Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Minecraft

Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Minecraft

I started playing Minecraft almost a decade ago, and the first time I installed it, it was complete chaos. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. There were hardly any tutorials or a “beginner's guide” to help out with basic stuff.

I remember standing there, surrounded by pixelated trees, cows mooing in the distance, the sun slowly rising, and thinking, "What now?" There were no quests, no objectives flashing on the screen, and no guiding arrows.

Back then, I had no idea how to even make a crafting table, let alone survive the night. So, I started with punching trees as we should, built a small house, just enough to spend the night, learnt to mine a few blocks, and other basic stuff. I was literally lost a million times in the world and had no clue what was next. But it kept me hooked, exploring.

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This is what we will talk about in this guide. As a beginner, everything can be overwhelming. And if I had to do everything right from the start, things would be completely different. Chaotic? Yes, but a lot easier.

Let’s dive right into it.

1. Punching Trees Is Just the Beginning

Your Minecraft journey will start the same way as everyone else. You will be spawned with bare hands on a land with infinite possibilities. The first thing that you would go for, and you should, is to punch the trees and get wood. It’s simple, it’s iconic, and it opens the door to crafting tools, building shelter, and eventually, surviving the night.

But this is just a small part of the process.

Wood → Tools → Survival Chain

You start by chopping down trees and turning the logs into planks, then into a crafting table, and then into wooden tools. This is how crafting works. From here, your mission is to move quickly and move past the use of wooden tools. You will only ever need a wooden pickaxe to mine Cobblestone, after which you can upgrade it to Stone tools.

Note: Skip the entire wooden tool set and just get the craft pickaxe instead for mining the cobblestones. Wooden swords and axes are barely useful and waste valuable early-game time.

Brace For The First Night Survival

Surviving the first night can be daunting, no matter what other players tell you. Hostile mobs spawn when it’s dark, such as Zombies, Skeletons, Spiders, etc., and if you do not have proper lighting and shelter, you will surely not survive.

As a veteran player, here are a few things you need to prioritize on day one:

1. Punch a tree
2. Craft a wooden pickaxe
3. Mine stone and make stone tools
4. Gather enough wood for torches and shelter
5. Kill a few sheep (or shear them) to craft a bed
6. Light up your shelter with torches
7. Sleep before mobs spawn, and it resets the night.

What You Might Be Missing Early On

If you have followed the above steps, things might seem easier and help you survive the night. However, this is simply a surface-level routine, and there are a few more things that you cannot choose to overlook.

1. Don’t Underestimate Lighting

Every resource and tool serves a purpose in the game. The same goes for lighting. Minecraft’s hostile mobs spawn in darkness — not just at night, but in any poorly lit area, including inside your base.

Many players build an amazing shelter, but forget to take care of the lighting. To fix this, you can craft torches and add them to your base, both in the interior and exterior parts.

2. Keep Hunger and Food In Check

As a new player, you might tend to panic when your health goes down and have no spare food on hand to regenerate your health. Hunger directly affects survival; once the bar drops too low, healing stops, and sprinting becomes impossible.

The best you can go with at the start is to get cooked meat from mobs such as cows, pigs, and sheep. Other than this, you can pick up berries on the ground or even craft bread from wheat. Even if you have no way to cook food, just eat raw meat.

3. Sleep Through The Night

It is important to understand how bed works. They don’t just set a spawn point; they skip the night entirely, preventing mobs from spawning. If you skip making a bed, you may often find yourself overwhelmed by hostile mobs and stuck inside a tiny dirt hut until daylight returns.

Even if you have a simple sword, it will work to simply shear or kill sheep. You only need three sheep to craft a bed.

2. Learn Your Way Through

Another interesting aspect of the game is that there are no direct tutorials offered by the developers. No quest markers, no pop-up tutorials, no detailed instructions. Just a vague “press E to open your inventory,” and from there, you're on your own.

This has been intentionally made so that you can explore the world of Minecraft from the ground up. But while that sandbox freedom is part of the magic, it can also be overwhelming, especially when crafting recipes are unknown, mechanics seem hidden, and the game never tells you what to do next.

This is where the Minecraft Wiki and Zap Hosting Blog come into play. You can find detailed guides on how to get started with things such as crafting recipes, mob behaviors, dimension mechanics, potion ingredients, enchanting mechanics, block properties, and even redstone logic diagrams.

Similarly, you can even check out YouTube tutorials that will make your initial journey easier and the end journey even better.

3. Don’t Be Afraid of Dying

No matter how cautious you are, you’re going to die in Minecraft. Whether it's simply falling into the lava or fighting a hostile mob at night.

This game isn’t about avoiding death altogether, it’s about learning how to recover and die smart. Every other veteran player will tell you the same, and the countless number of times they might have died before being able to create a guide on how to survive.

Let’s check out some of the ways you can die in the game and how you can avoid them.

Fall Damage

In an early game scenario, the most common way you can die is by falling off cliffs, trees, unfinished structures, or down deep cave shafts. It happens pretty suddenly and can easily lead to damage or instant death. Here are ways you can avoid this:

1. Try sneaking when you are near the edges. This one habit saves lives. While sneaking, your character won’t fall off ledges. It’s invaluable for mining over ravines, building bridges, or just climbing high spots.

