At the heart of Minecraft lies Survival mode, where players are thrown into a vast world and must gather resources, build shelter, and fend off dangerous mobs to survive. There are a few necessities when Minecraft players begin in Survival Mode.
Once spawned in, the first task is to create a well-lit shelter to prepare yourself for the first night. Ideally, you would have spawned in a good area that will have trees nearby, which can supply you with a crafting table and a wooden pickaxe.
The wooden pickaxe is necessary to harvest cobblestone, which will allow you to create a stone pickaxe, and a minimum of 1 furnace, which will be used to smelt ores and cook food later on. Remember to gather any stray coal you may come across.
Also useful at the cobblestone level, a stone sword is advised, as one needs to upgrade to iron next, and it is likely to take a while. Night will probably come before then, and some degree of protection is advised.
Before the first night hits, you should really try to find some food; you can get this by killing pigs, cows, sheep, rabbits, or fish. If you were lucky enough to stumble across a villager, then you would have most likely found farms from which you could harvest potatoes or carrots.
Remember to replant these so you can harvest them again!
You want to ensure that the area you plan on staying in is well-lit, or else hostile mobs like zombies, spiders, skeletons, and creepers will come after you.
This would be a perfect time to explore a cave in search of valuable materials. Never dig straight down! Diamond is among the rarest ores in the game and one of the most useful. You can create diamond tools and gear that have some of the highest damage, durability, and protection (second only to Netherite).
After making it through your first night without dying, you can go out and gather more supplies for making a bed, along with some food and, hopefully, some wool. A bed is a huge time saver in the long run because it allows you to sleep peacefully through the dark half of the game’s cycle, but only if you have the materials to craft it and a place to put it. Finding all these resources on your first day is very likely and will be very beneficial.
Torches are also useful to prevent getting lost in caves, as well as to prevent monsters from spawning in them. On the way into a cave, for example, a player can place torches on the left-hand wall (especially near where tunnels branch), and then the player knows that to find the way out, the torches should be on the right.
Before setting out in the world, it’s important to note where you are. Exploration can be fun, but you may get turned around, especially if your base is in a common area like a plains biome. We recommend writing your coordinates down.
If you are playing on a PC (Java), you can show coordinates by pressing F3 (FN + F3 on Mac).
If you are on the Bedrock version of Minecraft, you will need to enable coordinates when creating your world. Thankfully, you can head back to the edit world button from the main menu and enable coordinates if you forgot to when making the world.
Minecraft doesn’t really have an end, but there are bosses you can fight, such as Withers, the Ender Dragon, and the Warden. These are considered to be some of the hardest challenges in Minecraft survival, so you should aim to kill these creatures at some point in your survival conquest.
If you and your friends want to play together and try to survive, you should create Minecraft SMP servers where you will be able to gather resources, build shelter, and fend off dangerous mobs together!
Minecraft also has a whole world of options you can pick from to customise your game to your liking, if you want to mod your game! Some of the most popular mods include Pixelmon, Cobblemon, Optifine, and various others, which can go to the extent of adding Pokémon to your game!
