5 Minecraft Survival Tips

Zombies are moaning. Spiders are roaming. Nothing is quite as thrilling—or terrifying—as your first night in Minecraft’s Survival mode.

Your goal: explore and refashion a sprawling, blocky sandbox. But when the sun starts inching toward the horizon, it’s time to prep for darkness. Here are five tips for surviving your first night in Minecraft:

Your first order of business: create shelter! Before you build, pick a good location. Search for a spot near trees, a source of stone, and some hills. Your first night’s accommodations are like a roadside motel—just the basics, because you won’t be there long.

Next, gather some resources. Though you begin empty-handed, you’re not helpless. Curl your hands into fists and start punching trees until you get a half dozen wood blocks, then convert those into planks and build a crafting table, which is essential for creating survival tools. Work quickly—a Minecraft day only lasts about 10 minutes.

It’s tool time! Head to your crafting table, turn your planks into sticks, and build a pickax, shovel, ax, and sword. Use the pickax and shovel to load up on wood, stone, and coal (if you’re lucky), and hunt for food with the sword. Sheep drop tasty mutton and valuable wool, but cows, pigs, and chickens make for hearty starter fare too.

Let’s build! Find a hillside and dig a sideways tunnel four or five blocks deep, then carve out a three-by-three room. No hills around? Dig your tunnel into the ground and build a little bunker for the night. Don’t forget to break down your crafting table and move it inside.

A roof over your head is great, but you need to keep out creepy-crawlies. Craft a wooden door to close off your tunnel. If you snagged some coal, craft torches to light your space and a furnace to cook your meat. (You could eat it raw, but...yuck.) And if you nabbed three blocks of wool, craft a bed and go to sleep—it’ll be daytime in an instant!

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