Ask any gamer in this world, no matter if we’re talking about pros or simple beginners, about Minecraft, and they will definitely know a few things about Minecraft, one of the most popular games of the moment.
If you’re curious about it and looking forward to learning how to play it, then you’re in the right place. Here you can find a step by step guide on how to play Minecraft, perfect for every beginner who wants to enter the world of the game that has revolutionized the industry.
Before beginning, we must make one thing clear: Minecraft is what we call a sandbox game, so basically, there’s no proper way to play it. Therefore, the guide will teach you about some of the most common and straightforward methods of making your way through the game.
The Basics
Minecraft is a game based on quests and guided adventures, operating on a 20 minute day/night circle, split as it follows:
- 10 minutes of daytime
- 1.5 minutes of sunset
- 7 minutes of nighttimes
- 1.5 minutes of sunrise
During nighttime, the whole world is covered in darkness.
Controls:
- Moving: W, A, S and D
- Jump: Space
- Crouch: Shift (hold)
- Access inventory: E
- Select inventory items: 1-9
Game modes:
- Survival: You will deal with requirements like health, hunger, armour, oxygen and an inventory. You need to gather materials for crafting, alongside experience points.
- Creative: You have unlimited access to materials and no needs. Besides this, you are able to fly. Try this mode if you want to build a lot and let your creative spirit free.
- Adventure: You need to pick up the correct tools and harvest various types of materials.
- Hardcore: The same thing as Survival, but the created world is locked on Hard difficulty. If you die, the world you have created will be permanently deleted.
- Spectator: You can fly through the floor and see the world. It can be accessed using the /gamemode command.
The most popular mode is Survival, where your main focus is food and shelter. Therefore, in this guide, we will focus on how to play Minecraft in Survival mode.
The Game
When you begin playing, you will be simply standing in a landscape. Take a few moments and look around you and mark the area. Now, the two most important things you should focus on are crafting tools and building a shelter, before the first night-cycle comes, as mentioned above.
Your resources are limited, so finding trees and harvesting wood are the first steps you should make.
Harvesting wood: Look around for a few trees and, using your fist, punch them and collect the wood that drops. In order to harvest, hold down the left mouse button until you see cracks in the block and it breaks. Once it does this, walk near it and it will be place in your inventory. Keep doing this until you have 10 pieces of wood.
Building a shelter: You now have the necessary wood, so it’s time to find a place where you can place your shelter. Its main purpose it’s to keep monsters away, so build in a safe place. High up areas, for example, are a good choice.
Building a crafting box: Open your inventory and you will see a 2×2 crafting grid, to the right of the character. Placing wood into the crafting squares will transform each piece into 4 wooden plans. The blocks you gathered should be enough to create 24 wooden planks.
Now that you have the plans, you can start building a crafting table, necessary for building most of your tools and items.
Building your tools and items: Now that you have a crafting tablet, open it and you will see a 3×3 crafting grid. In order to build tools, you needs sticks, so place two wooden planks in the crafting grid, on on top of the other. Use 6 of them to create 12 sticks.
The first tools you need to create are a pickaxe, an axe, a shovel and a sword, essential throughout the game.
Building structures: After you have your tools, you should focus on building your night-one shelter, in order to keep yourself safe from monsters that spawn during the night.
Using your wood shovel, gather dirt for quick walls. If you have stone available, use the wood pickaxe and gather it, for a more durable shelter. It doesn’t need to be big, as covering your on all sides until the morning is enough.
Build a furnace: Finally, in order to be totally safe, you need to find some cobblestone for a furnace. If there isn’t any visible stone around, using the wood shovel, dig through a few layers of dirt and grass, in order to find some. Once found it, using the wood pickaxe, gather 20 blocks.
Return to the crafting tablet with the cobble stone and start working at the furnace. Place one block in each of the outer crafting squares, leaving the centre-middle one empty. Place the furnace somewhere near your crafting table.
Create some torches: Using your furnace, you can start crafting some light sources for the night. Open the furnace, place a wooden plans in the bottom square and some wood blocks in the top square and start making some charcoal. The first obtained piece can be used to keep the furnace lit, while you keep transforming wood blocks into charcoal. Keep doing this until you have 5 pieces.
Use the remaining sticks and the charcoal to make torches. Open the crafting table or the inventory and stack charcoal on top of stick. One piece of charcoal, alongside a stick, will give you 4 torches. After you’re done, place them in your shelter.
Eventually, if you want a bed, you can make one as well. Find some sheep and they will drop wool, used to craft a bed.