2. Craft a water bucket and carry it everywhere. If you fall from a height and are quick, you can place water before hitting the ground, which cancels fall damage.

3. Never dig straight down into the caves or underground. It is one of the oldest rules in the book. There is a high chance that you will come across lava or directly fall into a cave without warning. Instead, start digging a staircase, so you always have solid ground to land on.

2. Lava

If you ever happen to visit the Nether, you will find Lava everywhere. And if you fall into it, there is no coming back from it. In fact, it burns up all your gears, and even if you respawn quickly, chances are your tools and loot are gone.

Here are a few things you can do to avoid it:

1. There are some non-flammable blocks in the game, such as cobblestone. You can carry them with you, and if by any chance you encounter lava, you can use this block and protect yourself.

2. When you are in Nether, make sure to always carry a Fire Resistant Potion or blocks like gravel to control lava flow.

3. Refrain from mining right below the surface. Whether you are in the overworld or in the Nether, there is always a high risk of lava flowing when you are mining, and you might die when not prepared for it.

3. Creepers

As a beginner, you need to be careful of the Creepers. They’re silent, fast, and explode if they get too close.

Here is how you can stay clear of them:

1. Most hostile mobs spawn in the dark. Hence, you must keep your base well lit by placing torches all around. The same goes for while you are exploring dark pathways or even caves, torches are your best line of defense.

2. Another important thing is to sleep regularly. Going a few days without sleep causes phantoms to spawn, and more mobs in general. You can craft a bed early and sleep each night unless you’re farming mobs on purpose.

3. To defeat creepers, you can sprint towards them and keep hitting them before they explode. Also, using a shield does a great job since it will protect you from a potential explosion.

4. Let’s Talk Mining

Mining is the core part of the gameplay. I mean, the name itself is “Mine” and “craft”. For new players, "mining" often just means swinging a pickaxe and digging downward. But as you progress further, you will understand the correct way to do this and all the places you can look for the resources.

Here are some tips you can follow to mine like a veteran player:

1. Follow the Ore Distribution

If you have been mindlessly mining ores in every part of the game with no luck, you can follow the table below, which shows that ores generate differently depending on height.

2. Use The Right Mining Technique

Now that you know all the locations to dig for the resources, you also need to know about the different mining techniques. You cannot simply go about mining endlessly and die a million times along the way.

Also, there are much more efficient and organized ways to gain the maximum resources along the way.

1. Branch Mining: This is the most efficient way of mining, whether you are early in the game or later. You can use this method religiously to find diamonds, redstone, and lapis lazuli in bulk.

2. Cave Mining: To get iron, copper, and a lot of coal, Cave mining is the way to go. You can go with the natural cave openings and biomes like Dripstone Caves, Lush Caves, or Deep Slate layers.

3. Staircase Mining: This is one of our favourites and pretty popular too. This can help you provide access to deep slate layers and ores like diamond and redstone. You can even combine this technique with branch mining once you reach the right level.

4. Explosive Mining: Lastly, we can mine ores using TNTs and other explosives. This is mostly used to mine Ancient Debris in the Nether dimension. Make sure you have cobblestones and fire-resistant potions to protect you from the fire after the explosion.

3. Carry The Right Tools

Before stepping into the caves and underground for mining, you need the right tools. Here is everything you must have.

1. Pickaxes: You will need at least two of these, one with Fortune III for ores, and one with Silk Touch if you want to transport ore blocks or rare items like stone or copper blocks. Try crafting an iron pickaxe or anything higher for valuable ores like redstone, gold, and diamond.

2. Torches: As mentioned earlier, torches are your best line of defense in the dark. You cannot go about digging and mining in the dark with zero visibility. Moreover, mobs spawn in the dark, and you need to keep away from them while mining for resources.

3. Water Bucket: This is yet another essential item you will need in your inventory. It can help to put out lava, break your fall, and much more.

4. A lot of Food: This is pretty basic, but food will keep you saturated if you are looking to go for a long mining session. You can carry cooked meat, bread, or golden carrots.

There are other items you should have, such as cobblestone, storage chests, shovels, a crafting table, etc.

5. Villagers are OP

Villagers are not just background characters, they’re your key to endgame gear and resources. They can become your personal economy, XP farm, and enchantment hub if you treat them right.

As you move further in the game, you can start your own Villager Trading Hall. For this, you can start with curing a Zombie Villager if possible, it gives massive trade discounts, then trap villagers safely in individual pods with their workstation blocks (like Lecterns for Librarians, Smithing Tables for Toolsmiths, etc.). Then, let a zombie infect your villagers (carefully), and cure them to get almost free trades.

The librarians are MVPs in the game as they offer enchanted books like Mending, Unbreaking III, Efficiency V, and Fortune III. Likewise, other villagers can give you diamond gear in exchange for emeralds. Make sure to keep the villagers protected from zombies with iron golems, fences, and lots of lighting.

