Minecraft Survival

So, you've started your new Minecraft world, and you're wondering, now what?

WOOD!

First, go to the tree nearest to you and just start punching it. Punch it like it was your worst enemy. After a few seconds, the block will be destroyed and it will drop a smaller block of wood. Collect it, and repeat the process until you have about 12 or more wooden logs in your inventory.

Now, press 'e'. This will open your inventory. Take your logs and put them in four boxes you see in the top left of your inventory. In the box to the right of it, planks will be produced. Click on those until you run out of logs in your crafting area. Now, make a crafting bench. If you don't know how to make a crafting bench a great website to check out is the Minecraft wiki, which shows you how to craft anything and everything in minecraft.

After crafting your work bench, place it on the ground, right click it and make a wooden pickaxe. Exit out of your crafting bench, break and pick up your crafting bench and go gather 20 or so pieces of cobble stone. After gathering your cobble, create a stone pick (and throw out that terrible wooden pick), a stone shovel, a stone sword, and a stone axe. Now, it's time to find yourself some coal!

Finding Coal

Coal is usually in caves, or on tall mountains where clean stone is showing. So, go find yourself a cave or mountain and cross your fingers, because it's all luck.

Most worlds that are generated make it really easy to find coal, but every once in a while there are a few unlucky worlds where there is no coal in sight. In these cases, Notch made it really simple to have an alternative to coal.

The alternative to coal is charcoal, which you can get by burning a log with a wooden plank in a furnace. Really simple, and it can sometimes save your life.

Getting Bed Materials

As of Minecraft Beta 1.4 beds have been available. This allows you to sleep through 1 Minecraft night.

To make a bed, you need to gather 3 pieces of wool, and at least 3 planks. These materials are pretty easy to come by, but as of Minecraft 1.0, you now have to breed animals or you won't have any left if you kill them all off.

Making a House

Now that you've gathered all your needed supplies, you need to build a house so you are safe from the evil creatures that come out at night. Now, you have 3 options to choose from.

Your first house building option is the easiest. Just dig in to a mountain, put some torches down inside your little hide-y hole, and block yourself off.

The second building option you have is to find a nice looking tree, and just dig into it and make a small tree house for the night. As long as you're about 5 blocks off the ground, you should be good. This also works with the giant mushrooms that came in Minecraft Beta 1.9

Finally, and this option uses the most resources, build a wooden/dirt/cobble house from scratch. That's right. Find a flat piece of land, and build from the ground up. You should be fine with a 5x5 house for the first night.

Tip: You don't have to build a huge a house the very first night. Just a small little shack will do for your first night of minecraft survival.

Congradulations!

Congrats! You have learned how to survive your first night in Minecraft! Now, move on down and learn how to survive in Minecraft, for the rest of the time you play!

Building a Monster Proof House

You may have a house that keeps you safe at night so you can sleep in peace, but as soon as you step out of your door in the morning, ssssssss,,,,, BOOM! Your house is destroyed by a creeper. Well a little Minecraft secret to building a monster-proof house is adding fences around your house. This will allow you to look around before you actually step out into the Minecraft world. This will not block out spiders though.

Infinite Water Source

If you are building a farm it is really annoying to go back and forth to a lake or ocean, especially if your house is far away from one. So, instead of walking back and forth back and forth, you can make what is called an infinite water source. To make one, just dig a 2x2x1 hole and place water in two opposite corners of the square. For example, put water in the top left corner of the square and the bottom right of the square. Once you have done this, you will notice that it is still water, and you can take as much water from it as you want.

Finding Diamond

A great Minecraft trick and also secret to find diamond is to strip mine. This is a really simple way of mining. All you must do is dig down to level 10 and then make rows, spacing them 3 blocks apart from eachother. This allows you to dig through several chunks in only around 5-10 minutes. I guarantee you will find diamond with this method of mining within 20 minutes if you do it correctly. Check out the video below on how to strip mine correctly for more info.