How to Play Minecraft: A Beginner’s Guide

Minecraft, perhaps approaching its 10th anniversary, is once again the most played game in the world. But for those new to the game, you might be wondering how you play Minecraft?

Minecraft is not like a regular video game. There are no obvious goals or any real guidelines to help you get started. This beginner’s guide will help you prepare for the very first adventures in Minecraft.

The most interesting thing about Minecraft is that it is an open endless world and you can do whatever you want. But to do this, you need to understand the basics.

Objective and Basic Controls in Minecraft

Before we learn how to play Minecraft, visit Minecraft.net to purchase and download the game. Minecraft is available on most modern platforms, consoles and smartphones.

In this guide, we’ll focus on Minecraft for Windows, Mac, and Linux. But once you understand the basics, they can be applied to any version on any platform.

Minecraft doesn’t have a primary goal, but there is a certain flow of gameplay that is recommended to everyone. You start from scratch in this huge open world and must collect materials from scratch to build yourself a shelter, get food, build a bed and live until the next day.

From there, you can start mining for valuable resources such as iron ore and diamonds to create powerful tools, weapons, and armor. If you play for longer, you will be able to explore the open world, find villages, loot hidden chests, and fight enemy creatures called mobs.

Before we start with any of this, we need to introduce you to the basics.

Start by opening Minecraft. Click “Single Player” and then click “Create New World”.

Press the Game Mode button until Survival appears. The fun begins in survival mode where you have to survive and collect everything for yourself. We recommend sticking to the standard controls. Here’s an overview:

• Move – W, A, S and D Keys
• Jump – Spacebar
• Run – Double Tap W
• Crouch / Sneak – hold Shift
• Inventory access – E
• Use mouse to look around
• F5 – switch between different camera views
• Break blocks or attack – left click
• Use or place items – right click
• Throw an item you are holding on the ground – Q
• Go through the slots in your inventory – key numbers from 1 to 9

With these controls in mind, let’s check it out. Go to the nearest tree and break it while holding the left mouse button. Once the block of wood breaks, it will drop the log. Break four pieces of wood and collect them when they fall to the ground.

Press E to open inventory. You will notice that you have four logs in the bottom row of squares. This line is the tab for your quick slot. You can press from 1 to 9 to use any of them. The rest of your inventory will hold more items, but you can’t equip them quickly. You can click and drag items in your inventory to change their location.

Everything in Minecraft must be mined or crafted. Therefore, if you want to create tools, for example, you have to mine basic resources for them and then create them. It starts at the most basic level and continues from there.

For example, to build a tool, you start with a log, then build boards, then make sticks, and use sticks and boards together to make the tool.

Almost any crafting requires a workbench. You can use your logs to create it. First, click and drag your magazines into the four small squares shown next to your character in the inventory menu.

You will notice that 4 new items will appear in the output field. These are boards. Right click four times to turn your magazines into planks and then drag and drop them into your main inventory. This may seem a little odd at first, but bear with me.

Then use left click to select the 16 boards you created. And then right-click once while hovering over each of the four squares next to your character. A new item appears in the output field. This is a workbench.

Left-click to put the boards back in an empty spot in your inventory, then left-click to select a workbench. Then move your mouse to the toolbar at the bottom and left-click to drag it there.

Then exit the inventory by pressing E. You can now equip your workbench by pressing the number key corresponding to the slot it is in.

After that, you can look anywhere on earth and right-click to place it.

Then look at the workbench and right click. You will see a new desktop user interface. Click on the green book to open the extended workbench menu. You can click on the items on the left to see how they are created. As you play, you will learn more crafting recipes or you can find them online.

For now, we need to create a few basic tools. In Minecraft, tools can help you gather resources faster. Tool types include the following:

• Pickaxes for faster extraction of stone and ore.
• Axes for faster tree felling.
• Shovels for faster digging in dirt.
• Hoes for preparing the soil for planting seeds.
• Swords for attacking enemy mobs.

There are other tools for more unique circumstances, but for now, we only need them. To do this, click on the stick on the workbench. You will notice that you need to put two planks on top of each other in the crafting UI to build 4 sticks.

We’ll need 8 sticks, so use the right click to pick up the boards and use the left click to place an extra board in each box. Place your boards back into inventory and use the left click to pick up the sticks from the exit window.

We will now have new recipes unlocked to craft basic tools. Click the tools tab in the workbench inventory. Then you can click on each of the tools – for now, just craft a shovel, pickaxe, and ax to craft them. Use the same tips we already explained to create them and add them to your inventory or dashboard.

When you’re done, your inventory should look something like the image above. Exit the workbench by pressing E. You have created your first tools. It’s time to deal with the world around you.

