Tutorials/Things not to do

The Minecraft community has developed some unofficial standards of gaming which will help any new Minecraft players to get a hang of the game. Millions of users have at some point been very inefficient or died unnecessarily. Therefore, a collected list of things you shouldn't do or forget has been compiled below in order to make the game experience as enjoyable as possible. However, making mistakes is an important step to learn the way of things in Minecraft. In a way, this tutorial acts as a collection of frequent Minecraft mistakes.

These are just rules to keep you safe. If you get bored following or doing any of these rules, they should feel free to break them all and play the game their own way.

Possible death

By yourself

Avoid excessive sprinting and jumping in your first days of Survival

Sprinting and jumping drain hunger saturation much more quickly than walking. This will have a serious effect on the player's hunger levels. It is important for the player to try to conserve their hunger bar during the first few days, as renewable food production takes time and the player may exhaust themselves to the point that they cannot sprint anymore ( 3 hunger or less). If the player finds hostile mobs, they should only sprint if needed. The player can die of starvation if their hunger bar reaches zero. Once the player has a steady food supply, it will become safer to sprint.

This is less important as of 1.11, as the player's exhaustion increases at a slower pace.

Food poisoning

Be careful when eating rotten flesh and raw chicken, as each may inflict the Hunger status effect on the player, which drains the player's hunger bar. You should avoid eating these unless there is no better food available. Pufferfish, on the other hand, is extremely dangerous and should not be eaten at all, as it causes not only Hunger, but Nausea(makes your view wobbly) and Poison IV (the highest level of Poison that any item can inflict, draining you to half a heart in 12 seconds).

Don't venture around far away from a shelter without remembering its location

After the first few days of hard work, the player will probably have some basic facilities for their survival (e.g. wheat farms, a small house, and a mine). Many players are tempted at this point to venture farther from their base to look for resources and explore.

However, the player should always keep in mind the location of their house. Even a brief moment of activity in an unfamiliar place can make the player lose their sense of direction and could result in them never finding their house again. Without knowing where their base is, the player is in danger of losing valuable time and may have to start over most of the game.

Here are some orientation tips:

• Coordinate notation: The player can record their bases coordinates from the Debug screen‌ (done by pressing F3 in Windows/Linux, or fn + F3 for Mac). The coordinates are also reported when the player teleports using /tp @p ~ ~ ~, if cheats are enabled. A screenshot can be used or writing down, but the coordinates should be kept in a secure place.
• Lit landmark: Perhaps for smaller distances, one can build tall towers with some torches on the top as they travel, as well as placing one on top of their house. Keep in mind that the towers can only be seen if one's render distance is high enough. A Beacon can also be used for this purpose.
• Keeping a running list of important coordinates is recommended.
• Make a compass: If the player has four iron ingots and a piece of redstone, they can easily craft a compass. It will always point towards the world's spawn point, but not the beds.
• If you have a compass and 8 paper, you can craft a map to prevent you from getting lost.
• Leave a trail of wooden planks/cobblestone while you travel every few blocks.

Never try to sleep in the Nether or the End

Do not attempt to use a bed in the Nether or the End. Only use a bed in the Overworld. Using a bed in the Nether or the End will cause it to explode violently, with a larger blast radius than TNT. Additionally, it will set nearby ground on fire, which is also potentially lethal. In the Nether and/or the End, there is no day-night cycle that can be slept through. However, exploding beds can be useful in PvP, as decoration, as an attack method (especially against the Ender Dragon), and possible other reasons. Note that the bed will not explode when placed, only once used.

Don't surround a bed with blocks directly over and next to it

Normally, when the player sleeps, they will wake up next to their bed, if the space around it isn't taken. It is important to leave clear room around and above their bed. If there is not free space next to and/or above the player's bed, they may wake up inside a block and will begin to suffocate. If this happens, one should remove the block quickly or else he/she will possibly die. If the player is killed, they will not be able to respawn at their bed; instead, they will spawn at the world spawn, which can be very far away from where the player was trying to sleep.

Don't have a bucket of lava in your hotbar unless you are about to use it

If the player is careless when using lava, this may be a result (albeit a drastic example of such).

Lava is a very dangerous resource. The player should not keep lava in the hotbar unless they are immediately (or very shortly) going to use it. If the player accidentally uses a lava bucket, they may accidentally kill themselves, as well as damage any builds in the immediate area.

Don't forget to carry a bucket of water at all times

During adventures, leave a bucket of water on the hotbar at all times. In the case of an emergency, it can do the following:

• Extinguish self-inflicted fire
• Solidify pools of lava to a walkable surface of obsidian
• Safely descend cliffs
• Allow the user to scale cliffs
• Repel endermen

Don't jump off tall cliffs or mountains

Jumping off the biggest mountain in Minecraft may seem enticing, however, the player is likely to die from fall damage. It is much safer to descend mountains or cliffs by climbing down normally, or even using water. Alternatively, the player can use the Elytra to glide down the mountain. Be very careful on amplified worlds, as even Feather Falling may not reduce enough damage to survive enormous falls.

Don't shoot straight up

If an arrow is shot directly upward, it may fall back down to injure and/or kill the player. Also, don't charge at a target immediately after firing an arrow at them, especially if you are wearing Elytra wings, as you will collide into the arrow.

Don't get careless with fire

Fire can spread a long distance.

While not as dangerous as lava, fire is quite dangerous. In addition, it spreads every few seconds and can travel across trees. Fire is especially dangerous in roofed forest biomes because the trees are larger (meaning they burn longer) and closer together.

When digging or mining

Never dig straight down

By mining straight down, the player is likely to fall into a cave system, ravine, or dungeon and take significant fall damage (as well as get swarmed by mobs if they survive the fall), or fall into lava, die, and lose their items. Notch has even added a splash text to this effect. Digging straight down can also get you stuck in the hole you've dug. In that case, placing ladders or pillar jumping should get you out.

Safer ways to dig downwards and/or find caves include:

• Mining in a staircase pattern
• Find an open-mouth cave on the surface
• Place ladders as you dig
• Dig a 2×1 hole, while standing between both blocks/on the block opposite the one being mined
• Mining a 2×2 hole to create a staircase pattern
• Dig a 3×1 hole with a ladder/ladders down the middle and torches on the side, possibly re-adding some side blocks every 5 to 8 levels and/or a water source at the bottom, should the player fall off the ladder
• Dig down 3 blocks from the surface, place a ladder on the bottom block, stand on that ladder, mine the blocks below, and repeat

Should the player insist on digging narrow mineshafts downwards, they should try to listen for water, lava or mob sounds (this can be aided by turning on subtitles). This can alert the player to the presence of a cavern, lava, or mobs.

Never dig straight up

Just as the player shouldn't dig straight down, they shouldn't dig straight up, either. When mining up, the player could encounter:

• Water, which could drown the player
• Lava, which could burn the player and his/her items
• A cave with hostile mobs, which could attack or kill the player
• Gravel and sand, which could suffocate the player

A possible way to mine upwards safely would be to place a torch at your feet, and keep a block in your hotbar that you can switch to easily. The torch will break any gravel or sand. If you mine into water you can use a torch to create a temporary air pocket, and if you mine into lava, you should be able to place a block quickly enough to avoid letting the lava touch you. There is still the possibility of mining into a cave with mobs.

As with digging straight down, the player should be cautious to noises or particle effects (specifically, water/lava dripping from a block) which may signify the presence of lava, water, or a cave.

Desert temple

Never dig straight down in the center (the blue terracotta block) of a desert temple. You will fall directly onto a pressure plate. This triggers the TNT trap underneath, blowing up the player. This will probably kill them, as well as destroy the treasure (and anything the player was holding). It is much safer to dig down in a staircase fashion and then mine away the pressure plate. Once this is done, the player can safely harvest the TNT and take the treasure. You can also use a bucket of water to fall at a lower speed, making it easier to avoid the pressure plate.

Don't dig underwater in Survival mode

In Survival mode, blocks take five times as long to break while the player is underwater. Therefore, there is a high risk of drowning while digging underwater, especially if the player is not close to the surface. Placing a sign, ladder, iron bars, glass pane, door, trapdoor, fence, or a dry sponge on a nearby block can produce an air pocket where the player can recover their air supply. Also, placing a torch or using an empty bucket at head height will replenish air supply, however, the torch will immediately break and return to your inventory. Since all blocks displace a full block of water as long as there is something in the block space, placing a “partial” block (such as an iron bar or a sign) will create a full block air pocket. One can also create air pockets by digging out dirt or sand under an overhang (the block above must not be sand or gravel). Should the player need to dig underwater for long periods of time, a helmet enchanted with Aqua Affinity and/or Respiration or a Water Breathing potion can be used.

Be careful when mining in ocean monuments, as Guardians can attack the player, and the Elder Guardians (of which there are three per monument) will give you Mining Fatigue III while you are near the monument, drastically reducing mining speed.

Don't get careless around TNT

This is what happens when you're careless with TNT. (Click to play the gif.)

TNT explosions are very deadly at close range. Whenever possible, the player should use redstone wiring and repeaters to delay the explosion and/or remotely detonate the TNT. Should the player happen to have a bow enchanted with the Flame enchantment, they can also remotely detonate the TNT by shooting it. If necessary, the player should find cover to protect themselves from the explosion.

It is recommended to wear armor while using TNT, especially armor enchanted with Blast Protection.

Don't forget to bring a decent supply of blocks when mining deep underground

There are many risks linked to deep mining operations. If the player brings a good supply of common blocks (e.g. cobblestone, dirt, etc.), it will provide them with material to overcome potential hazards such as Lava pools, large cliffs, or mobs. It is also essential to have wood on hand for crafting.

Don't forget to isolate diamond ores before mining

Sometimes diamond ore may be the only block between you and your death. If you see diamond ores, especially on the ground, mine away the blocks around it. If you see lava, take care to completely remove or replace it to ensure you won't come into danger while attempting to extract the diamond. The same principle can be applied to gold, redstone, obsidian, moss stone and to a lesser extent iron, coal, lapis lazuli, and emerald. Dirt, gravel, and stone should be gathered above ground, where it is safe, and lava should be collected from the Nether or from surface lava pools, as it is easier to use a bucket on source blocks in these places. Remember to place torches when the light from the lava disappears!

Don't fall into the Void

Assuming the player has found a way to get past the bedrock layer, they will have access to the void. However, jumping in is suicide. Once the player falls below Y -64, they will begin to rapidly suffer void damage, which you cannot be immune from. You will only survive if you have Regeneration VIII or higher, which is inaccessible in Survival. Each time they receive void damage, they lose 4 health. If the player dies in the void, all of their items will be lost (except keep inventory rule). You can use the void to kill enemy players in PvP.

Don't build a nether portal on bedrock in Survival mode

If you build a nether portal at the bedrock layer you will have a very good chance of spawning on a small island near the lava ocean, meaning that shelter area may be limited to only a few blocks of space and since there is likely a lot of room around you. This type of area can also hide ghasts trying to snipe you from the lava and deactivate your portal. It is recommended that you build your portal above layer 20. You may even spawn on top of the lava, and your first steps into the Nether will be your death. While you cannot spawn in lava, it will usually be somewhat close to your spawn, and thus any expedition to the Nether should be taken with caution.

Don't dig around in sand with a shovel with Efficiency III or above

Efficiency enchantment can cause problems. If you drill around in sand and move forward, the game may sort of glitch and suffocate you for either a split second or until you die. Keep your distance with sand, the same going for gravel too. This usually happens on laggy servers or single-player worlds played on a weak computer, so if you are confident in your computer or are playing on a server that you rarely have lag issues with, then this is probably safe.

Keep in mind that death is extremely rare from this kind of scenario; an "Oh my god that scared me!" moment is far more likely. Another note worth taking is to be careful near desert ravines, as there are sometimes overhangs of sand with no sandstone beneath them, so as soon as you break a block above one of these many will fall and you can die of fall damage.

Don't forget to leave a trail of torches (or other blocks) underground

One way of keeping yourself oriented in caverns is to place torches on the walls on your right/left side. So when you return, the torches should appear on the opposite side of the cave. Other ways are placing blocks as markers in intersecting caves. You are extremely likely to get lost in an abandoned mineshaft. They have a complicated labyrinth-like structure with several floors, including lighting. If you get lost, mine yourself up to the surface, but be aware of dangers along the way as listed on this page.

Placing torches consistently at one side is an effective way to light your cave while giving you directions.

