Minecraft beginners guide

Minecraft, the start.

So who's the maker of this guide?

My name is Suzie and i'm a 16 year old dane. I have played Minecraft for almost a year and i'm a huge fan of the Yogscast and metal music. I play World of Warcraft, The Witcher 2, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 and Minecraft for the most. I decided to make this guide because i had a hard time learning how to play minecraft, that's why i have made a ”Errorlist!”. This is my first guide, and the first thing i ever write in english, longer than two pages. So if you have a question about anything, you can send me an e-mail. My e-mail adress is rensdyretfilur@hotmail.com. Write ”Minecraft question!” in the subjectline if you want an answer.

What is this?

This is a beginners guide to Minecraft in singleplayermode in peaceful.

What do i need to play Minecraft?

You need a computer, a keyboard and a mouse (You'll have a hard time with a touchpad). For the mouse i would recommend a mousewheel to scroll between items in the start. An important thing is a good creativity and imagination, without these you'll ever get good at Minecraft.

What is Minecraft?

Minecraft is a survival game and a game for the person who loves to entertain self. There is no purpose of playing Minecraft if you expect entertainment made by the game. The fights with the mobs is no big deal, the mining is not very funny and it takes a shitload of time.

But why do i say all these negative stuff?

Only to assure that you wont wait for ”the funny part” comming by itself.

But what is ”the funny part”?

Its individual what you think of as the funny part. I myself think its making defensesystems against mobs. Other reasons could be: Building, look at the stuff you have built and for some (some i dont understand), think its funny to fight with the mobs. There's a lot more reasons to play Minecraft, but again, these reasons are entirely individual.

The reason to play and what to do first

The only way to find your reason to play Minecraft is to actually play the game. In the start Minecraft is no big deal, and it seems hard just in easy. You will die alot of times falling off cliffs, maybe burn in lavapools or drown in the sea. Its recomendable to start playing in peaceful, just so that we dont have to add getting killed by: Skeletons, spiders, skeletons sitting on spiders, creepers, zombies and slimes.

Another important reminder

If you have some freinds talking about their great Minecraft-projects, don't get sad about your level of skill in Minecraft for now. You will quickly learn how to do a lot of things. They cant do anything now that you cant learn too. Just use the time nessecarily to learn how to play this game.

The start

You can do this guide and almost be sure to not die. I will put a few pictures in here to show how i have done.
The first step is to create a new world. You'll be asked for a name for your world. You just gives it a name. Then you'll be asked for a seed. If you wish to use my favoriteseed you write ”Narax”, but all seeds can be used. You click the button ”create world”. You start at a place. This place is your spawnpoint until you sleep somewhere else. Something funny about Minecraft is that you dont have to sleep. In peaceful you dont have any reason to sleep except for that it can be a bit annoying to work in the dark.

A few controls

To walk you use W, A, S and D and your mouse. I cant really guide you to get good to use these controls, other than to recommend using it. To change which item to have in your hand you can either use the numbers or/and a mousewheel. Press Q to drop the item in your hand. I to look at your inventory. Note for now that your inventory and a chest is two different things. If your game laggs after the first 5 minutes when you load your map, then it might be useful to set the fog-distance a bit, press F to do that.

First nessecarily thing: Wood

The first thing is to hit a tree. Its not the leaves you have to hit, just the tree. To hit the tree you go in range of the tree and holds the left mousebutton while pointing the cross in the middle of the screen at the tree. When the leaves dissapear by themselves you will get saplings, which is used to plant new trees. Do this until you atleast have 5 wood.

  A tree.

 A sapling.

What to do with the wood?

You open your inventory (pressing I). You leftclick at the wood and places it at the four squares. When you do this the outcome is wooden planks. You leftclick at the wooden planks until theres no more wood to make them from.

What magic! A Crafting Table! A what!?

You now place a wooden plank in every square in the 2x2 grid where you had the wood before. To only place one item from a stack you rightclick when placing the items. If you rightclick when picking up a stack from your inventory you'll pick up the half.

RECIPE: A Crafting Table

You take the Crafting Table and places it at the bottom squares in your inventory. The bottom squares is for the things you want to use with your hands. You press I to quit the inventory. You now have a Crafting Table in your hands.


( If you dont have a Crafting Table in your hands: try to scroll with your mousewheel or press the numbers until you have the Crafting Table in your hand).

Place the Crafting Table at the ground by leftclicking at the ground.

