This tutorial will teach you the basics of surviving in the first ten minutes of playing the game. Note that this guide does not go into much detail about the definitions or functions of blocks and items.
Dawn
Once you spawn in the world and look around, you'll notice many different landscapes all the way around you. Your goal is to gather all the resources you need before nighttime comes and monsters can spawn.
Minute Zero
0:00 - 0:15
It is best to create a temporary landmark to indicate your spawn location before you move at all. This might help you in the future, so mark it in whichever way you can. If you spawn on land, the easiest way is to dig the blocks adjacent to the block you are standing on and then place them one top of the other to form a pillar below your feet. See pillar jumping for more detail. Next, look around, take note of your surroundings. See if there are any trees around you. With versions earlier than 1.3, you will spawn exactly on that marker if you die, but in later versions, there is a spawn chunk region and you will spawn anywhere within that region. This region has special importance in the game and you want to lay down enough markings to be able to identify it later. (Pro tip for direction finding: you're always facing north at the start of the game.) Pressing F3 to open the debug screen will also tell you your facing, "f".
0:20-1:00
Walk towards trees. If you do not see any trees, pick a random direction and walk. If you are on an island, surrounded by water, swim towards land by holding space. Throughout the first day, it's recommended to hit any tall grass you come across as wheat seeds are going to come in handy later on. If you're in a jungle, keep an eye open for a big green melon and punch it if you see one. In addition, take note of food sources such as animals, as well as small caves (shelter), as they will be useful later on. If you've spawned in a plains, desert, or taiga biome, you may come across a village. Villages house villagers that can be used for trading with later on and they may contain basic food supplies such as seeds, carrots, potatoes and beetroots, as well as a blacksmith building that contains a chest with chest loot.
Minute One
1:00-2:00
If you still do not see trees, then start collecting sand (as much as you can get) for 20 seconds, then move on. If you are still swimming, keep at it. If you do see a tree, cut it down by holding down destroy and collect all of the wood. You do not need to cut the leaves, as they will decay automatically, but do collect the saplings and apples that drop from the leaves, if there are any.
Keep your eyes and ears open for animals such as chickens, cows, sheep, pigs, and especially wolves, which can be domesticated at a later point in time. You don't want to punch them by accident. If you do, wolves will become hostile. You will need to find some animals in a couple minutes. Take note if there isn't any water in sight.
Achievements:[Bedrock and Legacy Console editions only]
Getting Wood (Attack a tree until a block of wood pops out)
Minute Two
2:00-2:10
The next to step is to make a crafting table. To do this, you will first need to open your inventory by pressing E. Put one piece of wood anywhere in the 2x2 crafting slot you'll see near the top of your inventory. In the output box to the right of that, you will see 4 wood planks. Take the wood planks, and put 1 in each slot of the crafting area. The output should now be a crafting table. Template:Grid/Inventory Table Template:Grid/Inventory Table Put the crafting table anywhere in your hotbar (the 9 slots at the bottom of your inventory), and place it down with a right-click, and right-click again to open it.
2:10-3:00
Make a wooden pickaxe. First, you will need to make sticks. (1 log = 4 planks = 8 sticks) Template:Grid/Crafting Table Template:Grid/Crafting Table
Advancements:[Java Edition only]
Minecraft (Get a crafting table in your inventory)
Achievements:[Bedrock and Legacy Console editions only]
Taking Inventory (Press 'E' to open your inventory) Benchmaking (Pick up a crafting table from your inventory's crafting field output or a crafting table output) Time to Mine! (Use planks and sticks to make a pickaxe)
Minute Three
3:00-4:00
Dig down or into hills using your fist on the dirt, and then use the pickaxe to gather at least 19 blocks of stone, which will drop as cobblestone when mined. This hole can be your shelter if you want, so pick a suitable place. Remember to never mine straight down. Once you have your cobblestone, you can also look for a cave opening. These are quite easy to find, occurring in every biome, and they contain ores, which are necessary in Survival. However, do not venture far into one this early in the game. If you see a monster in one, retreat right away, as you currently don't have any weapons or armor.
With your cobblestone, make a stone axe, a stone pickaxe, and a stone sword. You may have to convert more wood into sticks. Template:Grid/Crafting Table
Template:Grid/Crafting Table
Template:Grid/Crafting Table
It never hurts to get more wood, so try to have at least 10 logs for the night. It's okay if you don't get enough. You can collect more in the morning.