By mobs

Don't look at endermen

If your crosshair touches any part of the upper body of an enderman while you are within 64 blocks of it, and it turns to see you doing this, it will attack you. If you want to hunt endermen without fear of provoking them prematurely, wearing a pumpkin on your head will prevent them from becoming hostile when looking at them. While this is an effective way to approach an enderman safely, the pumpkin will also make it significantly more difficult to see other monsters and fight them, unless one uses third person to fight the enderman, though this too has its disadvantages if one is not accustomed to it. If your armor is of high quality, such as enchanted iron or diamond armor, consider using a normal helmet instead of a pumpkin in order to fight more efficiently. Another way to use a pumpkin as a helmet is to press F1 (fn + F1 on MAC), however this will hide the weapons on hand and will hide the hotbar.

If you don't have a pumpkin or high quality armor with which to fight an enderman, a simple strategy is to build a small roof of cobblestone (or another cheap building material) up to three blocks high, and taking refuge under it while fighting the enderman. You can enter a space that is two blocks high, but an enderman cannot, so hiding under the roof and striking it with a sword is an easy way to dispatch the enemy without taking damage, although other mobs such as zombies can still hurt you. Alternatively, constructing a pillar four blocks high will produce roughly the same result, as an enderman cannot attack you from that height. Take care that a wandering skeleton or spider doesn't knock you off the pillar, though.

Don't get too close to a creeper

When it gets dark, or during the day if you see any, stay away from creepers as they can kill you in one explosion on hard (or normal, depending on your distance from it) if you do not have a shield or any armor. If you hear the sound of a creeper (which sort of sounds like primed TNT) proceed with caution. Your best bet is to run away in most situations, as even at walking speed the player moves faster than a creeper.

A creeper. Don't get too close!

If you are forced into a situation where you need to fight a creeper, keeping your distance is preferred. The best option is to use a bow, as you can kill a creeper at such a large distance it won't even be able to target you. If the creeper is close, you can build a 5 block high “pillar” by jumping and placing a block underneath your feet, which will allow you to shoot a creeper wandering around the base of the pillar, preventing it from getting close enough to explode.

If you do not have a bow and must fight it, your best bet is to use a sprint attack. If you hit a creeper (or almost any other mob) while sprinting, you will hit it farther away than if you just hit it normally. Usually this is enough to keep it far enough that it won't try to explode, but if it hits a block while being knocked back it may still try to explode, and if you miss while attempting a sprint attack the creeper will likely explode close enough to severely hurt or kill you.

It is possible to force explode a creeper by using a Flint and steel on it. After igniting the creeper, you should run away immediately to avoid damage taken or hide behind your shield. When you face a creeper directly while keeping your shield raised then it will keep you safe from any damage caused by the explosion.

When all else fails, try to get the creeper to explode as far away from you as possible. Ironically, this is the easiest to do on the “Hard” difficulty setting, since creepers can “count down” to detonation when they are further away from you than on other settings. It is even possible in some situations to persuade a creeper to explode without causing any damage to the player at all. Their explosion will cause damage to the environment unless they are partially in water, so if you need to make one explode, the ideal way to do this is to get it in water, and then get close enough to cause it to start detonating and then swim away, lowering your chances of getting hurt or killed.

If you begin to hear a creeper's hiss behind you, don't attempt to turn around and knock it away, don't try to block, don't do anything like that- just sprint away. At that point, it is completely impossible to kill it quickly enough to prevent the explosion, so surviving it is your highest priority.

Don't play on Hard or Hardcore if you are a first time player

Trying Hard for first players may sound fun, but it increases difficulty. Zombies and skeletons can easily kill you quickly at night and you can starve to death. You have less experience dealing with these hazards. You may not get the great gaming experience of exploring and experiencing Survival mode in Easy or Peaceful, and be unmotivated. Save yourself from that experience, unless you want to face the hazards regardless. Hardcore is definitely a no as your world is removed when you die, never to be seen again.

Don't try to kill zombies or endermen with a bow

Until you build a mob farm/skeleton dungeon grinder or have an Infinity enchantment on your bow, use your arrows sparingly. They are best saved for more dangerous mobs, such as skeletons, creepers (look above), and spiders. Zombies are easier to kill with a sword, and safer as well, because the high attack speed will keep them away from you. The exception is when the zombie is burning or their sword is enchanted with Fire Aspect, in which case, you will be set on fire when hit. This also applies to passive mobs. endermen always teleport away from arrows before they get hit, so bows and arrows are useless against them anyway. Alternatively, if you have a wolf or two, why bother wasting your sword's durability on a zombie? Just punch the zombie and the wolves will take care of the rest. Meanwhile, you can get on with killing creepers and skeletons.

Don't venture outside on your first night

Normally, the first nights are used to gather more resources, because you are not well-equipped yet. Stay away from any thing that can possibly kill you or can get you hurt. For some experienced players, this not a problem, as it provides them a challenge. The mobs that will most likely kill you are creepers, skeletons, and spiders. If you are on peaceful mode, this will not be a problem. If else, venturing outside during the first night can be very dangerous. If you venture inattentively, you might get killed by mobs. Plains are the safest places to be outside at night, because you can see monsters coming from a distance. However, forests and jungles can be dangerous, because you can easily be cornered, or surprised by a creeper coming around a tree.

Don't forget your sword when caving

A good sword is a player's best friend when in dangerous situations. One of the worst places to forget a sword is in a cave. In underground places, mobs spawn as fast as you can kill them, even with a sword. Even if you light up an area, if it is in a slime chunk, slimes can spawn. Plus, if you happen to find a dungeon, you can get killed fast if you do not have a good sword.

Don't build a wall that spiders can climb over

A wall is an excellent means of defending a certain area, either as a way to keep monsters out or for players to shoot enemies from afar without posing any danger to themselves. However, if a wall is designed incorrectly, spiders can easily scale the wall and make your wall far less effective. Spiders treat all vertical surfaces as ladders, allowing them to climb any wall with ease. However, they cannot pass through a block that is directly above them, so building an overhang on the outer side of a wall will deter spiders from climbing any further. Be careful, because spiders can jump over low walls!

Don't get careless in mineshafts

Abandoned mineshafts are some of the most dangerous places in Minecraft. Have these points in mind:

• You may walk right into a cobweb with venomous cave spiders which continuously spawn (they have a spawner). You are at a disadvantage, because cobwebs don't slow down cave spiders, you can quickly be cornered and die in a situation like this. Always bring shears so you can mine out the cobwebs quickly and escape.
• You may catch on fire and die. Mineshafts sometimes generate on lava lakes or vice versa, and set the wooden structures on fire.
• Look after hiding skeletons and creepers in the ledges alongside the wall of a ravine. The Mineshaft may intersect a ravine, and if you are stand on a bridge high over it, these mobs might send you careening off the bridge, and cause you to take extreme (possibly fatal) fall damage or worse, plunge into lava below.
• Keep yourself orientated on your exit route, or make several exit points. If you do not use proper orientation techniques, you can get lost in the vast labyrinth and never see the light of day again. If so, you can die of hunger (on hard difficulty) or will eventually be killed by a mob.

Don't leave gaps in your shelter

The purpose of a shelter is to protect you from the outside world. Leaving any sort of opening in that shelter defeats the purpose of having one, as monsters will simply be able to walk right in and attack you. Make sure that your house or fort is secure from all monster attacks, and only has entrances that can be defended easily. If you wish to see what's going on outside of your shelter while standing within, always make windows out of glass or glass panes instead of just punching a hole in the wall. An uncovered hole will allow skeleton arrows to strike you from inside the house, and creepers can see you from outside and explode next to the wall. Using glass will prevent monsters from attacking you in this manner. In case you don't have access to sand (to create glass), wooden gates can also do the trick, as hostile mobs cannot see through them. If you must have a hole and not a window, for instance an arrow slit, use stairs. Two upside down stairs facing toward each other in the wall leaves a space almost impossible to shoot through unless very close, making it safe from skeletons.

Don't start a sugar cane farm right outside or near your home

It's harder to identify a creeper hiding in sugar cane in the fraction of the second you have before he starts his timer. By the time you've gotten your sword out, your house will have a hole in it. However, it is completely safe if you use double fences, light up your farm, close the gate(s), and remove any higher ground near the farm. However, if a creature is following you, you can walk into the middle of a 2-block tall sugar cane. The creature will not be able to find you in the reeds, and will most likely walk away - but it may still walk into the plant.

Don't attack iron golems (unless you made it)

Iron golems sound like a reliable source of iron, right? Think again.

Iron golems only drop 3-6 iron ingots when they're killed. They are significantly stronger than you in both health and damage, and can kill you easily if not properly equipped. Worst of all, killing an iron golem lowers your popularity with a village by 5 points. If it is at -15, iron golems are indefinitely hostile towards you, until your village popularity is restored.

However, you can safely construct an iron golem farm if you want to harvest iron from them.

Don't use a wooden door on Hard mode unless it's protected

On hard difficulty, zombies can easily break down wooden doors and attack you in your base. The easiest way to protect a wooden door is to place a block of dirt in front of it anytime you are not using it. You can also use an alternative (fence gates, iron doors,) place fences and a gate around it, or place a door from inside the door-hole and open it. You can also put it in sideways, so when you open it it's closed, so the zombies don't even try to break it down. See Tutorials/Traps for advanced ways to protect your door(especially against enemy players in a server, who are much smarter than zombies).

Don't hit a skeleton with a sword enchanted with Knockback

This knocks it away and gives it more time to attack and knock you back so you can't easily kill the skeleton. This could also kill you so watch out when near a cliff, fire, or lava. Smite is good for this.

• Exceptions: You can knock the skeleton(s) over a cliff. They would probably die from the fall, and if water broke their fall then they wouldn't be capable of attacking you (if the cliff was high enough). Also if you have a shield you can protect yourself against the skeletons arrows.

Don't cross rivers at nighttime without a shield

Skeletons are especially dangerous if you are swimming (see below). Even if you do not see any skeletons, there may be some behind trees. They may come out while you are swimming.

If you try to fight a skeleton in water, it will shoot really fast and try to knock you away. Since your movement is hampered in water, you will not be able to reach the skeleton quickly enough before it shoots and knocks you back again. It is even harder to fight a skeleton in flowing water, if the water is flowing against you. Meanwhile, diving into a pool may keep the skeleton(s) and any other mobs off you, but the arrows still have a chance to hit you as they drop slowly. Also, skeletons in water will not burn in daylight, allowing it to live indefinitely. Your best bet is to leave the water and wait for the skeleton to follow you out of the water, where you will then have an even playing field to kill it.

• Exception: in versions 1.8 and further, the Depth Strider enchantment on boots makes you walk and run faster in water. If you have this enchantment, press your forward (default W) key and then your sprint (default control) while fighting skeletons.

Don't fight bosses without the right equipment

If you find an End Portal, have the soul sand and skulls to make the wither, or find an ocean monument, you should come equipped with these:

• High protection enchanted iron or diamond armor
• A sword, preferably diamond or enchanted (for the wither, smite, for the dragon and guardians, sharpness)
• A bow, also preferably enchanted (You'll want infinity and power for the dragon, just power for the wither (use infinity if you have it), don't bring it to kill guardians)
• Golden apples or health potions
• Dirt/gravel/sand blocks or ladders, to get out of a sticky situation
• Milk, since it removes the Wither and Mining Fatigue effects
• Friends: it's easier with more than one person, so if you're on Multiplayer, fight as a group. On singleplayer, wolves and golems could work as well.
• A helmet enchanted with Respiration and Aqua Affinity and boots enchanted with Depth Strider for fighting Guardians and maneuvering around ocean monuments
• If you are fighting the wither, do it in a low-ceiling cave, so you will have “sword mode” all the way (you can't spam-click with bows).
• Do not fight the wither with “sword mode” in the Nether without making sure there is no lava lake below the “arena".

Don't attack a silverfish in a stronghold (unless you can kill it in one hit)

Once you attack a silverfish in a stronghold, it will awaken all other silverfish in the vicinity, meaning you have a lot of silverfish to deal with. If you use a weapon that can kill it in one hit, or if you deal damage through indirect means (for example by lighing a fire with flint and steel), it will not evoke reinforcements and you will be much safer.

Don't let a snow golem run free near your bed

Since snow layer counts as a block, you will wake up standing on your bed, and you will wake up inside a block if your ceiling is only 2 blocks above, and that will make you take suffocation damage. You will also not spawn at your bed if you die, because it is "obstructed". To avoid this, cage up your snow golem.

Don't blow up your armor stands

Creepers explode when close to the player, and if armor stands are destroyed, they will not drop as an item, and you will lose not only the armor stand, but also the armor/headgear that was on it.

