. If you hear lava bubbling, slow down.
Carry a stack of blocks to seal off holes or lava.
Mark your way home with torches on the same side of the tunnel.

Finding iron

Iron ore is common underground and in cliff faces and caves. Mine it with a stone pickaxe, then smelt it into ingots. With iron you can make an iron pickaxe (needed for diamonds and gold), iron armour, a shield and a bucket. A shield blocks most attacks and is cheap: one iron ingot and six planks.

Creepers and other mobs

Creepers are green, silent, and explode when they get close. Hit one and back off; if it starts hissing, run. Never let one reach your house.
Zombies are slow; a stone sword handles them.
Skeletons shoot arrows; fight them up close or behind cover.
Spiders are neutral in daylight but hostile at night, and can climb walls.
Endermen are neutral unless you look directly at them. Do not stare.

The first week

Day 2: build a wheat farm near water and fence in a few animals for food.
Day 3: make iron tools and armour.
Days 4 to 7: expand your base, go caving with light, look for diamonds deep down, and keep a chest of spare food and torches.

Difficulty settings

Peaceful: no hostile monsters, and health refills on its own. Good for learning to build.
Easy: monsters do less damage, and hunger stops before killing you.
Normal: the standard experience.
Hard: tougher monsters, and starving can kill you.
Hardcore: a separate world type locked to Hard, with one life only.

Starting on Easy is perfectly fine; you can change it in most worlds later. What killed you on your first night, or what is your best early-game trick? Share your stories and questions in the comments.