Feed yourself: In order to survive, your character needs to eat, otherwise the health level will start decreasing and you will be easier to kill and eventually diet. The easiest way to eat is to find animals and..well, eat them. On the other side, the’s also the possibility of eating apples or planting seeds, in order to obtain wheat.
And this sums up the basics. After the first night is over, you are ready to start exploring the surroundings and start building. Of course, there are other essential aspects of the game that you need to know in order to learn how to play Minecraft at top level and we’ll cover them immediately.
Collecting stuff
Like most games, Minecraft offers you the possibility of gathering various items in your inventory. Weapons, armor and torches are essential throughout the game. Here’s what you need to know about each category.
Weapons: You will need them if you want to defend yourself from monsters. The most common one is the sword, which can be made from wood or stronger materials. Remember to always make the blade using a stronger material, since wood is prior to degrading quicker.
Armors: Monsters can inflict a pretty serious amount of damage when fighting with them. Just like weapons, your armor can be made from different materials, with various resistance and protection levels.
Armor can be made from the following materials, found throughout the Minecraft universe:
- leather
- iron ingots
- gold ingots
- diamond gems
- chainmail (you can buy it)
Also, there are multiple types of armor. In order to craft them, follow these instructions
- helmets: place materials in positions 4,5,6,7 and 9 in the crafting box
- chestplates: place materials in all the positions from the crafting box, except 2
- leggings: place materials in all the positions from the crafting box, except 5 and 8
- boots: place materials in positions 4, 7 6 and 9
Torches: Like mentioned above, their main purpose in Minecraft is to light areas, but they can also stop monsters from spawning, if an area is lit enough. The crafting process is detailed above, requiring one stick and one charcoal block.
Mobs
All the creatures spread through the game are called mobiles or shortly, mobs. If you want how to play Minecraft properly, you need to know how to identify the mobs, in order to differentiate the good ones from hostile ones. Actually, this is a very important aspect of the game, as it can make the different between staying alive or finding your way back after respawning.
Peaceful Mobs: Creatures from this category, like cows, sheep or chicken will never attack you. Actually, in most cases, you will be the one attacking them, in order to gather meat for food.
Neutral Mobs: They will attack, but not without a specific reason. For example, you can find wolves and Zombie Pigmen in Minecraft, creatures which won’t attack if you don’t attack first. On the other side, endermen will become hostile just if you look at them, so try ignoring them as much as possible.
Hostile Mobs: Things can get dangerous if you encounter mobs from this category, as they will always attack. The good part is that they spawn just at night or in the underground. Hostile mobs include skeletons, creepers, zombies, endermen and spiders.
Crafting stuff
After all, this game’s name is Minecraft, so one of your main purposes is to craft stuff. This can be a very fun thing to do, since there are tons of things you can do with the materials you gather. To be more specific, we’re talking about crafting recipes, which can be found online, in various Minecraft communities, where fans share everything they got.
Still, in order to craft stuff, you need materials. Here’s how you can find them:
Underground: There’s not a lot of stuff you can find there, but they’re very good. You can find dirt, stone and cobblestone. Dig with your shovel or pickaxe and see what you can find.
Above ground: A way more rich environment, here you can come across wood, sugar cane, seeds or wheat. In order to gather these resources, use an axe or your bare hands.
Creatures: Yes, mobs carry some pretty cool stuff sometimes. We’ve already mentioned that sheep are a wool resource, while chicken give you eggs, cows give milk and many other items.
General tips
If above you have what we like ‘the basic’ for anybody who wants to learn how to play Minecraft, we’re continuing our guide with a few general tips, which will definitely come in handy.
- Sometimes it can be hard to move around. A map or a compass will be perfect.
- As your progress, you can start breeding animals and even build a farm, in order to have food and trade the materials obtained from them.
- Keep a pet. A cat or a doge can make a really nice companion.
- Learn how to brew potions. They can be used to heal or even make yourself stronger, invisible or give you special powers. A great guide on how to do this can be found here.
And there you have it, ladies and gents. Hopefully, our short guide on how to play Minecraft will make you try this insanely popular game, which, despite the 8-bit graphics, is very complex and can turn you into a real addict.
Still, don’t forget about one thing, which we’ll always mention: use video games, including Minecraft, just as a method of relaxing and spending your free time in a pleasant way. Don’t ignore other activities, like going out or working out, just to play a game.
Like always, we’re waiting for your feedback. If you have some other tips, which every Minecraft beginner should be aware about, feel free to share them with us, using the comments section below.
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