You use a Crafting Table to craft items, with other items.

To enter the Crafting Table you rightclick the Crafting Table.

What you see now is a 3x3 grid and your inventory.
When i show a crafting recipe from now on, it will just be the Crafting Table's 3x3 grid.
The first thing to do with a Crafting Table is to make tools. Right now you only posses wood, and therefore you can only make wooden tools. A detail is that you need wood to make all tools, in the form of sticks. The materials you can use is Wooden Planks, stone, iron, gold and diamond.

RECIPE: Sticks

RECIPE: A pickaxe

Oh well, now you have made the first tool! Place it at the bottom squares in your inventory, and and quit the Crafting Table. Please wait to make the shovel.

RECIPE: A shovel

How to find stone

For the most part, you wont be in a world with stone everywhere at the surface. If you cant see any stone nearby, dig the soil away. If you want to do this quick, make a shovel now, but in a moment you you will be able make a significant better one anyways.
I suppose you stand at either dirt with grass on, gravel or sand. It might be that there's snow making the top of the blocks white. If you stand on gravel, or something else which is not mentioned right now, dont dig it right now.
If you chose to make a shovel, equip it in your hand now. If not, scroll to an empty slot. Hold the left mousebutton down and point at the ground and see the blocks dissapear.

Oh so this is stone?

The grey blocks you can see at the picture above is stone. You cant dig them as dirt, for that you need the pickaxe you made earlier. Or actually you can dig them with your hands too, you just wont get the cobberstone, but you can remove the stoneblocks using your hands and a shitload of time. The pickaxe only have a good use for stone, coalore and ironore.
So, now you use your pickaxe to dig the stone. For now about 15-20 cobberstone would do the trick. I have made a 2x2x2 cobberstone cube at the picture below, so that you can see what cobberstone look like.

A world basic: Jumping

You can jump, but only one blocks height. So note when you dig to maybe do some kind of fake stair, so that you'll be able to get up from the hole easy again. You decide youself hoe big you want to dig the hole.MY RECIPE: A fake stair

My stair here isnt a real Minecraft-stair. I will tell you the recipe for that later in the ”Design in Minecraft? What nonsense!”.

You shouldnt waste cobberstone doing a 2x2x2 cube or to mention toiling your pickaxe for removing the thing again.

Now i got this wierd stone, but for what use?

First of all cobberstone a good building material. I think it's better than wood planks because it cant burn. In this guide i will make you build with dirt and cobberstone. I use cobberstone for my pickaxes because its relatively easy to get, because it dont get toiled as quick as wood and because a stone pickaxe is quicker than wood. In my own maps i usually make a iron pickaxe to run around with when mining if i get lucky and find redstone, gold or lapiz lazuli. But you dont have any iron yet and you feel like the stone tools is quick compared to the wooden ones, for now that is.
Make a new pickaxe now, and just use cobberstone instead of wooden planks.

A house would be nice, wouldnt it?

In fact you are homeless right now. You are digging a hole. Isnt that a sucky life? I think so. Lets build a house!


So here comes a little challenge!

1. Dig two stacks of cobberstone.
   
2. Find an area which is pretty flat. Its flat if there's trees too (those you just hit and get wood).
   

3. Place the cobberstone as i have done in the first picture below picture. 
4. While standing on the cobberstones make this thing taller, as the second picture below.
   
5. When you have made it 3 blocks tall make a ”roof”. Keep in mind that you need to make a two block high entrance to your house.
   
6. In fact you have a house now. A house is basicly four walls and a roof. But, int the most houses there is a door too.
   

A house base

Making the house.

The roof

The house entrance

RECIPE: A door

Place the door in your house while standing outside the house pointing at the ground in the two block entrance in the house and rightclick. The result should be like this:

A little afraid of the dark?

So, i really hate when it gets dark... Right now we just want to keep it relatively simple. We just light up the place with torches. Torches is made out of sticks and coal. Either we have to make coal, or then we mine it. I'm a little mean right now, so i make you mine it. Go to your hole and dig until there's atleast two blocks stone around you except for the fake stair.

Like this

Can you see those stone in the picture with something black in them? Thats coalore. I dont guarantee you to find them quick, but just keep digging until you find some. Remember that down isnt the only direction. Its useful to dig to the sides, making the whole thing more effective. When you find them, mine them with your stone pickaxe.


MORE TO COME SOON