Don't venture into an ocean monument without the proper equipment

Ocean monuments are very dangerous unless prepared. Guardians spawn in them, which do 4.5 hearts of damage on hard, and 3 elder guardians, which will inflict Mining Fatigue III on you, which makes breaking blocks near impossible. The proper equipment is:

• Potion of water breathing (essential, bring at least 4), should be brewed with redstone dust to lengthen duration
• Potion of Night Vision (bring at least 2)
• Splash potion of Healing I or II(optional, but good for quick healing, bring at least 3)
• Splash potion of Regeneration (optional, but helps a lot while fighting guardians and elder guardians, bring at least 1)
• Potion of Strength (optional, but very helpful when fighting guardians and elder guardians, bring at least 2)
• Enchanted diamond armor (good enchantments include Respiration, Aqua Affinity, Protection, and Depth Strider)
• Fairly large amount of food
• A diamond sword enchanted with at least Sharpness I
• Iron or diamond pickaxe (essential, if you want to get the blocks of gold in the monument, should be enchanted with at least Efficiency II if you plan to mine with mining fatigue)
• Milk (optional, but can get rid of the mining fatigue effect for a few seconds or after you kill all the Elder Guardians)
• 2 sugar cane and a block of dirt (or sand). Place 2 sugar canes on top of each other, on the dirt (or sand) to make a small room where you can breathe. (remember that the dirt (or sand) must be placed on a plain surface).

Don't mess around in woodland mansions without proper equipment

New with the 1.11.0 updates are woodland mansions, which are extremely rare and only found in roofed forest biomes. While they contain plenty of chest loot and are absolutely massive, the woodland mansions also contain the newly added Illagers, which are hostile, extremely powerful versions of Villagers. Two kinds are found: Vindicators and Evokers. Both are extremely dangerous to fight. These structures are designed for end-game so make sure to bring the best gear. Bring the following:

A diamond sword enchanted with at least Sharpness III; full diamond armor with at least Protection III; 2 stacks of torches, one stack of food, and if available, Instant Health potions and/or golden apples.

Vindicators

Vindicators have 24 × 12 hearts - 4 more than the player. In addition, Vindicators hit extremely hard, hitting for 13 × 6.5 hearts of damage per hit on Normal and 19 × 9.5 on hard - both enough to kill an unarmored player in two hits, their attack can also disable shields, so they can kill you easily. Vindicators carry an iron axe, buffing their attack even more. Finally, Vindicators are capable of sprinting towards their target, and if named "Johnny" using a name tag, they will attack anything in sight - including Vexes - that is not an Evoker or another Vindicator. They will drop 0-1 Emeralds and sometimes their iron axe as well. Thankfully, there are a limited number of these per world, as they spawn within the mansion and don't naturally despawn.

Evokers

Evokers are even more difficult to kill than Vindicators. They have two main attacks: their fang attack, which spawns fangs out of the ground and always deals 6 hearts of damage regardless of armour or difficulty; and spawning Vexes, which can fly through the air and through walls, dealing 9 hearts of damage on Normal and 13 × 6.5 on Hard. Thankfully, they will start to take damage on their own after 33-108 seconds until they die. Unfortunately, the Evoker can spawn more of them. The only good thing about fighting an Evoker is that it drops a Totem of Undying, which is a one-time save from fatal damage if the player has it equipped or in their off-hand.

Don't fight a witch without good equipment

Witches are very dangerous. They throw negative potions at you like poison, harming, weakness and slowness. Players should never go unprepared when fighting a witch, because no matter how strong your armor is, it won't protect you from the potions. Only the protection enchantment counts. Thorns is useless due to the fact the potions are actually harming you, not the witch. Also, they drink positive potions, mostly healing, but they have other potions as well. They have speed, fire resistance and water breathing. Lava, flint and steel and Fire Aspect are almost useless due to the fact that they drink a potion of Fire Resistance. And since they are in lava, that makes it hard to kill and if you are using blocks to get to it, you can be knocked off to your death by a harming potion and they are impossible to drown since they drink potions of water breathing. Splash potions are completely useless due to the fact they are 85% resistant to splash potions. So thus, they take 1.8 × 0.9 hearts of damage from instant damage II and 0.9 × 0.45 hearts of damage from instant damage I. Also, Poison is completely useless due to the fact they only take 0.15 × 0.075 hearts of damage every time from splash potion of poison. So get at least an iron sword to kill it easily. Take some good armor and protection is mandatory due to the fact protection is the best protection enchantment and unenchanted or enchanted armor with things other than protection cannot protect you from potions.

If you have no choice but to fight them, then sprint in as fast as possible and kill it with your sword. Witches are almost completely helpless in melee combat.

The best way to fight a witch with is a bow, because if you are far away enough they can't throw potions at you, if your bow is good enough you can kill it before it can take a potion of healing, otherwise it will take more hits. So whatever you do, try to use a bow first.

Don't attack villagers

Attacking a villager will cause you to lose 1 popularity (see Village). Killing one removes 2 and they drop nothing. Attacking a baby villager and you lose 3 popularity. If you kill the village's iron golem, you lose 5 popularity. If your popularity is -15 or lower, any naturally spawned iron golems will attack you. Also, the village popularity will not reset when you get killed and the only way you can get your popularity back up is to trade with villagers. So don't ever attack villagers or iron golems. If you must dispose of them, use natural damage, such as fire, lava, or dispensed TNT. Iron golems can be melted down into wonderful ingots just by adding some lava (warning, dispose of the lava or else the ingots will be gone before you can collect them) . You can also build an iron golem farm for this purpose. Remember, villagers are your good friends, not your foes!

Don't spend the night near villages (unless you are playing on Peaceful)

If you are in a village at midnight, there is a 10% chance that a zombie siege could begin. Dozens of zombies will spawn regardless of how well-lit or walled-off the village is. A couple good sieges can easily wipe out your local village, and it is extremely tedious to try to repopulate it with zombie villagers. Staying out of the village boundary is sufficient to prevent zombie sieges from occuring, but it is still advised to stay farther away from the village, in order to prevent random zombie spawns.

Don't attack wolves

Remember that wolves can also be allied with the player. If you attack them, all the wolves around will get angry also, and when wolves are angry, they can't be tamed, similar to zombie pigmen. Also, get this: Wolves do not despawn on Peaceful mode, but they will damage you in the Bedrock edition and will not damage you in the PC and Console edition on Peaceful mode.

Don't go near polar bears if they have cubs

Polar bears are neutral mobs, but they can deal up to 9 damage per hit on Hard mode. Not only this, they are incredibly easy to provoke. If you attack a cub, all adults within a 41x21x41 area will become hostile towards you; even being within a 21x21x21 area of an adult will set it off if a cub is within 16x8x16 blocks of it. To top it off, polar bears swim faster than you can, although you can hit them underwater as mobs float.

Don't attack an enderman in the early stages of the game

This is especially important for beginners; do not attack endermen if you don't know how to properly deal with them. Without adequate armor they can deal incredibly high damage compared to most mobs, and their teleporting abilities can make them unpredictable. If you provoke an enderman and are unprepared to engage it, simply using a bucket of water can repel it.

Don't throw a negative splash potion too close

If you throw an negative potion too close, you will be affected by the potion: poison is deadly as it brings you down to half an heart, and any damage can kill you. Weakness reduces the damage you deal to mobs, making it difficult to kill mobs. Slowness reduces your speed, making it difficult to escape hostile mobs. Instant damage can kill you if your health is low. Also, the knockback received from instant damage can send you off the edge of a cliff, if you are close to one. Note that undead mobs (zombies, skeletons, zombie pigmen, wither skeletons) will be healed if they are hit by one.

Don't attack a creeper in water with only a sword

Creepers submerged in water cannot destroy blocks and structures by exploding, but the slowing effects of the water make it especially tricky to kill them effectively. Unless you want to make it explode to get rid of it quickly without affecting the terrain, use a bow instead. Alternatively, just let it blow up, as long as it is in water, it does no damage. This is because water can absorb the explosion as it has a blast resistance of 500.

Don't go to The End with pumpkin on the head

As the pumpkin severely impairs your vision, it may not be a good idea to wear it and fight the dragon head-on, even if it prevents the Endermen from attacking you. However, if you use a resource pack or F5 (third person view) to remove the impaired view of the pumpkin, you will be able to see the entire screen, and endermen cannot become provoked by looking at them. If you would rather use a diamond helmet, and are confident you can keep your crosshair away from the endermen, using a diamond helmet might be a better idea. And in the console version, resource packs have not been implemented yet, so don't use a pumpkin as a helmet in The End.

Don't look up in the sky while moving

If you're doing this, you might fall into a ravine, lava lake, or a patch of mobs, or fall down from a mountain. You'll be likely to die and lose your stuff if you do this. This would be stupid if you're playing on survival, especially hardcore. Nobody wants to be surprised by falling down to a ravine, lava lake or a patch of mobs. Looking around is the way to go while sprinting (although you can press F5 twice to mostly prevent this from happening).

Don't stand right in front of the block you are mining

This isn't quite so obvious either, But if you mine the blocks in front (while being very close to the block) all sorts of things could happen - you could walk into a ravine, walk straight into a monster spawner, or even worse, have lava flow onto you. Use ambiance to your advantage. If you hear a weird noise, lava, or water, proceed with caution.

Don't play hardcore mode unless you know what you are doing

Once you die in hardcore mode, the world gets deleted! As of versions 1.9 and above, your other option is to respawn in spectator mode. Monsters spawn anywhere it is dark enough; that includes outside at night (the moonlight doesn't help), and in caves anytime. Light your area properly! If you do not prepare with a bow and a bunch of arrows, or a high-damage sword, do not go mining in deep dark caves. It won't end well if you can't fight mobs properly. If you really want to dig, stay safe and build a quarry.

There is absolutely no point in safe-keeping important items (such as weapons and torches) far away from dangerous places because you won't be respawning to collect them if you die. Don't try Hardcore until you're familiar with the game mechanics by playing a few games on lower difficulties first(normal or hard)

Don't venture outside during thunderstorms

Thunderstorms are a particularly dangerous form of weather, as the sky darkens enough for monsters to spawn, even during the daytime. An unprepared player with few supplies can be killed quite easily if a thunderstorm begins and monsters start to spawn. While thunderstorms do not occur often, it is always a good idea to make sure you have enough supplies and weapons to survive should one happen. Additionally, a biome with extensive vegetation, such as a swamp or jungle, is at additional risk during a thunderstorm, as a bolt of lightning could set trees ablaze and destroy large areas of forest. These bolts are also nearly lethal to the player if they are hit by one, so standing outside during a thunderstorm is always a risky prospect. And, if that wasn't bad enough, lightning bolts can transform pigs into zombie pigmen, villagers into witches, and creepers into charged creepers. Overall, thunderstorms are a dangerous situation.

Concerning the Nether

Don't goof around in the Nether

The vast space inside the Nether along with its environment come with many risks and hazards than one would expect from the Overworld. Come well-prepared with a bow with at least Power I, at least three stacks of arrows, (or one arrow if you have Infinity), enchanted iron/diamond armor, especially those with Fire protection, and an iron or diamond sword. However, unless you're on Hardcore, leave your really valuable equipment(like your most likely new Diamond pickaxe) at home: an inventory-incinerating death in lava is far more likely in the Nether than it is in the Overworld. You should only bring along an Stone pickaxe(Iron is fine) and a Stone Shovel(Unless you plan to farm Soul Sand to plant Nether Warts in the Overworld) as tools, and Torches, At least half a stack of food, Flint and Steel for relighting your Portal if something happens to it, and two to three stacks of cobblestone. if you don't want to risk losing anything else, then don't bring anything else.

Next

• Do not dig straight down — this is even more important in the Nether, where one-block thick overhangs above lava or high drops are the rule, rather than the exception. It is best not to dig anywhere close to your feet with a diamond pickaxe with any level of efficiency, as netherrack breaks instantly with said combination. Be careful on gravel as well—you may dig one block and discover you were standing on a gravel outcrop over a chasm or worse, the lava sea at the base of the Nether. However, the ladder trick in the Overworld will still work.

• Do not carry valuable items in the Nether, unless you've set up a secure Nether base. And even if you are, a diamond or Efficiency-enchanted pickaxe can be more trouble than it's worth, as it will blast through netherrack floors and walls entirely too fast. (Think: Creative mode destruction time, a.k.a. instant or 0.1 seconds)

• Do not build structures out of anything weaker than iron doors (25 blast resistance). Ghasts can and will blow up and possibly set fire to lesser materials. Nether Brick is best to build your base out of(Fire and Blast proof against mobs), though Obsidian is more durable but harder to obtain.

