Minecraft For Noobs: Getting Started

- Part 1 -

Hello, and welcome to a video that will help you survive the first night of your Minecraft experience.
This guide will help the most simple of the simple.

Please note that the video was taken before the official release of Minecraft. The version recorded was Beta 1.6.6
- Gathering Materials -

The first step to surviving Minecraft is to get wood. To collect it, Hold your left mouse key until the block disappears and a smaller floating block falls. You can collect this by walking over it until it shows up into your inventory.

To see your inventory, press the letter, 'E' on your keyboard. You can configure this by going to options, controls, and then click on the inventory button and type the letter you want to use for your hot key.

Once you have wood, hit the hot key you chose for your inventory. Left click the wood to pick it up and place it in your 2x2 crafting area by clicking on the square you want it in. A new item should show called, "Wooden Planks." On the item, you should see a number 4. This means that for every wood, it equals 4 wooden planks. Left click the item and right click each wooden plank in every square in your 2x2 crafting area. A new item will show called, "Crafting Table." This is a useful item because you can craft anything you want in it.

- Building your home -

Sometimes, a home can be very time consuming and you end up at night still building it. This is not a smart thing to do if you can't fend yourself off from the mobs in the night. That's why we recommend building a temporary dirt shack in the ground, until you make the nice house you want. Note that when you place your door, place it from the outside.

To place a block, right click the block you want it to be placed. To make a house, you just place the blocks the way you want them to be. I recommend building a home with more cobblestone than wood if your on a server that allows people to light the house on fire...

Once you have built your home, you will need to mine. To craft a pickaxe, put 3 wooden planks horizontally, and 2 sticks vertically in the middle. Your shape should resemble what a pickaxe looks like. Just like breaking wood, use the pickaxe to mine through the stone. If you don't have a pickaxe and try to punch the block, you'll end up with nothing and some bloody knuckles (not really).

If you watch the video and notice how we sort of failed, it's to teach you not to stray off too far unless you know your way back. A good tip we show is to use F3 to find your coordinate points, so you can travel places and find your way back.

Because the video is outdated by about a year, it shows how you are supposed to kill sheep to get wool. Please don't kill the sheep, but shear them with shears. The reason why is that with the new updates mobs don't spawn, they reproduce. And when you kill it off, you end up with extinction. You can use the wool to make a bed. A bed requires 3 wool and 3 wooden planks.

Along with the crafting table you will need something to smelt your ores you mined. You can create a furnace by putting cobblestone around the edges of your crafting table. If you can't mine coal, use wood, not wooden planks, but regular wood to make charcoal. Put the wood in the furnace and some more wood on the bottom to smelt yourself some charcoal. You can use this to make torches, or use it as fuel for smelting other things.

If you want to watch more of the tutorials, click on the 'Part 2' annotation.