Minecraft Tutorial - Day 1 (v0.1)

Your first few times playing Minecraft can be confusing, stressful, heart-wrenching, and unbelievably enjoyable. Seeing as there are no in-game instructions, I have created this bare-bones tutorial to guide you through the first day. This tutorial assumes you have a basic understanding of the gameplay mechanics. If not, make sure to check out my Getting Around tutorial.

Day 1 Goals:

• Gather Resources
• Craft Tools
• Build a Safe Shelter
• Craft Torches

Those are the 4 main goals you should have for your first day. No need to make it more complicated than necessary. With a little practice, you can have all 4 goals completed by the time the sun reaches its apex. While starting out, if you spawn without any trees in view, it's ok to start a new world to make sure you have wood.

Gather Resources
The first thing you need to do is gather wood. Look around, find a tree, and punch it down. Don't worry about punching the leaves, they will decompose once you finish off the trunk. You can spend a couple minutes gathering wood this way, but you don't want to get carried away. 10 logs is plenty to start off.



Craft Tools

Before you can make any tools, you need to make wooden planks, sticks, and a crafting table. Every log will give you 4 wooden planks, and each 2 wooden planks will give 4 sticks. Turn all your logs into planks, and make 12 sticks. Lastly, make a crafting table as shown.

Place the crafting table on the ground and open it up. Now you have a large space to make more complicated items. Make one of each of a wooden pick, axe, and shovel as shown:

Once you are finished making your tools, equip them to your hotbar. I recommend you use your axe to chop up your crafting table so you can take it with you.


Build a Safe Shelter
There are two basic starting structures you can make for your first night. The first, easiest, and quickest method is to tunnel into a cliff. Dig out a section 3 blocks wide, 2 blocks high, and 2 blocks deep. Now, on the right side of this tunnel, dig out a section 1 block wide, 2 blocks high, and 4 blocks deep. Then, expand the back area into a 3x3 room. You will have a cave that looks like this from the top:

The wall will provide protection from skeleton's arrows during the night. The last step will be to fill in the entrance as shown in these screenshots. The middle block on the top layer is important to keep spiders from climbing into your cave, but allows you to have 2 windows to look out. To get in and out, until you make your first door, just dig one block of dirt to create an opening, and put it back to seal your cave again.

Make Torches

If you found coal, great! Place coal above sticks in your crafting window to make torches. If you didn't find any coal, you will have to make it yourself. First, you will have to make a furnace. Fill your 3x3 crafting window with stone, except for the center slot. Place your furnace on the ground and open it. In the top left slot place a log, and below it a wooden plank . The bottom plank will burn, fueling the furnace, and turning the top log into charcoal.