6. Go Early On Enchantment

Enchantments might sound like something you would go for when you get full gear or later in the game. But they are also mid-game essentials that can massively boost your survival, efficiency, and resource collection.

Think of this particular feature as the game’s way of leveling up the tools and gear. Here are a few examples of enchantments that can benefit you early on:

1. With Fortune, you can gather more resources.
2. Unbreaking makes the tool stronger and more efficient.
3. Mending is another enchantment that repairs your tools, weapons, and armor automatically using the experience (XP) you earn while playing.

And so on. This is why you should always use your diamond pickaxe with enchantments. Since they are difficult to acquire and without enchantments such as Unbreaking or Mending, they will break fast. Without Fortune, you’ll miss out on duplicating diamonds, coal, and redstone drops and much more.

To find enchantments, you need to craft an enchanting table that will require 15 bookshelves for max-level. You can also get this from Village Librarians, loot chests in Bastions, End Cities, Dungeons, etc.

7. Nether Is Not Endgame, But Also Not Beginner Friendly

You need to enter the Nether when the time is right and when you are prepared with adequate resources at your disposal.

What Do You Need Before Entering Nether?

Before thinking of exploring the Nether, you will need these things.

1. At least an iron armor, or the best option would be a complete set of Diamond armor.
2. Next, make sure you have a bow or a crossbow to tackle the hostile mobs you will come across.
3. A reliable source of food, such as setting up different automatic farms for it, and also basic enchantments such as Unbreaking, Mending, Fortune, Silk Touch, and a few others.
4. At least one piece of Gold armor will potentially save your life.
5. Many cobblestone blocks since they are fire resistant and might come in handy in protecting you from lava.

We spoke about how you will need at least one piece of Gold armor, such as Gold boots, helmet, etc. This is because the Nether features a hostile mob called Piglins that attack unless you're wearing at least one piece of gold armor.

These mobs will then allow you to roam freely around them and will not attack you. In fact, you can even barter with them by tossing them gold ingots — they’ll give you useful items like fire resistance potions, obsidian, soul speed books, and even Ender Pearls.

Bonus Tips

Fire-resistant Potions are a lifesaver in the Nether. There is lava everywhere, and you will need a lot of this to keep you safe. Apart from this, you will come across Blaze (fire-breathing mobs) that might deal great damage if you do not have this potion.

And you also need to protect the Nether portal from the mobs such as Ghasts. They spit fire everywhere and can destroy your ticket to home. The best line of defense is covering the entire portal with cobblestone that is fireproof.

8. Farms Can Change The Game

In the beginning, you might start with gathering food and other resources on a daily basis. However, it is not efficient, considering you cannot spend time simply gathering food or resources all day long. This is where automation steps in, and you can set up farms for a ton of things.

Here are some of the farms you can build:

1. Food Farm: Start with crafting wheat, potatoes, or even carrot farms. Later, you can learn to craft animal farms for meat, wool, and more.

2. XP Farm: You can build farms to kill Zombies, Skeletons, etc., to collect constant XP. In the late game, you can upgrade it and craft an Enderman XP farm that gives the best XP per hour.

3. Iron Farm: This uses 3+ villagers, zombies, and beds to spawn golems. Then, iron gets automatically collected in the chests, which makes crafting less painful.

4. Sugarcane Farm: Sugarcane is needed for paper, rockets, and books.

5. Gold Farm: This is built primarily in the Nether and provides gold nuggets, zombie flesh (for trading), and XP.

Overall, farming allows you to focus on other aspects of the game while it handles your food needs and other important resources.

9. Mods Unlock A New World

Lastly, if you have not yet thought about using mods in your game, you are missing out on so many things. The moment players hear the word mods, they are taken aback because of the fear that this might break the game.

But once you’ve got a couple of solid vanilla worlds under your belt, dipping into mods feels like a well-deserved upgrade, not cheating.

Here are a few mods that make sense and are worth it.

1. Just Enough Items (JEI): One of the most downloaded mods and highly popular. If you are looking for a lightweight and efficient way to view recipes, item uses, and other crafting-related information in Minecraft, this is the one to go for.

2. Biomes O' Plenty: There are a lot of biomes in the game to explore, but never enough. You can install this mod to get 50+ more biomes to explore, with much more to explore from terrain to mobs.

3. Alex’s Mobs: For more creatures and mobs in Minecraft, Alex’s Mobs is what you need. They are found in different mobs, with different levels of difficulty and aesthetics, making the game a lot more fun.

These are only a few of the best mods for Minecraft available on the web. Simply check out official sites and try the most popular ones to give them a try.

We are at the end of this article, but not done yet. There are a few more tips that will help you make your Minecraft journey easier and a lot better. For example, it’s super important to always have a backup or save your world so that no error can destroy your hard work.

Also, forget about winning the game; Minecraft isn’t about winning at all. It’s about using your imagination to build, mine, and explore. Lastly, don’t forget to try multiplayer and stay connected with the community. Minecraft has one of the biggest communities that is not only competitive but exceptionally helpful.

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