The Beginner's Guide To Minecraft

The first thing anyone needs to know when playing Minecraft for the first time is: Firstly, "What is Minecraft?" and secondly, "How in the world do I use the controls?"

Minecraft is an indie game in which you use blocks to build and manipulate the world around you. If you ever played "Legos" as a kid, it's pretty much a much improved version of the basic idea of "Legos" which is to say it expands on the idea that people love building stuff.

Developed in about a week by Markus Persson before being released to the public on May 17, 2009 Minecraft places you in a randomely generated world full of endless possibilities, it is one of the first games where you are limited only by your imagination.

Minecraft is currently in Beta and is due for full release sometime in November of 2011, presumably the day of "MineCon", November 18-19, 2011.

Here is a list of the various default controls and what they do (i.e. how to move and do stuff):

Movement:

• W = Forward | S = Backwards | A = Left | D = Right
• Dashing: Double tap the Forward key to dash.

Jumping:

• Space = Jump | Hold Space to Jump Repeatedly

Mouse Buttons

• Attack / Mine / Harvest / Break = Left Mouse Button
• Use Item = Right Mouse Button
• Select Block From Quick Slots = Scroll Wheel

Keys

• Left Shift = Sneak (Prevents you from falling off of an edge)
• Q = Drop Selected Item
• E = Inventory / Character
• T = chat
• Tab = List Players

There are a few basic things you need to do in order to survive.

Refer to the pictures for basic crafting schematics/recipes.

Your First Steps:

1. First, you need to look around you when you load into your world. Take the first minute or so to look and see what's around you. Don't linger too long though, Daylight only lasts for about 10 minutes in Minecraft!
2. Next, your going to want to locate the nearest cluster of trees. Aproach the trees and while aimed at, and close enough, hold down the left mouse button on the trees trunk to harvest some wood. Do this until you have at least 10 blocks of wood.
3. Then press 'E' to open you inventory, and make some wooden planks. Now take all of the wooden planks you can by holding shift and clicking on the wooden planks.
4. Take some wooden planks and put them in each block of the inventory crafting space and this should give you a crafting table. Yay! Your first crafting table!
5. Once you have your crafting table, place it in a quick slot, select it, and while aimed at the block of your choice on the ground click the right mouse button.
6. Now that your crafting table has been placed, right click on it to open the crafting table screen. Place wooden planks to make sticks. Now take some sticks, about 16 or 20 or however many you want.
7. Next take sticks and wooden planks and make some tools.
8. Now find a suitable hill to dig into and make your first home! Dig into the hill and hollow out a small space to start. Go back to your crafting table and make a door, place this door in front of your first homes entrance so badies can't get in.
9. Then you need some coal to make torches, so go find a natural cave and look for some coal which should be near the entrance. Then go back to your house and make torches.
10. When night falls retreat to your house and place torches inside and out so you can see in and around you home. Next, mining!

Now that you have your house, it's time to dig!

Getting Your Mine Set Up:

1. Beginning on one side of the inside of your house, begin digging a staircase.
2. Dig down until you hit bedrock, and then go up about 10-12 levels.
3. Mine out a base of operations.
4. In your base place a crafting table, some furnaces, and some chests.
5. Now it's time to begin the real fun!
6. There are multiple techniques you can use when mining; we are going to go over these techniques now.

Mining Techniques:

• Branch Mining- Branch mining is probably the most widely used form of mining because of it's simplistic nature. You begin by making a mineshaft that branches out of your base of operations. Dig out either a 1x2 tunnel or a 2x2, whichever you want. Dig as far as you want/can and then leave the branch. Move over 2 blocks from this branch and create another branch. When you have created all the branchs you can, move up a couple of levels, then repeat the process. You should find quite a bit of resources this way.
• Spelunking- Spelunking invloves finding large natural cave systems and mining exposed resources, this method is high in yield but it also the most dangerous, because mobs are often found in large numbers in cave systems. And you may get lost in caves also. So you need to weight the advantages and disadvantages of this technique for yourself before you go spelunking.
• TNT Clearing- This method makes use of TNT to excavate large amounts of blocks, it is not an effective mining technique because it can destroy valuable resources in the process of exposing them.
• Large-Room Mining- Large-room mining is pretty much what the name suggests, you clear a huge room to find all the resources in a large area. Although it is the highest in yield it is the second most time consuming method, but good for creating a base area to create a mob spawner from.
• Quarry Mining- Quarry mining is very similar to large-room mining, but instead of clearing an area underground, you begin at the surface and clear multiple layers of a large area all the way down to bedrock. This is the most time consuming method there is

The Basics of Combat:

Sword Combat:

• Press the left mouse button to attack.
• Hold the right mouse button to block.

Bow Combat:

• Hold the left mouse button to charge the bow, release to attack.

Damage/Effects:

• You will crit if you attack while falling.
• You will push mobs back several block spaces if you hit them while dashing.

Friendly Mobs:

Cows:

• Drop: Raw Beef, and Leather.
• When a bucket is used on a cow you get a bucket of milk.

Pigs:

• Drop: Raw porkchops.

Sheep:

• Drop: Wool
• When shears are used on a sheep they drop wool and become "naked".

Chickens:

• Drop: Raw chicken, and Feathers.
• Chickens periodically lay eggs that can be picked up and thrown or used to make cakes.

Unfriendly Mobs:

Creepers:

• Drop: Gunpowder
• Will blow up if they get too close to you.
• Do not catch on fire in sunlight.

Skeletons:

• Drop: Bones, and Arrows.
• Skeletons shoot arrows at you if they see you.
• Catch on fire in the sunlight, killing them quickly.

Spiders:

• Drop: String, and Spider Eyes
• Jump at you and can climb walls.
• Can fit through 1x2 spaces.

Cave Spiders:

• Drop: String and Spider Eyes.
• Jump and climb like normal spiders.
• Chance of poisoning you on touch.
• Can fit throug 1x1 spaces.

Zombies:

• Drop: Flesh
• Make zombie sounds, as zombies usually do.

Endermen:

• Drop: Ender Pearls
• They can teleport to you from many spaces away and can pickup blocks.

Please leave a comment if you would like me to add or change something or if you want to submit content such as: screenshot of the week entries, random minecraft photos, crafting recipes, etc.

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