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Early game

The first few in-game days set up everything else. Rough priority order: wood → stone tools → food → bed → coal/iron → shield.

Day one

  1. Punch trees — get ~8–12 logs. Craft: crafting table, wooden pickaxe.
  2. Go straight to stone — mine 3 cobblestone, upgrade to a stone pickaxe, then stone axe/sword/shovel. Skip making more wooden tools.
  3. Food — kill a few animals (cook the meat — raw food is a trap), or break tall grass for wheat seeds near a future farm spot.
  4. Bed — kill 3 sheep (or shear with iron later) + 3 planks. Sleeping skips the night and sets your respawn. On a server, gamerule playersSleepingPercentage 1 lets one sleeper skip for everyone.
  5. Shelter — dig into a hillside and plug the hole. A hole with a door beats an ambitious half-finished house at sundown.

First mining trip

  • Take: stone pickaxe, sword, food, torches, a water bucket as soon as you have iron, and spare wood (craft tools/torches underground).
  • Don't dig straight down (gravel, caves, lava) — staircase down instead.
  • Iron is everywhere below sea level; ~32 ore makes full armor + tools with spare. Smelt with the coal you mine on the way.
  • Lava lakes start around Y −54; diamonds are best at Y −58/−59 (1.18+). Bring the water bucket before going that deep.
  • Mark the way home: torches on the right wall going in — right-hand rule out.

Early essentials checklist

  • Full iron armor + shield (a shield blocks creeper blasts and skeleton arrows)
  • Wheat/carrot/potato farm near base (hoe grass for seeds; villages have carrots/potatoes)
  • Sugar cane on a water edge → paper later; bamboo/cactus spotted for future XP smelting
  • Small cow/sheep pen (wheat lures them, breed pairs)
  • Furnace array + chest organization before the hoard gets out of hand
  • A bucket kept on the hotbar — water saves you from lava, falls, and creepers

Worth knowing

  • Beds + village — if a village is nearby, it solves food (farms), beds (houses), and a head start on villager trading.
  • Spiders burn last — at dawn, skeletons/zombies burn but creepers don't. Wait for full daylight or keep the shield up.
  • Tools: don't enchant or anvil-repair iron gear — it's disposable. Save levels for the enchanting table and diamond gear.
  • Death insurance: until you trust your route, carry less. Items despawn 5 minutes after death (loaded chunks). Server-side rescue: tp Alice <coords> or temporary gamerule keepInventory true.