• Do not mine glowstone unless it can be collected safely constructing a cobblestone platform underneath it. Otherwise a ghast might blow both you and the cluster into your death, or the glowstone may fall into a lava pit or a magma cube party center. Also, do not go out of your way to find glowstone if you know where a witch hut is – you can nip in and cut the witch down every so often, and have a chance to get a little more glowstone. For those who have the patience, building a witch farm is worthwhile, and does not have anything to do with ghasts. But so long as you are alert and have a Power I bow, you can kill Ghasts in one shot, making them much less dangerous.

A ghast firing at a player after entering the Nether.

• Do not plan on using a water bucket as your defense against death in a lava pool, as water doesn't work in the Nether. By using the water bucket, some mist will appear and your bucket will become empty. Try to gain the necessary materials for Fire Resistance potions as soon as possible and use the potions as your defense instead.

• Do not attack zombie pigmen without ample preparation for the consequences, for example be at an advantageous position to fight them, or there is only one or two in the region(you must be completely sure about that). Zombie pigmen work as a team; attack one, and all the zombie pigmen in the area will become aggressive, similar to untamed wolves. They're harder-hitting (dealing as much as 6½ hearts or 13 points of damage on Hard mode) and faster than regular Zombies, so it's better to kill single, isolated zombie pigmen unless you're well-equipped and experienced enough to take on large groups. A building of sorts to retreat in is advisable at all times, preferably with firing holes in the walls, even if you don't have a bow, you still can see through them. If you can't get away fast enough if you hit one, your best chance of survival is to hit them away with a sword with a knockback enchantment. You can knock them into lava as a defense method, because lava will slow them down and give you time to escape, but however, all Nether mobs are immune to fire and lava(Exception: Ghasts). You can also pillar jump two blocks and attack them safely from the pillar.
  Note: Killing zombie pigmen with a dispenser of TNT will not anger them as it counts as environmental damage.

• Don't catch yourself on fire; as said before water does not work in the Nether unless you have a cauldron with you, which is advised, but whether you have non-water related ways of putting out fires or not, avoid fires anyways.

• Do not try to sleep in the Nether. If you right-click a bed in the Nether, it will explode and possibly kill you. If you are on an overhang, you could even fall into lava. If you die in the Nether (other than Hardcore mode), you will wake up in the Overworld. This can be a good thing, however — in single-player or with no other players near where you were, the Nether chunk will unload, and you'll have plenty of time to re-equip yourself and maybe even go back to retrieve your stuff. See section 1.1.4.

However, if you are not playing on Hardcore mode and want to preview the Nether, equip a stone pickaxe and sword. This is a good idea just in case the nether portal spawns in a lava ocean or in a quartz cave.

Don't drill around with Efficiency on netherrack carelessly

Note: This is true of any Diamond Pickaxe with Efficiency II or higher.

Like we said earlier, just bring a Stone Pickaxe or non-enchanted iron pickaxe (except Unbreaking) with you. Efficiency is useful for breaking things quickly, but using it in the Nether when mining netherrack can lead to death or other problems. Netherrack is a very soft block (softer than stone) and high efficiency is not only not needed, will also mine it so fast that with just one click, one block will break. By holding, you can drill out half a stack in less than 5 seconds. Digging recklessly in the Nether environment, where lava flows as fast as water in the Overworld, can super drill yourself into lava pools or rivers. Also, unlike cobblestone or ores, netherrack has limited use, and will just be a waste of your precious Efficiency pickaxe.

However, if you have potions of fire resistance, and want a ton of netherrack for whatever reason, then you should dig a tunnel if you are using an Efficiency pick. Make the tunnel at least two blocks wide. One side of the floor should be higher than the other, so that if you do hit lava, it will be channeled to the lower side. Always stand on the high side.

The conclusion is: It is best to mine carefully and take precautions in a world like the Nether.

Don't do potentially dangerous things in the Nether without fire resistance potions or enchanted golden apples

This advice is more relevant for more risky ventures in the Nether, where you are likely to catch on fire. Of course, you cannot get the ingredients for fire resistance potions without first entering the Nether. If you haven't gotten blaze rods or started brewing yet, it is best to have some spare food and have a full set of iron/diamond Armor on with a bow/tons of snowballs to kill blazes, because when they light you on fire, it's hard to extinguish yourself as you can't place water in the Nether. When you enter the Nether, look for magma cubes to brew a potion. You can get magma cream if you combine blaze powder and slimeball in 1 x 2 arrangement. As of 1.9, enchanted golden apples cannot be crafted in the Java edition, and can only be found in loot chests in generated structures.

Ingredients	Crafting recipe
Blaze Powder + Slimeball

Don't ride mobs(horses, pigs or llamas) in the Nether

Horses are useful in the hilly over world, or flat plains, but the Nether is no horse paradise. There are many cliffs horses can fall off of, ghasts to shoot you into a sea of lava, and the place is one big cave. You wouldn't take a horse mining, would you? If you must use a horse/donkey in the Nether for large transport of materials, take several precautions:

• Use a fire resistance potion.
• Use horse armor(Diamond or Gold) if you're using a horse.
• Avoid speed potions (May seem counter-intuitive, but higher speeds = Higher chance of falling off a cliff).

Alternatively if you are making a transport system in the Nether, you can create a pathway exclusively for the horse to effectively create a “horse subway” that will travel extremely fast with the combined speed of the horse and the distance reducing effect of the Nether. You can also create a mine cart system that is much more foolproof even if the building is tedious.

Riding llamas in the Nether is even more dangerous because you cannot control llamas.

Don't go to the Nether without flint and steel, fire charges or a piece of iron

Even if you secure your portal, there is always the possibility that a ghast will de-light it (not destroy it, as Obsidian is only destroyed by a Diamond pickaxe or the Wither). If this happens, you cannot return home easily, which is why you need your Flint and steel to re-light the portal. If not, you would need to do one of the following activities, both of which are dangerous:

• Trick a ghast into shooting your portal again, to relight it. However, this may consume a lot of time, and you can kill yourself with the ghast's fire.
• If you have found a Nether fortress, you can kill a ghast, blaze and wither skeleton, then craft fire charge. However, Wither skeletons and Blazes are potentially dangerous.

However, if you do have somehow forgotten to bring your Flint and Steel, you can craft a Chest and place your items in it, then jump into the lava(unless you play on Hardcore), then you can wake up in the Overworld, retrieve your Flint and Steel and go back to the nether. Hopefully your items should be untouched. Beware you lose your experience if you do this.

Wasted resources

Involving tools and items

Don't use wood logs as fuel

A log burns the same amount of items as a plank (1.5 items). Craft 4 planks from 1 log, and use the planks as fuel to quadruple your burning efficiency. Charcoal, which you get from burning 1 log, burns 8 items. Use 2 planks to burn 3 logs, to make a durable fuel source.

Don't craft rabbit stew

Rabbit stew restores 5 hunger, but the 3 edible ingredients (the cooked rabbit, baked potato, and carrot) combined restores more than 5 hunger. The carrot restores 1.5 hunger + the cooked rabbit meat restores 2.5 hunger + and the baked potato restores 2.5 hunger. 1.5 + 2.5 + 2.5 = 6.5 hunger. Therefore, crafting rabbit stew results in a net loss of 1.5 hunger and the mushroom used to craft it. Plus, rabbit stew does not stack, so it will hog up your inventory.

Don't drink base potions

These base potions (awkward, mundane, thick potions) have no effects on the player. You will instead consume Nether wart and glowstone dust, which all are valuable for brewing the useful potions.

Don't waste space by crafting a lot of one item

By conserving the raw, original material, you can save several slots if you craft them into other blocks only when you need them. It may not be evident in the beginning, but when you wastefully convert a stack of planks into sticks, you use several slots. You can waste space because the product of the original material cannot be reversed. This'll be explained below.

Planks and sticks: 1 log yields 4 planks which yields 8 sticks. Be careful about making sticks from planks, because they will no longer be a block.

Ores (except quartz)

You can "compress" 9 ingots into a single block. When you have many ingot blocks, you can extract the ingots whenever you like.

Don't mine valuable blocks with low-level equipment

If you don't have an iron pickaxe for gold ore, diamond ore, redstone ore, and other valuable ores, they won't drop their contents. Instead, they'll just break (eventually). Likewise you need a diamond pickaxe for obsidian. A good indication is the amount of time it takes for them to appear to be destroyed. If you have been mining a block for more than 4 seconds (with the exception of obsidian, for which it takes 9.4 seconds with a diamond pickaxe), then it is very unlikely to drop resources when destroyed and you will just lose the item you tried to mine. However, it is just better to remember that wooden pickaxes mine coal only, stone pickaxes can mine iron ores and iron pickaxes can mine every ore except obsidian.

• Wood planks have better uses than tool crafting, and should only be used as such when there is no alternative or when you are just starting. When you start, you should make a wooden pickaxe, mine 19 stone blocks, and then you will never again need the wooden pickaxe, or any other wooden tool. 11 of the 19 can be used for a full set of stone tools, and the remaining 8 for a furnace. You can then burn the wooden pickaxe as fuel in the furnace.
• You should use golden tools only if you need especially fast gathering of resources for a short period (for example, working underwater). Gold also enchants very well, so gold tools are useful if you want any enchantment which would otherwise be difficult to obtain, such as silk touch. However, note that gold pickaxes can't mine the advanced ores (Including gold ore itself!), regardless of enchantments.
• Cobblestone tools are fairly slow, but they are so cheap as to be disposable, and two of them will last as long as an iron tool. (Longer, with item repair.) These are good for digging out lakes, harvesting jungle trees, and other bulk work.

Don't waste valuable equipment on low-value jobs

Diamonds are worth their weight in… well, diamond! Using your diamond pickaxe for bulk mining may be faster, but will damage the pickaxe a little more every time. Using it for digging dirt won't even be faster. Diamond items last long enough that they're as likely to be lost to a "bad death" as they are to wear out, so the other question is when and where you're willing to risk them. Never use iron, gold or diamond for hoes, as the only gain is durability (and for gold, not even that), unless you have too many diamonds than you know what to do with (e.g. you have a collection of enchanted diamond tools and armor with almost every (or every) enchantment, or you have at least three stacks of diamond, which is not likely).

• Iron is faster than stone and lasts twice as long. The sword and armor are also noticeably more powerful. Iron ore is fairly common, but not unlimited (unless you build an iron farm), so don't get careless about spending it. These should be your go-to tools “in the field”, that is when traveling or adventuring. Iron tools are also easiest to enchant, not counting gold as you don't craft tools out of gold(at least you shouldn't be).
• Diamond tools are for special missions—when you want stuff that will last a long time (but not forever), and work fast. However, the supply is strictly limited, so choose carefully how you use them and risk them! Given that you want to get the most out of your diamond items, you should enchant them as powerfully as you can.
  • Shovels also get used up, but are much cheaper than other tools, only one diamond piece is consumed. If you have many diamonds, an "eternal-shovel" may be a decent time-saver.
  • Swords only cost two diamonds, and can give you a key edge in fights, so they are worthwhile, but remember they also increase the possible cost if you do die.
  • Diamond armor should pretty much be saved for the ender dragon, until you've got enough diamonds stockpiled that you can risk losing your investment. (24 for a full set of armor!)
  • A diamond hoe is completely useless. It does the same amount of damage as fists, and there are no enchantments for it. Hoes all work instantly. If there is a plus, it's that is has a very long durability. Think: you could have made a diamond sword, an enchantment table or 3124 uses of a shovel. See "Don't make a hoe out of diamond or gold" below.

Of course, if a villager blacksmith sells diamond tools, that changes things! You can trade renewable resources for emeralds, and then those for store-bought iron and diamond tools, so use those to your heart's content.

Remember also that your most valuable resource is your time. As the saying goes, “The world is infinite, your time is not”. Someone could easily hollow out a 10×10×10 area with wooden picks and wooden shovels, but it is a waste of time when one has diamond tools to use on the same project. Using iron and stone tools to mine in order to conserve your diamond takes away the point of gathering the diamonds in the first place, and most people don't want to spend their entire Minecraft experience digging. If you only have an hour to play Minecraft every day, it would be better to spend 20 minutes of it digging out an area for a house foundation than 2 hours building it, even if you "waste" a few diamonds in the process. Take this advice with a pinch of salt; it's your choice how you want to use your diamonds and time.