Chop up your crafting table, collect it, and remember your spawn point. (If you have the Rei's Minimap mod, put a spawnpoint where you spawn by pressing "C" then typing "Spawn")
Advancements:[Java Edition only]
Stone Age (Get cobblestone into your inventory) Getting an Upgrade (Get a stone pickaxe into your inventory)
Achievements:[Bedrock and Legacy Console editions only]
Getting an Upgrade (Pick up a pickaxe from a crafting table output that is not a wooden pickaxe) Time to Strike (Pick up any type of sword from a crafting table output)
Minute Four
4:00-5:00
Now that you have your sword, start killing animals with it, and then collecting all their drops. Collect at least three pieces of meat, exactly six is best. Go after sheep if they're available because they drop wool, which is needed for your bed, and mutton for food. If you see a horse then do not kill it! Leave it alone for now - it won't drop anything useful, and taming it is pointless until you find a saddle. So don't waste your time if you are behind. Don't bother attacking wolves, as they don't have any item drops, are rather dangerous if you attack when starting out, and can be tamed into dogs using bones dropped by skeletons that will protect you. If you are lucky enough to run into cats, then don't kill them either, or even scare them away, as they can scare away creepers and can also be tamed with raw fish. Also, always make sure to leave at least 2 of every animal, so that you can breed them for later.
Try to find coal and a place for your first shelter. Hillsides are best for both. If you do not see coal, collect at least sixteen more logs (craft an axe if you skipped that earlier.) Your shelter site must be within 100 blocks of water.
Advancements:[Java Edition only]
Adventure (Kill any entity, or be killed by any entity)
Midday
Minute Five
5:00-6:00
Walk around, looking for an ideal place for your shelter. If you see sheep, kill 3 of them to gather 3 blocks of wool. If you want to have an easier time later on by breeding sheep, don't kill sheep unless there are 5 or more around or if you still need food (Sheep drop mutton). (It is still advised to kill sheep whenever you find them until you have three blocks of the same color of wool to make a bed.)
Minute Six
6:00-7:00
Clear the area for your new shelter. You can make an easy shelter by digging into a hill or digging steps downwards into the ground (called a "dugout" or "hideyhole".) Don't get fancy if there isn't any water (or land), animals, or trees in sight because you won't be using it for more than one night (An especially desperate shelter is a 3×1 hole in the ground with one block covering the top.) If you find a village you could stay in one of its houses. Be careful if you're on easy to hard difficulty, as you may have to deal with zombies.
Minute Seven & Eight
7:00-8:00
Build your basic shelter (worry about size and looks later, focus on functionality). For now, build it with dirt, wooden planks, or sandstone (if you spawned in a desert biome and collected sand during Minute One).
Template:Grid/Inventory Table
After shelter, your highest priority on Day 1 is a source of light. With light, you can work usefully during your first night. Without light, you will huddle in the dark, worrying about strange noises!
If you found and mined coal, craft some torches to light up your shelter. Template:Grid/Inventory Table
If you did not have coal, make some charcoal. This is a higher priority than food, as you shouldn't get too hungry until later in the game. However, you should avoid excess sprinting and jumping.
Deploy your Crafting Table and make a furnace. Template:Grid/Crafting Table
If you didn't see coal, make your first charcoal by cooking a log in a furnace. Template:Grid/Furnace
Use this charcoal to cook up to 8 more logs. You can keep using this method to get charcoal until you find coal ore. The charcoal will be used to make torches in the absence of coal (see the earlier torch recipe.) On advanced survival maps, such as Skyblock, you will never find coal (because you spawn on an island well above the altitude coal ore spawns), so charcoal is required for maps like Skyblock. Template:Grid/Furnace
Make some torches as per the preceding section. Once you have a source of light, you can stop worrying about the impending darkness and do other tasks all night long.
Earlier, you hopefully collected some meat by killing animals - "...at least three pieces of meat, exactly six is best." Now, it's time to cook it in a Furnace with some planks: Template:Grid/Furnace
If you spotted coal earlier. go and mine it while waiting for the meat to cook.
A furnace batch always takes ten seconds to complete. Coal and charcoal last 80 seconds, and so do 8 batches. Planks last 15 seconds, so two can do three batches. This is consistent for all furnace recipes, even ones late in the game. Template:Grid/Furnace
See Smelting for the details.
