Crafting in Minecraft - Minecrafting Guide Introduction

So, when you log in to Minecraft for the first time, you're going to be empty-handed and wondering what to do first. The game works on a day/night cycle, and during the day, you're fairly safe. At night (and in any dark spaces not speared by light sources) bad things come creeping out, bent on killing you, and making you respawn where you start the game. More on this later.

First, you're going to need some simple tools and a safe place to hole up for the first few days, hiding at night, and coming out during the daytime to proceed.

Again, when you start Minecraft, you'll be empty-handed, but we can quickly raid some resources for tools, and get started on a safe hole in the wall (literally).

Trees are common all over the area, and you're going to break these down first to get some resources.

Everything you hit in Minecraft will become a material you can use to craft something else. Some things require more hits than others, and some are easier to collect with certain tools.

For the time being, all you have is your hands, so start punching trees. You'll see cracks appear in the block you are hitting, and eventually a wooden block will pop loose. Congrats, this is your first step to progress. You'll hear a little pop sound when you run over the wood block, picking it up. Keep punching the tree to get more wood, ideally until the tree trunk is completely farmed.

As a bonus, punch out the leaves of the tree. This will occasionally drop saplings (shown above). These can be planted to create new trees. (Be sure to plant them in a sunny spot, not in the shade.

Okay, so after you have a stack of wood blocks (a complete stack is 64 blocks), it's time to make some tools.

You might be able to find a small cave to hide in, or you can punch one open through dirt (brown blocks) or sand (yellowish blocks).

Even before you do this, let's create a crafting table.

In the default configuration, " i " opens your inventory.

When you press " i ", you will see your stack of blocks in your inventory, an avatar of yourself with clothes, and a four boxes in the upper right corner with another box beside them. This is your small workspace. If you click on your stack of wood blocks in inventory, it will attach to your cursor, and if you right click the stack in one of the four squares at the top, you will see the box to the right fill with 4 wooden planks.

Wooden planks are used to make some items, and in turn, are used to make sticks, and you will need a lot of these later. For the time being, left click your stack of wood blocks back into inventory, and left click the wooden planks out of your small workspace slot. You can then put one of each plank into the four small workspace boxes and a crafting table will appear to the right.

The crafting table will look like this:

You're going to live and die by the tools you have on hand, and because just about everything wears out as you use them, you'll be making a lot of tools.

The weakest tools you can make are out of wood, but for the moment, that's all you have. That's ok. They'll get the job done for now.

Let's start with the basics:

Picks: Picks help you tunnel through stone, iron, coal, and other blocks found underground. The pick is far more efficient than other tools and breaking rock, and with some materials, you will need the strongest picks just to be able to break them.

Shovels: Shovels are useful for tunneling through sand and dirt, but are less effective against rock. Shovels however make quick work of dirt and sand, where picks take much longer.

Axes: Axes are only really useful on trees, but they chop through wood in a hurry. They are far slower against all other blocks.

With all of these on hand on your toolbar at the bottom, you can toggle back and forth for the right tool for the right job.

For now, let's make a few of each, so we can get a few more vital materials and dig a shelter for the first night.

To make any tool, you will make sticks.

Sticks are made just like wooden planks, except they are made from wooden planks. Open your inventory again, or use your crafting table, and put 2 wooden planks, one atop the other, in any two boxes in the construction grid. 4 sticks will appear in the result box on the right. If you have 2 planks in each of the two spots, and you click the result box twice, you'll get 8 sticks on your cursor. 2 stacks of 3 on the right, and three clicks gives you 12 sticks, and so on. You can collect up to 64 sticks per stack, (just as with everything else).

Now you have some sticks, and you should still have some wooden planks (don't turn all of your planks into sticks!)

You are going to place combinations of planks and sticks in the 3x3 grid to make wooden axes, picks and shovels.

The configurations for each look like this:

So, for example, to make a crafting table, and two each of wooden axes, picks and shovels, you'll need:

1 wood block > 4 wooden planks > 1 crafting table

1 wood block > 4 wooden planks > 8 sticks (6 sticks for the tools, 2 sticks left over)

4 wood blocks > 16 wooden planks > 6 business ends for 6 tools - 6 for axes, 6 for picks and 2 for shovels, with 2 planks left over).

You can probably get 6 wood blocks from a single tree, so you'll be up and running in no time at all, and have a few pieces left over.

There are other tools, and even some weapons, but we'll get to them a little later.

Minecraft is complicated by darkness. Night brings darkness making it harder to see what you're doing, and monsters tend to spawn at night, and in any unlit portions of excavated ground.

The solution is portable light that you make for yourself in the form of torches.

First, you're going to need to find some coal.

Coal appears in blocks of rock and looks like this:

You may have grand dreams of building big blocky towers, castles, bridges and who knows what else, but right now, you just need to be able to survive the night without being crushed by the night time baddies.

Since you have a pick, you can carve a tunnel into any rock face, and build a good sized room to hang out in.

It doesn't have to be big, just big enough to move around in to wait out the night.

Tunnel through rock with your pick (or through dirt with your shovel) and build a room inside a rock face or mountain. As you go, you'll pick up the rock or dirt that you tunneled through, adding it to your inventory.

Add torches to your toolbar at the bottom and plant them with your cursor on any vertical surface.

You will be able to see how much light your torch provides by how it lights the blocks around it. Make sure you have enough torches to illuminate the room. They don't have to be next to each other, but space out enough of them to light the room. This will ensure that you don't get spawns in there.

Don't forget to breakdown your crafting table and take it with you. Simply hit it with one of your tools until it reverts to a small-sized block, and pick it up. You can replace it in your new base of operations.

Now that you also have some material blocks, climb into your temporary shelter, and wall up the space to the outside except for one block, so you can see when it's daylight out.

I recommend leaving the bottom most block open so that you can see out, but nothing that is two blocks tall (all monsters) can get in, and skeletons (which have bows and arrows) will not be able to shoot at you.

With this done, you're now safe for your first night in Minecraft, and you can spend the time examining the blocks you've excavated, and do some serious mining.

Note: If you have friends in the game (recommended - I mean how else are you going to show off your new hovel, eventual constructions and bum materials), you may want to ask for some coal that first day just to get you through the night. Once you start mining and minecrafting in earnest however, you'll have more materials than you'll know what to do with.