Don't make a hoe out of diamond or gold

Although it may be tempting to have a diamond (or gold) hoe, don't! Any hoe can till a dirt block at the blink of an eye. The only thing you can gain with making hoes out of minerals better than cobblestone is durability, but since cobblestone are both renewable, making a hoe out of rare materials is a waste. In the early game, cobblestone is the optimum material for hoes. If you are like many players, you may find yourself with a surplus of iron after several hours of game play. If you intend to build a very large farm, making an iron hoe will save you a lot of time, running back and forth to make hoes, but you can also carry two stone hoes with you for the same effect, and four cobblestone is much easier to acquire than two iron. In this case, an iron hoe is a better idea. But if you are building a small or medium-sized farm, stick to cobblestone. Having a diamond hoe is considered being “high class” so if you have a lot of diamonds, it does have some bragging rights. And it can also help you to obtain the "Serious Dedication" advancement. Making a golden hoe on the other hand tells other players that you have no brain, since it has half the durability of a wooden hoe (the golden hoe, not your brain).

Don't use non-weapon tools for damaging mobs

Carry a sword with you until you craft a bow. Other tools cause less damage to mobs, and they lose durability faster.

An axe has the added advantage of the ability to chop wood faster as well as being a decent weapon. At some point you will want to replace it with a stone or better sword though. While an axe does more damage a sword in a hit, axes are more expensive (3 material (wood, stone, iron, gold, diamond) and 2 sticks instead of 2 material and 1 stick) , they hit slower and use more durability each hit, so they are really not worth it over a sword of the same type. As of 15w34c (1.9) axes can disable shields temporarily and are stronger but slower than swords.

A pickaxe is two tiers worse, meaning a stone sword does as much damage per hit as a diamond pickaxe. Shovels are three tiers worse, meaning a wood sword deals as much damage per hit as a diamond shovel. Using a Hoe is the same as using your fist.

All axes deal the same amount of damage, making a stone axe deal much more damage than a diamond sword. However, axes have much slower attack speeds than swords, so don't use them if you often miss your melee attacks.

Don't use gold to craft tools or armor

Even though golden tools sometimes do work faster than diamonds, and are much easier to enchant than diamond or iron (for example, A golden pickaxe can pick up an ender chest more quickly than a diamond one, and it is easier to get Silk Touch on it. This makes it seem like a good idea to have one to mine Ender Chests, since you rarely move Ender chests anyway.), they have very low durability(half the durability of a wooden tool). Instead, you should use gold to craft golden apples, golden carrots for potions or food, powered rails, and or a clock.

• Exception: if you have a gold (zombie pigman) farm in the Nether. If you do, then gold becomes an infinite resource. Zombie pigmen drop gold ingots and nuggets upon death, making gold nuggets and gold ingots renewable.

• Gold is also better than leather armor in all cases (other than durability), so if you don't have enough iron to make a full set of armor, gold is good for your armor. However, you are likely to get more iron than gold, unless you spawn in a mesa biome where gold can be found near the surface.

• Here are some examples of how weak golden tools are: Golden sword with Unbreaking III has around the same durability as a stone sword, and one with Sharpness V does the damage of a none-enchanted diamond sword.

Don't use a tool on leaves or grass

Using a tool on leaves is a bad idea, because it will drain the uses your tool has. If you use it on all of the leaves on a tree, not even an iron tool will last very long. It is just as fast to use your fists, or any non tool items, so never use a tool on a leaf or grass. However, the tools that are made for leaves are shears, which can be used to collect placeable leaf blocks. However, these leaf blocks could potentially hog up your inventory, so you may not want to do this, unless you wish to make a structure out of leaves. If you'll be cutting through a lot of leaves, you may choose to make a few disposable stone swords to use as machetes; this also works on the cobwebs you find in abandoned mineshafts. However if you have extra fortune axes/shovels and want saplings you may want to use them on the leaves. This is an especially good idea when trying to obtain Jungle saplings, as their drop rate is much lower.

Don't use a tool with enchantments like Fortune or Silk Touch on low-value blocks

Why would you use a Fortune-enchanted pickaxe on stone? You will not get any extra stone and you waste your pick's durability. A good idea is to bring an Iron pick to mine stone, iron and gold, which are not affected by Fortune.

Exception: With the advent of the Mending enchantment traditional "economical" use of "the right tool for the right job" is no longer as applicable as it might have been in the past. Its perfectly conceivable to have two pickaxes (a Fortune III and a Silk Touch) last indefinitely given the current state of the game and diligent maintenance (don't just use it until it breaks).

Don't throw away valuable equipment that has lost most of its durability

None of us want tools that are about to lose durability. So, many of us just throw them out, even if they are valuable. It's a big mistake! For example, let's say a zombie attacked you while you were wearing diamond armor, and the armor lost most of its durability. Don't throw it out. Yes, just think about all your hard work and the diamonds you wasted. It still has some use! If you have a fishing rod with less durability, then you can still use them to find fish! It is better than no fishing rod! Shears with less durability still have some use – you can get more wool (but don't collect leaves)! Same goes for tools. Also, old wooden tools and weapons can be used as fuel. You could also use them to repair other armor with powerful enchantments or low durability. And anyway, it's always good to have an extra pair of tools in a chest in case you die and lose your stuff. Any scrap tools or armor made of metal, if you are positive you will not need it,can be chucked in the furnace to obtain a nugget.

The downside of using objects with a low durability is that they may break whilst being used. This is a problem especially for weapons and armor. This inconvenience can be mitigated without disposing of the equipment: if worn out equipment is stored while new items are being used, the pieces of equipment can be combined later.

Fortunately, the Mending enchantment enables one to repair any item they are holding in their main hand, off hand, and any currently worn armor using XP from any source, even if some may not consider an XP for 2 durability a good trade. (Note: All of said items need an individual Mending enchantment in order for this to work.)

Don't immediately throw away your items with lesser value

Admit it. We don't want our chests and inventory hogged up with less valuable items like rotten flesh or seeds, right? You think in your mind: “Just throw it into lava.” Don't make that mistake! Items made of materials with lesser values still have a use. For instance, a creeper blows a hole in your animal farm and you are left meatless, then think about all that rotten flesh you just threw away? Rotten flesh is not only efficient food for wolves, but it also makes a great emergency food as it's easy to kill zombies, and fills your food bar more than the hunger effect drains it(and it heals you a bit every one you eat). If you want emeralds to craft emerald blocks for making a pyramid to empower beacon, you can use rotten flesh to trade with Villager for emeralds(Around 40 for 1, which is a good trade!)

Also, all that cobblestone still has a use. Cobblestone can make great emergency tools. Furthermore, if a creeper blow up your terrain, you can use cobblestone you just got to fill up the hole (or better yet, only fill the second top most layer of the hole) then cover it with dirt, or sand. Even though it has a lesser value with not much durability, it still has some use in it.

Always think about what you are throwing away before you do. Anyways, Chests are cheap to make.

Don't waste experience

As your experience level rises past a certain point, the experience orbs you collect count less towards the next level each time you level up. In other words, each level takes more and more experience to fill up. Since you'll never be able to enchant anything at a level higher than 30, make sure to enchant as soon as possible when you reach that level unless you are in a place where it is very inconvenient to leave. (Exception you need between 31 and 39 levels to improve or repair an item on an anvil.) Otherwise, you'll be wasting much of the experience that you gained after that point. Even worse, if you die, you lose all of your experience (or maximum of first 7 and a half levels worth of experience if you manage to retrieve your gear). For example, when you defeat the ender dragon, you get 12,000 XP points. This brings you to level 72, but why waste so much(levels above level 17 require 3 more XP to reach every level above that)? Collect enough to get yourself to level 30 or slightly more, then enchant a diamond item, you can easily enchant more than 2 diamond items like that.

Also, try to make a cow farm and sugar cane farm (for leather and paper) early in the game if you are on a Multiplayer server with low amounts of these resources. (Exception: There is a public enchantment table or a player allowed you access to their table). If you are in Singleplayer, or there are abundant resources on the server, you can hunt and gather for them. You will need these items in order to make bookshelves since they require paper and leather. Bookshelves are necessary in order to create high level enchantments unless you can find/trade for enchanted books. Without a high level enchantment table, you will eventually find yourself forced to either spread low level enchants across iron gear, put mediocre enchants on diamond and waste their potential, or waste it from going far past level 30 and possibly dying.

Diamond is by far the best candidate for enchantment in most circumstances, so if you have enough diamonds, it's always good to enchant diamond armor and tools first, and level 30 is usually the best since it usually outputs the highest levels of enchants. Diamond or iron pickaxes are a good start, because you have a chance of getting Fortune which will greatly increase your diamond output when you mine for them if it's the highest level (III). If you've ran out of diamonds to make into gear and enchant, and you don't want to waste your experience, a good candidate is a bow (or a fishing rod if this appeals to you). Since these items don't have tiers, you're still making sure that you make the most out of your experience. And then when you do get enough diamonds, you can use those. And lastly, if you have a very efficient mob grinder, you won't need to worry too much about this stuff. You'll have plenty of xp and will be able to enchant all of the tools and armor you use given enough patience. If you use them well, enchanted armor and tools can make collecting resources, excavating, fighting monsters, and exploring dangerous areas much easier, so make sure to make the most out of your experience.

Don't overload your enchantments

Speaking about tools and armor, over-enchanting them can risk being unable to repair them. The anvil has a limit of 39 levels. Even if you have enough levels, your anvil will still declare the repair work “too expensive”. You can get into this fix by not renaming your items early (the repair penalty adds up), or by adding on more enchantments from other items or books. Or, although kind of half-cheating, if you can access creative mode, go to it and do the job.

Fortunately, in 1.9 update, there is a new Mending enchant which you can find from fishing or trading with Villagers, tools enchanted with this won't need any more further repair (as it is repaired every time you have extra experience) so be sure to enchant your diamond gears with Mending and Unbreaking first before maximizing enchants on those.

Don't throw away your tools

You might need extra tools as backups, if any of your tools break you may need an extra. If you had 1 pickaxe and it broke, you have to stop mining and go to your base/home and get the supplies you need.

• Exceptions:
  • Wooden tools - they're slow, they break easily, and you usually still have a few from your first day lying around. It's not a bad idea to get rid of those; however, you could put them in an item frame as a trophy to remember you survived your first day or you can use those as fuels to smelt ores and cook food (pretty much conserving coals for later use).
  • Stone tools - they're also slow, can only mine coal and iron ore, and are usually only good for mining in bulk(or establishing a strip mining field).

Don't use shears to collect too many leaves (or vines)

Shears are made for collecting plants like leaves, vines, and grass. But don't collect too many, as they will hog up your inventory. It is better to have a “leaf chest” where you hold all the leaves you collect with your shears. Another thing is that each time you collect a plant with the shears, it tweaks the shears a little more every time. If you collect several stacks of leaves and you don't know what to do with them, you will have just wasted 2 iron ingots. You could have used those ingots for something else.

Don't hog up your inventory

This is how big your inventory is.

Don't do this or you can't collect any more stuff. Lava is a good thing to destroy the annoying circling items on the ground, but cacti is better because it will not burn your beautiful wood house. (But remember the Don't immediately throw away your items with lesser value above) Cacti can destroy items more reliably than lava, as items in lava can bounce back and you might pick them up. If you mess up, cacti will have a much smaller chance of killing you than lava(and if you wear sufficient armor, it doesn't hurt you at all). (1 damage per half second in contact instead of 5 when in contact and 1 when burning.)

Consider organizing your inventory for quick access and perhaps a "professional" feel, letting you keep track of what is necessary and what is not, and cutting down on the time it takes to find that item you just picked up. Alternatively, use shulker boxes and ender chests, which retain their inventory when picked up.

Don't get rid of a clownfish

Yes, clownfish are pretty much useless apart from restoring half a hunger point, but do not throw them away. Clownfish can make as a good emergency food source, as can be done with rotten flesh (while rotten flesh inflicts you with Hunger, Clownfish do not). Clownfish can also be used to tame ocelots. And who knows; perhaps in the future they may have some other use!

Don't use fire charges to light fires (unless you can't craft a flint and steel)

If you have a flint and steel, don't use any fire charges you have to light casual fires (fireplace, burn down a tree, etc.). Think about all the time it took to kill all those blazes, creepers, and to mine the coal. Once you use a fire charge to light something, it is immediately consumed unlike flint and steel which can be used many times. There is an exception however, if you are trapped in the Nether without a flint and steel and iron ingots, and need to relight your portal, then fire charges are a great alternate source. However, under normal circumstances, it is not worth wasting those hard earned fire charges when you could just use a flint and steel.

