Minecraft – The Best Tips For Beginners
The classic Minecraft has been experiencing a renaissance for several months now. However, the game has become so complex that the survival mode can be a bit intimidating for beginners. But don’t worry, with our tips you can build a magnificent mansion in no time.
Last year we gave you some general Minecraft tips for the Switch version of the game. These included gameplay, texture packs and the different biomes. This time, we’ll focus on getting you started in survival mode, so that the first few hours aren’t too frustrating.
The Entry Point in Survival Mode
First of all you should know a few things about the spawn point of your character: You start your Minecraft adventure in a newly generated world, at a point within a few hundred blocks of the center, at coordinate 0;0. If you press the F3 key, a lot of information will appear in the top left corner of the screen. Approximately in the middle of the information field you will see the information about “XYZ”, i.e. the three axes that indicate your exact position in the game. The middle indication (Y) is perhaps not so important for the initial orientation – it shows the position in the vertical. If you get lost and don’t know where your base is located, you should try to return to coordinate 0;0 and search for your base from there.
By the way, if you have picked up a compass later in the game, the needle of the compass will always point to this central spawn point. So it might be advisable to build the first dwelling not far from there. If you haven’t built a bed in the game, you will also return to the original spawn point when you die. To be fair, the game makes sure that the point is (more or less) safe, so that you don’t die right away. We recommend that you set up your first base not too far from the 0;0 coordinate on the one hand and on the other hand, if possible, by the water. A small lake is already sufficient to allow your grain to thrive, for example.
Recommended: A dedicated Minecraft Server
We recommend setting up your own Minecraft server. The main advantage is, of course, that you will have full control over who can log onto the server. Such a server could of course be installed on the children’s PC or on the NAS. But much more obvious is a small Raspberry Pi that acts as a pure Minecraft server. It runs completely self-sufficiently in the local network and cannot interfere with the other devices. Moreover, it can even be shared over the firewall without hesitation, so that the children’s friends can also log in from outside.
A good alternative would be to take a Minecraft VPS from a hoster that offers special Minecraft server hosting packages. Everything will be set up and pre-installed correctly, so you can start playing right away with optimal server performance.
Necessary first Steps in the Game
Minecraft has a day-night cycle. While there are many ways to die during the day (the heart indicator shows your life energy), the night is even more dangerous. Zombies, exploding creepers, skeletons with bows and arrows, spiders, and (when sleep deprived) flying phantoms make darkness a real gauntlet for unprotected newcomers. Therefore it is important at the beginning not to lose too much time and to start collecting resources.
In the first step you collect wood by removing the blocks from trees with your bare hands (left mouse button). Then press “E” to open your inventory. Here you can craft basic items and also see your character’s clothing/armour and other equipment. The really good things, however, are made using a workbench. It is very easy to make: Drag the wooden blocks into the 2×2 crafting field.
To the right of it you will see the symbol for the wooden boards. Drag some of them into your inventory – if you put items in the bottom row, you can select and use them (you can scroll or switch between the items with the mouse wheel). The right mouse button is the action button, the left mouse button is primarily used to remove/cut. If you fill all four crafting fields with wooden boards – whether oak, birch or any other type of wood – the workbench appears on the right. Drag it to the selection bar and place it anywhere you want with the left mouse button. Maybe where you want to build your first hut.
If you collect your first resources, explore the area and forget about time, twilight usually comes faster than expected. As a beginner, it is best to get through the night in a bed in a safe place. Around your original spawn point, there is usually a village from which you will probably also steal one or two resources. Find a hut with a bed and lie down in it (right mouse button).
Important Items for Survival
By the way, you can also simply remove the strange bed, collect it and set it up at any point – probably your first little hut. By the way, if you take beds and raw materials from the village, partially dismantle the huts and steal the vegetables from the beds, the village will almost certainly become orphaned quickly. Your first minecraft house will probably be made of wood or simple quarry stone. To collect rubble and avoid having to remove everything with your hands, you should grab a pickaxe from the workbench as soon as possible. The simplest version is made of wood only. Craft sticks first – this can be done in the inventory as well as at the workbench by arranging two sticks under each other.