Survive your first night

At night, enemy mobs will appear and try to attack you. If you die, you will return nearby, but you must return and collect all your belongings. It’s best not to die in Minecraft because you might lose your items or lose your previous location. Therefore, to avoid this, on the first night we need to quickly build a shelter.

To make this as easy as possible, simply equip the shovel by pressing the corresponding hotkey number for it. For us it was 1. Then look at the ground and hold down the right mouse button to dig up three blocks.

Then look up and use the earth you just mined. Should be 4 keys. Then right click to place the block. It will get dark now. But the important thing is that you are safe.

Now you must wait until morning. This will take about 7 minutes. So either wait and hear the dangerous creatures pass outside, or take a short break and come back in 7 minutes. Your game must remain open, otherwise time will be suspended.

After 7 minutes, you can look up and while holding the left mouse button dig out the ground to see the morning light. Now, if it is still dark, just lay the ground down again and wait a little more. Once morning comes, you can dig up blocks in front of you to create a small step to jump over so you can leave the pit you were hiding in.

So, now that you’ve built your first home, you need to set up a real shelter so you never have to hide in a pit covered in mud again. You only need a few things – walls, a roof, a door and a bed. With a bed, you can sleep so you don’t have to wait all night. The night will be automatically skipped.

Walls and ceilings can be built from anything. You can design and build it from planks or just build it from the ground. You can harvest these resources from trees or the ground using the tools you have already created. You will need quite a few blocks.

Sometimes Minecraft can be quite tedious – you will have to collect many blocks by chopping trees, digging and mining ores.

You can start placing blocks to build your first home by equipping blocks in the toolbar. A door is another item that can be crafted on a plank workbench. Just open the crafting table menu and use the UI on the left to select the door to craft it.

The bed is the last item that can be a little tricky. You must explore the surroundings and look for sheep. If you find sheep, attack them. Once they are killed, they will drop wool and mutton. This will be your first adventure when you go looking for sheep.

You should be able to find them within minutes from your current location, just make sure you remember the way home. You will need three blocks of wool of the same color and three planks arranged as in the image above to create a bed on a workbench.

You will now have your first home. You can sleep in this bed at night to skip the night. On top of that, if you die, in the future you will be reborn here in your bed.

Before we start exploring Minecraft, there are two more things to do. We need to build a chest to store our items and an oven for cooking.

The chests are simple. Use the layout shown in the workbench in the image above to place the chest. You can then place items inside by right-clicking on the chest and dragging the items into the chest’s inventory.

You need to collect cobblestone for the oven. It can be obtained from the ground with a pickaxe. Start by digging the ground with a shovel. You will hit the stone pretty quickly. Your best bet is to dig down, creating a ladder as shown above until you come across a rock.

Then you can use the pickaxe to collect the stone. To build a furnace, you need eight cobblestones. You can see the diagram for making the furnace above. Install a stove in your home. Now it’s time to pay attention to the stripes above the quick slots. These are your health and food bars.

Your food will deplete slowly, and if it gets too low, you will lose health. If it fills up, you will gradually restore health. To replenish it, you must eat food. You should already have lamb from the sheep you killed earlier, but you must cook it.

Right-click the oven to cook food. Then place the meat in the upper drawer and the fuel in the lower drawer. It can be any kind of wood or coal.

You can easily collect logs from trees if you don’t have firewood. Eventually, the food will be cooked and you will see it in the output box on the right. You can eat food by placing it in the slot of the quick access bar, wearing it and holding down the right mouse button.

Explore the World

At this point, you should have everything you need to survive. You will have a home, bed, tools, and a way to prepare food and store items. At this point, it’s time to start collecting your best gear.

You can use the workbench to craft better tools that last longer and mine blocks faster. The fastest upgrade is to use cobblestone to craft stone tools. But if you dig deeper, you can find diamonds and iron. Iron is the next upgrade after stone, and diamond is even better. Until then, the stone will fit

You have to dig deep to find iron and diamond, and this can take a while. Until then, you can explore the world on your own and learn how to play Minecraft. You will learn more while playing. The most interesting thing about Minecraft is learning and learning how to play it yourself.

What to do next is up to you. Can you dig deep to find abandoned mines filled with loot and dangerous enemies? Will you explore the world above to find villages to swap loot or find hidden temples to get the best gear? Will you be looking for a saddle in chests hidden in buildings so you can ride a horse, or will you be working on mining diamond gear?

The choice is endless. A great place to learn more about how to play Minecraft is to watch YouTube videos or read wikis like Minecraft Gamepedia In the meantime, we hope this beginner’s guide to getting started with Minecraft has been helpful.

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