Don't smelt ores

Ingredients	Smelting recipe
Ore+ Any fuel

Ores (except iron and gold) can only be obtained using Silk Touch, which is a very rare enchantment, and you will gain more experience if you mine the ore with a pickaxe that does not have the enchantment. Additionally, the redstone and lapis lazuli ores yield multiple items when mined with a normal pickaxe, and only one if smelted; and any of the above ores can drop more than one item with the Fortune enchantment.

Don't brew potion of weakness using anything other than a water bottle

Potion of weakness can be brewed by adding a fermented spider eye to any of the following potions:

• Water bottle
• Awkward potion
• Thick potion
• Mundane potion
• Potion of strength
• Potion of regeneration

It is obvious that by using a water bottle, you use the least resources since glass and water are renewable.

Involving blocks and entities

Don't kill passive mobs that drop meat with a sword if you have flint and steel

If you're already carrying flint and steel while you're hunting, save yourself some time. When hunting a mob that yields meat (pork, chicken, steak, mutton, rabbit), using a flint and steel cooks the meat for you. This is especially useful on chickens, since they are easy to kill, and raw chicken can inflict food poisoning. You'll save coal and time you would have spent cooking it, and a flint and steel costs less to make than your trusty iron or diamond sword. However, be careful not to set fire to yourself, or to try it on mobs near water. Try and set as many as you can on fire at a time to maximize efficiency, and watch out for wooden houses or trees.

Lava also works, and it doesn't have durability, but it kills mobs quickly, so be sure to remove it. Plus, remember that lava will destroy any items that fall into it, so be careful if you decide to use lava to hunt mobs.

Be careful using these methods if it concerns your animal farm, since you might kill your entire brood/herd/drift and you need at least 2 of each for reproduction. Beware of the durability level, too. If it goes down, you'll need to use another iron ingot on it, not to mention a flint, too.

Another alternative is to use the Looting enchantment, as it provides a higher drop rate than regular weapons. Some may deem this far more useful due to the massive amounts of fuel they may possess. Coal is easily obtained anywhere, and blaze rods are easily obtained through a blaze farm. Exception: You may need raw meat to trade with butchers or you struggle to get enough experience but have lots of coal, wood, lava etc. The time required to cook it could be bypassed by farming, mining, etc.

Try not to kill animals in your farm/ranch with a sword

As of version 1.9, the sword has a "sweeping" attack, which can hit several targets at once. This is useful when fighting monsters, but can cause problems when slaughtering animals, especially in a crowded ranch; when trying to kill one mob, you may accidentally hit or even kill another mob standing next to it, without meaning to. This can be avoided by using an axe instead of a sword, which has the added bonus of getting the job done in fewer hits (if you time them correctly), but the axe will take double durability as damage.

Don't kill sheep for wool if you have shears

Sheep drop only 1 block of wool when you kill them. If you have shears, you can right-click on a sheep with shears which will give you 1-3 blocks of wool. Not only that, if you right-click a sheep with a dye in your hand, the color of the sheep will change to that color. Sheep eat grass to re-grow their wool, and will have the same color they had before. This makes wool of all different colors renewable. Note that baby sheep cannot be sheared, and will not drop anything when killed.

Shear them before you kill them if you have shears and need the XP or food (raw mutton). Also, the only essential use for wool is a bed, so don't kill more than 3 sheep to make one on your first few days.

Don't shear Mooshrooms unless you need to

Mooshrooms drop 5 red mushrooms when sheared, but no brown mushrooms. However, you can get infinite mushroom stew out of them by right-clicking them with a bowl, meaning you get more bang for your buck this way. In addition, Mooshrooms never grow back their mushrooms when you shear them so you need to landscape for a long time to find another mushroom biome. Exception: Killing Mooshrooms after shearing.

Don't dye a sheep many times (unless you have not enough sheep to have one of each colour)

If you dye a sheep many times with different dyes, you just wasted the previous dye. You may think it cheap, but blue wool requires Lapis Lazuli, and you do not want to waste them, because lapis lazuli is needed for enchanting (unless playing before 1.8).

Don't kill tiny slimes with a sword

Tiny slimes have the lowest health in the game (only )–so low that they can be taken down with a single punch. They also deal no damage. Knowing this, you shouldn't waste your sword on them because it's unnecessary, and will waste your sword's durability. An exception is if you need lots of slimeballs and you have a Looting sword, then you should use it for maximum drops, or if there are many of then, in which case you can take advantage of the sword sweep attack and kill multiple slimes instantly. However, don't try this on Magma Cubes, as even the smallest Magma Cube still deals decent damage.

Don't craft white wool

If you try to add a bone meal in the crafting menu with white wool, it will yield one white wool. You are obviously wasting bone meal, which could be used to grow crops or trees. In bedrock edition bone meal should be used to bleach wool where needed instead.‌

Don't use torches to break anvils

People use torches to break gravel when mining to prevent suffocation, but anvils cannot suffocate you. Unlike gravel, sand, and the dragon egg, if anvils fall on torches, the torch will be destroyed without dropping itself as an item, and the anvil will deal damage to you, and then land on the ground. Use stronger non-solid blocks like slabs, signs, cakes, and soul sand to break anvils, making the anvil drop as an item.

Try not to destroy bookshelves multiple times without Silk Touch

If you need to move bookshelves, don't do this too many times if you don't have Silk Touch. Normally it will yield 3 books, which is 6 wooden planks lost(which is fine, but if you do it too many times you lose a lot of wood). Silk Touch enables you to get the actual block back.

Don't destroy ender chests without Silk Touch

Ender chests will drop 8 obsidian blocks when destroyed, meaning that your eye of ender is gone forever (luckily, eyes of ender are relatively renewable, unless you rarely see endermen). If you have another Ender Chest you will still have your items.

Don't use glass carelessly

Glass doesn't drop itself when broken even with your trusty fist, so if you change your mind on creating a window, you just lost glass forever. (This is not the case if you have a tool with the silk touch enchantment.) Lost glass can become an issue if it is not renewable to you. Before you place glass, make sure to see if you really want to put it there. It's also important to not hold glass in the hotbar unless you plan to use it soon, since, if you accidentally place glass, a Silk Touch tool would be needed to retrieve it. This is the same with glass panes.

Don't shoot paintings, boats, minecarts, item frames, or armor stands (Why would you do that anyway?)

Don't shoot these items. They count as entities, and as such the arrow will disappear if you shoot it. In fact, an armor stand will be destroyed and not drop as an item and you will lose the arrow, the stand, and the armor/headgear. Also be careful with fishing rods, as they will destroy paintings. If you want to practise archery, shoot a wall instead made of a solid block like stone.

Don't cure a zombie villager if there are other zombies around

If you cure a zombie villager when other zombies are around, when the villager goes back to normal, all of the zombies will gang up on that one villager, and kill it, reversing what you just did.

Don't smelt all of your cobblestone(you can build with cobblestone as well)

Unlike cobblestone, stone and stone bricks cannot be used to make tools, should the need arise. In addition, having to mine stone out again after having smelted it will again leave you with cobblestone, and you'll have wasted the fuel you used to smelt the Stone (unless you mine it with a Silk Touch tool). It's always a good idea to keep a decent stock of Cobblestone to hand, in case you require it for various reasons.

Don't get careless with the dragon egg

So many players want to show off that they killed the ender dragon, but many have lost the dragon egg, which is the trophy of the End and only one exists per world. If you get too careless, you may blow it up or send it back to the overworld by accident(then you'll probably quit the game from rage). To obtain it, you should cover up the portal with end stone and use a piston to push the egg or just teleport the egg by right-clicking (careful not to let it fall into the Void), mining below the egg, putting a torch, and breaking the block below the egg. Here are some of the things you shouldn't do:

• Blow it up with TNT, this might not drop the egg, but will blow it up
• Try to mine it with a weak pickaxe
• Forget to cover the portal and send it to the Overworld

Also, never leave it where players can obtain it in a Multiplayer server. Lots of players play servers, and someone might see it and steal it from you. Place it in an Ender Chest and only display it as a trophy if you are playing with friends, or want to play capture the flag with it.

Be careful with redstone elevators in the Nether made of stuff weaker than Iron Doors(both when using it and when building it)

Don't do this, as you may have to start again. There may be hidden lava in the netherrack and it can spill out and ruin your lift, especially if it's made out of wool or wood. Plus, ghasts can blow up parts of your lift if you build it out of weak materials.

Do not build wooden houses in the Nether even if it is away from lava oceans

Wood is flammable, and ghasts shoot fireballs that can burn it. Even if it misses by 3-5 blocks away, the netherrack fire will spread to the wood planks in your house.

Do not build a house/base in the End out of anything except End stone

End stone is perfect because it is easy to mine and is renewable. Endermen cannot pick it up, nor can the ender dragon destroy it. Don't use obsidian; it is harder to break or obtain.

Do not delete your world if you lost everything

So you have done well in survival mode. You have diamond armor, diamond tools, diamonds, gold and iron. All it takes is one careless mistake for it all to be naught; for instance, you fell into a lava lake, or you were swarmed by players who stole all your treasures. If you experienced this (and most people have), then you might be feeling hopeless and want to delete your world. DO NOT DO THIS. If you do, then not only is your hard work gone forever, but you will lose your precious buildings, gorgeous landscape, farms, and all else. The only way to solve this is to open up your world and continue playing. You may have lost a number of items, but if you have been storing resources at your base, you should be able to bounce back quickly. it is like starting the game again, except that you have a major head start, having found a cave or similar and a house, with at least some rare stuff in your chests.

Minecraft is a game of exploration and discovery. Take the opportunity to discover new sources of diamonds, gold and iron. Iron in particular is very plentiful, and if you already have a base and some mines started, it should be easy to gather enough materials for a full suit of armor and a sword.

Don't use Fire Aspect on an enderman

This important for people who are purposely hunting for ender pearls. Fire Aspect will cast the enderman on fire and make it teleport like crazy(because it returns to neutral), so you might never see that one ever again. Also, don't fight them near water, lava, fire, or rain. This makes it easier for them to get distracted and teleport away(same reason). On the flip side, if you don't want to fight one and you accidentally looked at it, try to go into water or rain, or use Fire Aspect on it.

Don't get rid of emeralds(duh)

This is simple theory knowledge. Emeralds are actually rarer the diamond ores(natural generation), and they act as a currency between villager tradings and on legit Multiplayer servers. You can buy powerful items with them. You can also use them to craft emerald blocks for decoration or more useful, a beacon which provides a positive status effect in a certain radius.

Do not breed or heal horses with golden apples!

Golden apples are extremely hard to obtain. Hay Bales breed and heal twice as much of the horse's health than a Golden apple. You definitely would want to use other items and not gold ingots to heal or breed your animals.

Don't trade with villagers for a loss (non-profit)

You do not want to trade with villagers an emerald for a renewable resource, unless you are desperate or have run out of these resources. This should be quite obvious, but it is your own preference to what deals are worth it. (Like do you trade 3 emeralds for a bow? No, unless you haven't found a single spider for ages. Or, do you trade 2 emeralds for cooked chicken? No, time consuming, and not worth it. Don't even think about trading 19 raw chickens for a single emerald, you could have just cooked them and replenish your hunger.)

Other

Be careful with fire(unless you actually want to burn down a forest)

This is a no-brainer. Fire combined with wood and leaves result in even more fire! Fire can destroy chunks of forests, as well as accidentally burning down part of your house. Follow what Smokey Bear says: “Only you can prevent wildfires.”

Avoid carrying flint and steel, fire charge or bucket of lava in the hotbar, unless you are going to use it soon(you are currently heading to that destination). If you are making use of a flint and steel or fire charge, have a water bucket handy. Then, if you accidentally set fire to something, you can quickly put out the flames. You can also try to punch the fire when it's created, and it will be immediately extinguished (hopefully it hasn't spread already).

If you really need to burn down lots of trees with fire(for whatever reason), then burn trees with caution. A fire resistance potion/water bucket would come in handy. It is still recommended to punch trees down, though.

Don't use a water world superflat preset for survival

This setting does not generate land. You will swim and eventually drown/run out of food and starve to death, and anyway it is boring. Only use this preset if you are making a Creative Mode world, are a masochist, or have set certain structures to spawn within the world.

Don't use 9 pieces of coal when you can craft them into a block of coal

Nine pieces of coal burns for 720 seconds while a block of coal, which can be crafted with 9 coal, burns for 800 seconds. Effectively, this gives you eight items' worth of free fuel.

Ingredients	Crafting recipe
Coal

Besides, blocks of coal are efficient for maximizing storage, anyway.