If you have additional wood, make a wooden door. Zombies have the ability to break doors on hard mode, but if you are a beginner, you shouldn't be playing on hard mode anyway. Please keep this in mind when building your entrance/exit to your shelter, and to place the door go outside and place it to outer side of the block of your entrance to your shelter.
Template:Grid/Crafting Table
If you are out of wood, just place a couple of dirt blocks in the doorway until morning. You can make a door tomorrow.
Advancements:[Java Edition only]
Possibly Husbandry (Eat anything that can be eaten)
Achievements:[Bedrock and Legacy Console editions only]
Hot Topic (Pick a furnace out of a crafting table output) Possibly Renewable Energy (Smelt wood trunks using charcoal to make more charcoal)
Minute Nine
9:00-10:00
Get ready for the night and craft a bed if you gathered wool. You will have to get three wool blocks of the same color. Template:Grid/Crafting Table
While you have this extra time, it would be a good idea to craft a chest to store unwanted and unnecessary items to carry around at all times such as seeds, eggs, leather, and extra food (meat).
Template:Grid/Crafting Table
Minute Ten
10:00
Go to bed. If you have not gathered enough wool for a bed or do not want to use one, first check to see if your base is secure (is lit, has all four walls, and has a roof. It is not recommended to add decorations to your house on the first day).
If you don't have enough wool then what you need to do is start to make a mine. From mines you can get lots of useful items such as iron, coal, redstone, gold, lapis lazuli, diamond, and emerald. Never dig straight down, as it is very dangerous. You could fall into a mob-filled cave or into lava. Mines are also a good way to find caves.
If you don't have enough coal to make many torches for the mine you can organize your items and house to make finding and moving easier. Also, if you managed to gather some leather (at least 4 pieces) by killing cows, you might craft some leather armor. It's weak, but better than nothing.
Advancements:[Java Edition only]
Sweet Dreams (Lie down in a bed)
Dusk
If you decide to start making a mine, there are many methods to dig for resources. While a safe method would be simply to dig a large room, lighting it up as you dig while looking for ores, a more profitable (and risky) decision would be to look for a cave and start spelunking. If you decide to find and explore caves, a sword, food, enough wood (20 to 30 logs) and a light source (presumably torches) are absolute necessities. If you come across any ore other than coal, get a stone pickaxe before you mine it, as using an inferior pickaxe will not only take longer to mine it, it will break the ore without dropping the resource. You will need ladders and a crafting bench just in case you find a good cave and decide to stay underground for long. If you run short on food, you can survive on rotten flesh dropped by zombies, but it is not as nutritious and can poison you with hunger for 30 seconds. If you are living on rotten flesh, it is best to wait until the hunger bar is low and then eat multiple rotten flesh in quick succession, because the hunger penalty doesn't stack up per. Be prepared for hostile mobs, as it is a common but fatal mistake for starters to think that the moon spawns hostile mobs, and not simply darkness. If you come back with enough iron, you will be able to experience many more features of Minecraft, mainly redstone, pistons, diamond, and much more. You have started on your path to your success in Minecraft, whether you found iron or not.
Other options
One good idea is to chop extra wood and burn it for charcoal. With practice, you can start a new game and as long as you are near trees when you spawn, you should be able to make basic tools, a furnace and have enough wood for torches before midday (5:00).
Often people would rather use up wooden tools before switching to their newly made stone tools, but the stone tools really are better — if you don't want to "waste" the wooden tools, you can use them as fuel to smelt single items.
If possible, and if you can spot a position where you would like to build your house when you spawn, try to gather the resources from nearby, and only dig where you would otherwise dig to construct your house to save time later. Replant all saplings (which have a chance of falling when tree leaves are mined) as soon as they fall if this is the case so that you have less distance to walk later.
If you're more adventurous, find an ocean. As soon as you have a lot of wood blocks, build the crafting table and wooden axe as above, then build 3 or 4 boats and go sailing. Spend nights at sea while perusing the coastline for a nice place to make your base. Once you do, put ashore at dawn and proceed with the guidelines above.
Crafting
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Matching Wood Planks | [Java and Legacy Console editions only] | |
| Matching Wood Planks + Wooden Shovel |
Shovel represents an oar. [Bedrock Edition only] |
Video
- Note: This video is outdated, as since 1.12, achievements have been replaced with advancements. However, the basic survival concepts are still the same.
Video Credit - PaulSoaresJr