Minecraft

Minecraft is a world made of cubes that you are allowed to take apart and put back together. There is no tutorial, no quest marker and no story cutscene. You spawn in a random world with empty hands and about ten minutes before the sun goes down.

That sounds hostile and it is not. The game teaches by consequence: you get cold-opened into a forest, you get hungry, night falls, something groans at you out of the dark, and every one of those problems has a craftable answer. Learning Minecraft is learning the recipe list, and the recipe list is discoverable from inside the game.

• Survival mode is the real game: hunger, damage, resource gathering.
• Creative mode gives you every block and flight, for building without pressure.
• Hardcore is Survival with one life, permanently.
• The world is effectively endless and generated from a seed, so no two look alike.

The only real goal on day one is to still be alive on day two. This is the sequence, and it takes about ten minutes once you know it.

1. 1

   Punch trees

   Hold left click on a tree trunk. Collect 4 or more wood logs. Everything starts here.

2. 2

   Open your crafting grid

   Turn logs into planks, planks into a crafting table (4 planks), and place the table down. Now you have a 3x3 grid instead of 2x2.

3. 3

   Make sticks, then tools

   Planks into sticks. Then a wooden pickaxe and a wooden axe. The pickaxe is the priority: it is the key that unlocks stone.

4. 4

   Mine stone

   Find exposed grey stone, mine 20 or so with the wooden pickaxe, and upgrade every tool to stone. Stone tools are faster and last longer, and cost nothing but a walk.

5. 5

   Dig a hole and sleep in it

   Before dark: cut into a hillside, seal the entrance behind you, place a crafting table and a furnace. A crafted bed skips the night entirely, but wool needs sheep, so hole first, bed later.

6. 6

   Eat

   Kill a cow, pig or chicken, cook the meat in a furnace with wood or coal as fuel. Raw meat works and is worse. Your hunger bar drains as you sprint, jump and fight, and when it empties your health follows.

Minecraft is one loop turned over and over. You gather a material, that material unlocks a better tool, the better tool reaches a material you could not touch before. Almost everything you will ever do is a version of that.

The tool ladder, in order, is wood, stone, iron, diamond, netherite. Gold sits off to the side: it mines fast and breaks quickly, so it is a curiosity rather than a step. Each tier mines the tier above it, which is why a stone pickaxe cannot touch diamond and an iron one can.

• Coal, on the surface and in caves, is torches and furnace fuel. Take every piece you see.
• Iron is the workhorse: tools, armour, buckets, anvils, rails, most redstone parts.
• Diamond is deep and rare. Save your first ones for a pickaxe, then armour.
• Netherite is a Nether material and upgrades diamond gear rather than replacing it. It does not burn in lava.

Two systems multiply everything else. Enchanting (a table plus bookshelves, powered by experience levels from mining and mobs) turns good gear into great gear, and Efficiency, Unbreaking, Mending and Fortune are the ones that change your day. Villager trading turns emeralds into enchanted books, diamond gear and endless food, and is the fastest legitimate shortcut in the game.

Minecraft does have an ending. It is optional, nobody stops playing after it, and it is a genuinely good multi-session goal for a new player who wants direction.

1. 1

   Get iron gear and a bucket

   Full iron armour, iron sword, iron pickaxe. The bucket carries water, which is your answer to lava and to fall damage.

2. 2

   Build a Nether portal

   A frame of 10 obsidian, lit with flint and steel. Obsidian is made by pouring water on lava, then mined with a diamond pickaxe.

3. 3

   Raid a Nether fortress

   Inside the Nether, find a fortress and kill blazes for blaze rods. Bring a bow, a shield, and fire resistance if you can get it. The Nether is hostile in a way the surface never is.

4. 4

   Trade for ender pearls

   Piglins in the Nether will trade pearls for gold ingots. Endermen drop them too, and are far more dangerous to fight than to barter with.

5. 5

   Make eyes of ender

   Blaze powder plus ender pearl. Throw one and it flies toward the nearest stronghold. Follow the throws, dig where they sink.

6. 6

   Kill the Ender Dragon

   Fill the End portal frame with eyes, jump in, break the healing crystals on the towers with arrows first, then fight the dragon on the ground. It is very beatable in iron gear with a bow and a bed.

Minecraft has no narrator, but it does have a story, buried in structures and one long piece of text. Somebody was here before you. The world is full of ruined portals, abandoned mineshafts, strongholds full of empty libraries, ocean monuments and desert temples, and none of them come with an explanation.

• Strongholds sit underground with End portals already built, half assembled, by someone.
• The End is a dead sky-world of pale stone, ruled by a dragon, farmed by endermen who carry blocks around as if they are rebuilding something.
• The Deep Dark is a sealed biome with an eyeless guardian, the Warden, and ancient cities that were clearly evacuated in a hurry.
• Illagers are villagers who left. They raid the villages they came from, and their mansions are full of rooms that look like experiments.

When you kill the dragon, the credits roll over the End Poem: a conversation between two unnamed voices about a player who dreamed a universe made of blocks. It is the only piece of authored story in the game, it is about you rather than about the world, and it is worth reading rather than skipping.

We run a public survival server with Java and Bedrock crossplay, so a phone, an Xbox and a PC can all stand in the same base. It is cozy, chaos, crafting and community rather than a hardcore grief server: griefing and stealing get you removed.

1. 1

   On Java

   Multiplayer, Add Server, address mc.aquilo.gg. No port needed, an SRV record carries it.

2. 2

   On Bedrock

   Servers, Add Server, address bedrock.aquilo.gg and port 25598. Bedrock skips the automatic port lookup, so both boxes matter.

3. 3

   Read the rules

   They are short and they are enforced. aquilo.gg/mc/rules has them, and the in-game /rules book is the same text.

4. 4

   Say hello

   Link your account in Discord and your in-game chat and the server chat become the same conversation.

• Torches everywhere. Mobs spawn in the dark, and a lit base is a quiet base.
• Sleep every night in a bed. It skips the night AND sets your respawn point.
• Carry a water bucket. It stops lava, breaks falls, and makes obsidian.
• Name your pets and your best gear with a name tag or an anvil. Named things are things you keep.
• Build your first base near water, trees and open ground, not in a cave you like the look of.
• When you die, your items stay where you fell for five minutes on Java. Go back immediately, and mark the death coordinates.
• F3 on Java shows coordinates. Write down your base numbers before you wander.
• Shield up. Right click with a shield blocks skeleton arrows and creeper blasts, and it is craftable on day one with iron and planks.

The community wiki is genuinely excellent and covers every recipe, mob and structure with current numbers. If a guide anywhere disagrees with the wiki, believe the wiki.

• Minecraft Wiki for recipes, mob mechanics, enchantment tables and structure loot.
• The in-game recipe book (the little book icon in your inventory) shows everything you can craft with what you are carrying right now.
• Ask in our Discord. The Minecraft channel is full of people who have solved whatever you are stuck on.