Fair warning: Do not use blocks to smelt only a few items. Whole blocks are consumed at a time and you will be surprised when your block of coal smelts three pork chops and then burns away. For example, you could load a stack of iron ore in your furnace and then add in 16 more to make full use of the block of coal. If you are smelting less then 72 items in a furnace before the fire goes out, it's better to use coal, rather than a coal block.

You can use Item Hoppers to help you, which will fill up the Furnace when there is nothing in the smelting box, and place another one so smelted items will go into it.

Don't heal a horse with 9 wheat when you can craft a hay bale

Similar to the above involving the 9 coal and the block of coal, each wheat crop can heal a horse 2 HP, which equals 1 heart of health. However, an entire bale of hay can heal a horse 20 HP, which equals 10 hearts of health, and hay bales are crafted with only 9 wheat. Effectively, this will heal your horse 2 extra health points.

Plus, just like how blocks of coal store 9 coal, hay bales act as a storage unit for wheat (9 wheat can be crafted from a hay bale).

Exception: If your horse lost only about 2-4 health points, don't feed it hay bales, feed it wheat instead, you'll end up wasting more wheat for no reason at all.

Avoid building a weak or flammable house (especially in Multiplayer)

Avoid building with dirt, sand, snow, and netherrack, because they are weak materials with a low blast resistance. They are quite easily destroyed by creepers or TNT. Wood is a flammable block with half the blast resistance compared to stone-based blocks. Instead, use cobblestone, which is a cheap, abundant, and tough alternative. Later on in the game you may want to make your main base out of bricks, stone bricks, stone, and possibly, obsidian. You could also use end stone if you make an ender chest, or go to the End, and kill the ender dragon and mine some End Stone.

A list of low blast-resistance materials can be found here.

If you use an inventory editor, be extremely careful not to use stone, stone bricks, or cobblestone with silverfish in them (also known as monster eggs).

Wooden houses are quite flammable. griefers can burn down wood structures on Minecraft servers. They also can be easily be blown up due to wood having low blast resistance.

Wood is however, efficient to collect in large quantities. A stack of wood blocks can be harvested in the same time as a stack of cobblestone, but yields four times as many when crafted into wooden planks. For large constructions, such as mob traps, wood planks are a good choice. Wooden roofing may be easy and look nice, but it is vulnerable to being set on fire by lightning. Either do the roof in a fireproof material (brick is classic), or have a fireproof layer beneath to limit the spread of fire. If you do use wood walls, consider buttressing or trim with either smooth stone, cobblestone, sandstone, or obsidian. It will not only look better, but will have better blast resistance against explosions.

Don't build houses mainly out of obsidian (unless you found a lot of it) (especially in Single player)

Obsidian is blast proof and provides great protection. But getting obsidian takes a lot of time; you may need several Minecraft days. Obsidian is a dark block, making it unpleasant to look at from the inside. Despite the fact that it is blast proof, it can still be destroyed by blue wither skeleton skulls from the wither. Use most of your obsidian to cover your valuable items instead.

In multiplayer war games, or if you are playing seriously on multiplayer servers against other players, you should build your base out of Obsidian.

Don't build TNT traps out of dirt if you plan on reusing them

It is time consuming to rebuild dirt traps. Instead, try a more explosion-resistant material, such as obsidian. Cobblestone also works, but some blocks will be destroyed. Or you can use water to avoid terrain damage.

Water has the ability to absorb the destructive aspect of an explosion, but generally not the physics or health damage, which means that your target will probably get launched. (Or killed, if it was a mob or a non-creative-mode player.)

Don't make a fireplace in a wood house

Fireplaces look very nice, especially in homes made of logs or wood planks. However, you are discouraged to do so, because of the chance of the fire spreading. You can, however, build a fireplace and make sure no flammable blocks are around (at least six blocks away). However, be aware this is not foolproof and your house may still catch on fire. Fires don't spread forever, but fire can still destroy a good chunk of your home.

Hint: Make a fireplace only with non-flammable blocks, like stone or clay. Or just use a furnace or a torch if you don't want to risk.

Exception: You may do it if you are playing in that very old version of Minecraft that has nonflammable double wooden slabs.

Don't grief up your spawn point

If you want to play with TNT, don't use your spawn place for this. If you die and have not slept in a bed, you will spawn at this place; so if you dug where you spawn, you will spawn at the bottom of the hole, and may not be able to get out as you have no pick or materials. And always remember to mark the spawn point when spawning into a new world! You can always create a new world in creative mode to prevent this.

Try not to live in certain biomes

Some biomes are better to live in than others. Oceans are, obviously, not advisable to build a beginner house in, due to the lack of trees, materials, or caves. This also goes for the desert and mesa biomes; while both are devoid of trees and generally flat biomes, they are the perfect setting for pyramids and other exotic builds. The swamp and extreme hills biomes are not recommended as build sites due to witch and slime spawns in the former and long drops and few trees in the latter. Also, in extreme hills biomes there's also the danger of finding a silverfish block underground disguised as stone or its variants. However, an extreme hills biome makes a great spot for building an epic house in creative mode. The snow biome will periodically develop a layer of snow over dwellings, which can be annoying for some, or desirable for others. The jungle biome and roofed forest biome, while full of trees, are hard to build in because of the dense foliage, and can be very dangerous to navigate at night. The plains, birch, flower, and standard forests, savannas, deep forests, mega taigas, and taigas biomes are typically recommended for beginner players due to the availability of resources and spawn rates of friendly mobs. Many biome variants and technical biomes are suitable too. See biomes for more. Mushroom biomes are deceptive. No monsters can spawn, and mooshrooms make infinite food sources with bowls, but you can't grow trees easily, and mobs can still cross over from other biomes. Also, they're very rare, and you will have trouble finding it.

Don't venture out at night in certain biomes

Forest, jungle and roofed forest are the biomes that have the greatest risk of being killed at night. Dense vegetation and shadow can hide creepers and corner you against a tree. Hostile mobs are more likely to spawn as well. However, extreme hills biome has very steep inclines, which can give you a hard landing if knocked back hard enough by a skeleton, for example. The swampland biome is quite dark and has vines hanging down from trees. This is a hazard at night, because of the flat terrain and spots of water, it obscures potential creepers.

Don't spawn the Wither in the Nether or the End, unless you are playing Creative

If you spawn the Wither in the Nether, and you are on a one-block thick overhang above lava, the wither can destroy the overhang, and you can fall in the lava, or take fall damage. If you spawn the Wither in the End, you have to deal with TWO bosses. Plus, withers can destroy obsidian, preventing you from climbing the obsidian pillars to destroy the ender crystals that heal the ender dragon but if you do this first and are an expert you can get the wither to try to kill the dragon and some endermen but for most players, always spawn the wither in the Overworld. Although the endermen can fight with the wither and it will be mortally wounded, KILL THE ENDER DRAGON FIRST. You don't want to be killed by the ender dragon when you are looking at how endermen kill wither, yeah? And finally, you DO NOT want the wither to cruise through the center island and basically destroy the entire island, then you'll be knocked back into the Void. Even though you can make the ender dragon and the wither fight each other, it's very unlikely that it will happen.

Exception: If you are very experienced, you may try climbing up to three blocks below the bedrock layer in the Nether, and spawn the Wither on top of a piston at the same level as the ground. Then quickly activate the piston. This should push the Wither up, getting his head stuck in the bedrock layer. Even the Wither cannot destroy bedrock, so he will not be able to move. Just watch out for the Wither's initial explosion, then you're good to go. It is also a wise idea to fight the Wither in the end when the ender dragon is killed before, as end stone is blast resistant(45 doesn't sound like much when compared to 6000 of Obsidian, but it is still blast resistant), so it won't deal much damage to the environment; by the way, the Wither is hostile to endermen, and enderman will fight back which will then distract it, giving you time. You can use this as an ender pearl farm too! If you are going to fight the Wither in the end, beware of falling into the void.

Don't fight the Wither near important buildings

Speaking of spawning the wither, wither spawing is a very easy way to grief your beautiful world or diamond castle. If you are planning to fight the wither, move very far away from important land or buildings. Withers make huge explosions when spawned and shoot out wither skulls that explode. Even your fully enchanted diamond suit won't stop the wither from destroying the world. The wither still takes a number of hits to be defeated from the most powerful of your weapon supply. Caverns and abandoned mineshafts are your best bet. That way you can easily hit the wither without it going too far. Still, abandoned mineshafts are dangerous. When planning to fight the wither, pick the area carefully! You can watch some youtube guides on strategies to defeat the wither with less trouble.

Don't be careless with your new pet wolf

A tamed wolf can be very useful. It can give you a hand when fighting mobs, create guards, or just keep you company when lonely. It can be easy to forget to make your wolf sit down when not using it since it will kill any mob you punch possibly resulting in your farm that was once teeming with animals to end up empty. Also when you are attacked by a mob or player, the wolf will stand up and come to you. That can be annoying when you are miles away from your house. After you spend enough time with your wolves, you are less likely to make those mistakes but still don't get too careless! Try to befriend two wolves and then start breeding them to ensure you can easily replace a wolf who died. Beware walking on ice though, because if you get too far away the wolf will teleport to you, and end up trapped under the ice, and will drown.

Don't adventure from your home without a few essential items

It's important to be prepared if you want to go adventuring. There are a few things that you will always need to carry with you after you leave your base.

General

• Armor(Full Iron+)
• A good sword(Iron+)
• Pickaxe(Stone+, depends on what mining you are doing, a stone pickaxe won't help you if you find anything other than Iron and Coal, otherwise, go for Iron+ for general mining )
• Optional bow and arrows, but recommended for killing skeletons
• Stack of dirt or cobblestone
• Water bucket
• Food
• Torches
• Compass and/or map (if you plan to just explore)
• Bed
• Crafting table(this will come in handy, especially at night)
• Fishing rod (in case you run out of food).
• Wood (useful for crafting while you're away from home)

Stronghold

• Armor(Full Diamond+)
• A good sword(Diamond enchanted)
• Bow, Infinity bow recommended
• Food
• At least a stack of torches.
• 12 eyes of ender (unless you already activated the portal and are revisiting it, if you haven't found the Stronghold and are looking for it, you will need more)

Mining

• A shovel(Stone+) (For underground dirt and gravel patches.)
• Armor(Full Iron+)
• A pickaxe(Enchanted iron+) to mine the ores
• A sword(Iron+)
• A stack of torches
• A few wood planks or blocks (for crafting more tools or torches if needed)
• A furnace
• A few pieces of coal (about 10-15, for furnace)
• A chest or Shulker Box (in which to place the goods)
• Food
• A bucket of water
• A bed (It's a good idea to set up a small room to sleep in if you plan to mine for a long period of time)
• Dirt or Cobblestone. This common resource may seem useless, but it can be used to mark a point(dirt does not generate underground so you know you must have put it there) or to pillar jump. It is cheaper than both signs and ladders.

Abandoned mineshafts

• Milk (optional, to get rid of poison effects)
• A bow and sword(Iron+)
• Iron or better pickaxes, preferably enchanted
• A stack of dirt or similar
• Buckets
• Shears to cut cobwebs.
• Full Iron+ armor

Be careful with a horse

Horses, donkeys, and mules are quick and donkeys and mules give you a place to keep your stuff! So, if you see a horse or donkey, tame it. Just remember, if you want to tame a horse, always keep a lead and a fence on hand to tie them up. Make a pen to keep them safe, and give it a sturdy cobble roof. Make sure you have a two fence gate door to make sure you can leash up your pet and take it for a ride. If you are taking a survival journey, take a mule or donkey! They'll carry food and resources while providing a ride. Keep your horse healthy and never dangle it from a high place with a lead. And if you have other pets, pen them up in another area of your home; if you accidentally hit a horse, your pet wolves will kill it. You can name your similarly-colored horses so you can tell them apart. Don't visit your horse sheds unless you want to ride them, or want to give them armor.

Don't pass a chance to settle down in a village (but beware of large hostile mob sieges)

Villages are brilliant places to live. They have farms if you're hungry. Large villages have guards against hostile mobs (iron golems). They have a population of non-hostile villagers, who you can trade with. Villages are very good for players. They give shelter to the people without it, and a town. They also give you something to build on! Make a pool, a garden. Turn it into a city(or a war base), while you have no effort building a home first. And don't forget, if there is a blacksmith's, there is a chest with something of use inside it! But first, before you settle down, try these things:

• If you have pets, board up the blacksmith's lava with cobblestone or iron bars. That way, they can't be hurt in the lava.
• All villages have wells. Board them up, as pets can get stuck or drown.
• Villagers will go into your house. Craft an iron door. It keeps villagers and zombies out.
• Look at your house. A villager won't settle down if you don't make it sustainable to them.
• Light up the village to keep too many mobs from spawning at night. Note that this will not prevent zombie sieges from happening.