Then simply place three wooden planks in the upper row and in the two lower fields of the middle vertical. If you have removed some rubble stone in the ground or on stone houses, you can craft a better pickaxe by filling the upper three crafting fields with rubble stone. The iron pickaxe is much better, but save it, because you need it to mine gold and diamonds. A gold pickaxe is very effective, but breaks quickly, and the diamond pickaxe is unsurpassed. Select the book icon on the workbench to see the recipes for new items. Other important items in Minecraft include the sword, a simple door for your hut, torches to light up caves and living quarters, and a stove to create other materials and items.
You craft a stove by filling all but the middle square with quarry stone. Once it is placed, you will also need fuel. The best thing to do is to create a charcoal stock. Glass bricks, which serve as simple windows, are made by melting sand (which can be found in the desert, especially near water) with the charcoal in the oven. You can also make your meat edible by leaving it in the oven for a while. The food will quickly fill your inventory, so it’s best to store it in a chest. You can either carry chests around the village or make one yourself by filling all the crafting fields of the workbench with wooden boards. If you place two chests next to each other, they will automatically become one long chest. We recommend that you always keep things tidy and store the items in different chests, sorted by category, so that you always find what you need quickly. More tips like that can be found here.
Satisfy your Hunger in Minecraft – Your first Wheat Harvest
When your life energy is running low, there is only one way to regenerate quickly: replenishing the food gauge. This refers to the ten meatballs on the bottom right, which represent 20 food points. Half a leg stands for one food point. Minecraft is full of food: meat and milk from animals, all kinds of vegetables, and now even bee honey, which you can generate yourself with beehives in your base. Growing fruits, vegetables, and grains is perhaps the most important and controllable food source. To cultivate your land, first create some conditions:
First, organize some seeds – you will surely find wheat in the village, which is the basis for bread production. When you harvest it, you will also get your hands on the valuable wheat seeds. Now you look for a nice free area of land, which is situated at the water. Alternatively, you can simply make water ditches (best done with a shovel) so that the soil is moist and fertile.
Now you have to pick a pickaxe at the workbench. For the beginning a simple hoe made of wood or stone is absolutely sufficient. To do this, pack one unit of the material you want the hoe to be made of into the first two fields in the top row. In addition to wooden boards and quarry stone, iron, gold and diamonds are also possible later on. In the lower two fields of the middle vertical row, place one stick each for the shaft of the hoe. If you hold the hoe in your hand, you can turn the ground into arable land field by field with the right mouse button. If the soil is moist enough, the field should become considerably darker after a short time.
Immediately after you have planted the field, take the seeds in your hand and plant them into the soil with the right mouse button. It takes a while until the wheat has reached its full size and is golden yellow. Then you can harvest it, even with your bare hand. But don’t forget to replant the seeds directly. If the growing process takes too long, there is a trick to speed it up. But as a beginner, you probably won’t like it: You have to kill skeletons and collect their bones. If you process them into bone meal and spread it generously over the bed, the harvest will be ready in no time. You can also use the bones to turn a wolf into a loyal dog companion.
How you become a cattle breeder
Most farm animals and pets are suitable for breeding. We recommend using sheep and cows as the first farm animals. Make a supply of simple fence elements from sticks and wooden boards and use them to mark out an area of grass-covered pasture. You will also need a fence. More practical than the gate is a piece of carpet on the fence, which allows you access without the animals escaping. However, you will need wool – and for that you need sheep first of all. Like cows, they can be lured to your base quite easily if you hold a bundle of wheat in your hand. If two animals are trapped in the enclosure, apply wheat to them to make them multiply.
The sheep will give you mutton and the wool mentioned above, which will later be an important material for you. You can also get it by slaughtering the sheep, but it is more effective to use scissors, which are made of two iron bars. You catch the milk of the cows with a bucket. They also provide you with beef and leather after slaughter. Leather is also an important material. The simplest type of armour and books, for example, are (partly) made of it.
How you get on in Minecraft
If you have a safe place to stay, the most important tools and enough food, you can devote yourself to other things, such as finding diamonds, building a nether portal or searching for the end dragon. Survive raids, explore biomes such as jungles and icy snowy landscapes, build a rail network and enormous structures that can be seen from far away. Keep parrots, foxes, dog cats and even polar bears or skeleton horses as pets. If you are a technophile, the world of Redstone mechanics awaits you. You should discover all this on your own.