Don't break monster spawners

When you are in a dungeon, mineshaft, stronghold, or Nether fortress, don't break the spawner even if you need more experience points. The spawner will only drop 50 experience points when broken and you can use them later in the game for mob drop traps and infinite experience farms. Simply put, a one-time drop of 50 experience points isn't worth losing a potential source of infinite mob drops and experience.

By the way, the spawner never drops itself. There is no way to obtain one in your inventory outside of commands.

Don't be afraid to take a little damage

If your hunger bar is full, you regenerate lost hearts quickly, but at the cost of hunger points. Perhaps jumping down that mountain is a safer option than taking ages to build your way down when night is about to fall. If you have lots of useful stuff with you, such as diamonds, it might be better to put them in a chest and come back for it later, as jumping off something 23 blocks high or more will kill you . Letting a creeper blow up may be useful when mining. Just like before, spider eyes are useful as food, even though they cause poison that take out only 2 hearts. If you have very heavy armor, you can use a creeper to “Creeper Jump” if you have good armor and block with your shield. You'll take a little to a lot of damage, but sometimes it's worth it. What's better: an explosion in the ground, losing 2~3 hearts, and jumping on top of your house and be safe from the mob ambush, or fighting a mob army and losing around 8, or worse, die?

• Exception: You are playing Ultra Hardcore Mode, or you have less than half health. See Tutorials/Ultra hardcore survival for more details.

Don't try to mine bedrock in survival

Bedrock is unbreakable in survival, and as such attempting to break it will just waste your time. (Mining does not take up hunger, however, until the block actually breaks. In the case of bedrock, it simply won't). If you really need to break a bedrock, /gamemode 1, or use one of the glitches shown in Tutorials/Breaking bedrock. Anyway, breaking bedrock only allows you to access the void and die.

Don't make dangerous redstone contraptions that you may accidentally kill yourself with(e.g. a trap of some sort)

Redstone mechanisms can be dangerous if not used correctly, you might make a mistake and push a block into your head and suffocate, blow yourself up, drown, get pushed off a cliff, or even miss a slime block and fall somewhere else. Also fast redstone clocks can cause the FPS to drop.

Things that you might've been doing wrong

Things you were doing wrong in Minecraft (view on YouTube)

Multiplayer

Possible death

Don't PvP without the right equipment

It is dangerous to fight players without armor or weapons. If they win, they can take any hard-earned valuables in your inventory such as diamond, gold, or iron.

In a PvP battle, players normally take the best equipment to fight other players. Most use enchanted diamond armor or diamond swords and a few may even have cheats on. (They may switch to creative and kill you easily or they may give themselves Strength 99) Don't take anything made out of leather, wood, or gold as those are too weak. However, you can take a lava bucket and burn the opponent if s/he doesn't have a Fire Resistance potion.

Don't punch a griefer

Don't do this, as the griefer may pay attention to your attack and he might kill you, so always hide when you attack him. And if he finds out where your base is, being a griefer, he will grief it. If you have good armor and sword, and you think you can beat him, then kill him.

Don't stand in the open in a PvP server with bows

This is very dangerous, especially when towering. One hit could send you falling to your death, into lava, or into a group of enemies. A good idea is to tower up high and make an enclosed room.

Don't attack players wearing armor with the Thorns enchantment with a sword

Don't do this as the armor can deal damage to you. Try to use non-melee attacks intead.

Don't show new faction/clan members your base

Do not trust players looking for factions/clans. If they teleport to your house/base they could steal your stuff and grief your base/house/land or kill you every time you come home. They may invite other people to do the same. Keep a close eye on new recruits, and only invite people who you know in real life or trust deeply. If you do they may grief and you don't want that to happen (and or they may tell other factions).

Don't accept random teleport requests

Under no circumstances should you ever teleport to a random person or allow a random person to teleport to your base. Many experienced server players will send random teleport requests, hoping that someone like you will accept and follow them into a trap. On the other hand, if you allow the random player to teleport to you, they could arrive with dangerous potions, diamond gear, and very quickly slaughter you and destroy your base. Even if you think you can beat them, the odds are always against you. Your Protection IV diamond armor and Sharpness V diamond sword are useless if the other player is waiting to punch you off a 200-block tall pillar, or has two Splash Potions of Harming II ready. However, your water bucket, milk bucket or totem of undying can save you.

Do not step on a pressure plate

You will never know what the pressure plate will trigger! It could trigger a trap with a hole filled with lava and you will lose all the items in your inventory, since we all know lava destroys items. Worse, it could trigger a trap with a player on the bottom of a really deep hole, and when you die because of the fall damage, the player will steal all your valuable items. To foolproof this, get rid of the pressure plate and dig the ground below it, while standing at a safe distance, as it might trigger a trap, but it won't always happen. Also, if the pressure plate is wooden you can try shooting it with a bow and arrow, as this will activate the pressure plate, which is not always a good idea as a TNT trap can really mess you up. *BOOM*

Do not destroy tripwires without shears

It will be part of a player trap tripwire circuit. Destroying tripwire without shears will trigger it for half of a second. It will damage your shears by one use, but it is worth it! (Think: would you rather lose just 1 use of your shears, or would you punch it without your shears and risk triggering the traps?)

Stay away from any body of water in a PvP survival mode server

We all know that your movement is hampered in water, such as lakes, rivers, and especially oceans and deep oceans. Other players will knock you further into the water, and you cannot get out. So it is extremely advisable to stay away from bodies of water.

Do not to be too late to join a PvP survival mode server

If you know the server has newly been made, you can prepare yourself before the rest grief the spawn point or kill new players. Now there might be custom set spawn radius (in 1.9) or spawn protection, however, this will not protect you from being killed for fun once you step out of the area.

Wasted Resources

Do not enable keepInventory on hardcore Multiplayer

This was proven by a player. Basically, if you die, then you drop your items and respawn. However, in hardcore mode, once you die, it is Game Over. If you kept your inventory, then it actually consumes your items rather than saving them(the items self-destruct). Worst of all, in Multiplayer, if you die with the keepInventory, then your friends cannot retrieve the items you lost and when they can't give them back to you. So don't always use cheats to get you through! But if there are many enemies, you may want to enable this so they can't steal your items.

Other

Don't move beds without telling fellow server members

Beds can be helpful but tricky. Helpful by letting you sleep peacefully through the night with no disturbance. But, they can also kill you. If you pick them up, your spawn is back to where you entered the game. Remember, they are used to set your spawn in case you die.

Don't live near the spawn on a public server

When playing on a public multiplayer server, building your base away from the spawn in a hidden area is a good idea. It is easy for a newcomer to come in and see your house and just grief it or come into your house, kill you and take your items. To further reduce your chances of getting griefed, you can build your base underground or underwater, especially if you are playing on a server on which griefing is allowed.

This information might not be relevant on servers which have plugins or mods to let players protect their land.

Don't let miners accidentally find your base

So you have a hidden piston door in a cliff with lots of diamonds. All it takes is a miner to dig into your base. Once they did it, they will grief it. No matter who or what he is, the miner will always turn evil and kill you and steal your loot,That means your base is ruined. Just by a miner! It is important to surround your base with lava to kill people, but that means it would kill you if you are extending your base. So do not forget about the lava! (if available, you can claim the mine to protect it, too, and its way safer than lava)

Never trust any stranger if you enable cheats to them!

You just learned from the time the miner dug into your hidden base full of diamonds. You surrounded it with lava and obsidian, and some stranger says they want to team. Don't trust them! Put them on another team! The chances are far too much that they would like to steal your diamonds and grief your base. They are most likely nice in real life, but they are most likely bad guys in Minecraft. Even if they've been on the server a while, maybe you still shouldn't trust them...anyone could be evil.

Possible ban

Don't hack into the servers console

Hacking into a server's console is very illegal. Chances are, a moderator will send your IP address to the police and may even arrest you, as it is also against the government laws. In some countries, the account can also be blocked and even deleted! Even if it's not illegal, lots of players will hate you.

Don't use X-ray mods

Administrators and other players do not appreciate the use of X-ray mods or resource packs on their servers, as it gives you an unfair advantage and most likely will lead to punishment and ultimately being banned from the server! It is never a good thing to X-ray, no matter how far away you think admins are, because you never know that an admin might be spying on you and ban you!

Exception: If you are building a tunnel network underground with other players and have permission from the server owner or admin. In this case, make sure to turn any X-ray mods or resource packs off when you're done with them.

Don't build houses out of bedrock

Speaking of bedrock, don't build your base out of this (or at least, in Multiplayer anyway). Administrators and other players hate bases that are built out of bedrock due to the ugliness of it. If you are building a house out of bedrock, then players that see your base will likely find your base ugly. You may also be banned for using bedrock on a SMP server, as the only way to obtain it is to go into creative, use console commands, spawn in command blocks or hack it in.

Exception: You are allowed to build such houses without breaking the server rules if you are the server owner.

Don't go past the edge of the world

See also: Far Lands

Don't do this, as you may be kicked from the game and sometimes not by another player. Please note that it happens at X/Z 32,000,000. If you do get kicked, then it is worse than being stuck at X/Z 30,000,032 since you are kicked from the game and external programs such as MCEdit cannot solve it. It is impossible to go over X/Z 32,000,000 without a use of a disable kick command mods. These kick messages will be displayed when a player is kicked.

“

Disconnected by server. You are kicked by: Null.

„

“

You are kicked from this server! Reason: Went to illegal point.

„

Note: In MCEdit, the selection box distorts after 12,500,000.

Exception: Since 1.7, there is an invisible wall blocking past the edge of the world, and /tp doesn't work beyond X/Z 30,000,000, which means you're safe!

Technical

Possible Death

Never travel near the edge of the world

As of 1.8, there's a world border, which prevents you from falling into fake chunks. However, the excessive effects players experienced in the past still remain. Huge Lag spikes may occur, painting and various textures become distorted, thus hindering your chance of survival. Not only that, the lava textures could become lopsided and thus could kill your without knowing, because the lava becomes unnoticeable particles. Worse of all, if someone moves the world border, then if you're near the edge, then you cannot escape quickly. If you place down item frames, then it will block your vision and can hinder your chance of survival. Sometimes, TNT can become an entity at another location and could ruin everything.

Possible crash

Never ever create a house on a superflat of snow alone

If you try to build a house on snow alone, watch out. You will crash the game. Although you can still build your house there, be careful. Chances are, you will place the block on snow and you will crash the game, if your computer is extremely laggy. And snow is very weak. Creeper explosions will mess your snow house, and other players will get in your home VERY easily and steal your items.

Don't try to teleport carelessly on a laggy computer

Don't do this as you might crash or freeze the game, or worse, make it extremely laggy. If it is, then it is impossible to move the mouse cursor outside of Minecraft window because the cursor will be stuck. That means it is impossible to close Minecraft without task manager.(Something similar to Force Quit, which works every time)

Don't trigger lots of TNT on a laggy computer

If you do this, you will crash the game if your computer is extremely laggy also, it will crash 2 times or more if you're careless. And you have to open the Task Manager or Alt+f4 to close the window. So even if this seems fun, next time, don't do this again.

Don't make a superflat world with a layer of TNT

Once a single TNT block of TNT explodes and causes a chain reaction to other TNT blocks, the world may possibly lag and crash the game. (except for a case wherein there is a huge (about 12 blocks or more) layer of air below the TNT layer.)

Don't enchant a sword with a very high level Looting enchantment

Looting increases the amount of items that mobs drop and increases the chance of rare drops. If you use commands you can get a sword with a very high level looting enchantment like Looting IX (9), but don't use it to kill many mobs at the same time. It will drop so many items that the game will become extremely laggy. The game may also crash as it probably won't be able to handle so many entities simultaneously.

Don't play carelessly with dispensers

If you place a lot of dispensers and you activate them, then a lot of items will come out. The game will get laggy, and if it goes longer then Minecraft will not able to hold that much items and will crash or freeze. Then you have to open the task manager to close it. On Multiplayer you could get kicked.

Last things

Always carry a pickaxe and a sword

If you are going to venture far away from your house, always carry wood, a stack or two of stone or dirt, a pickaxe, and a sword.

Make sure that you have enough food

If you run out of food, you must either locate more, or risk starving (possibly to your death).