While Minecraft came from humble origins, the game is no longer as simple as its friendly graphics imply. This sandbox game has been expanded, updated, and iterated on for over 10 years now and is arguably more popular then ever. It has spawned several spinoff games like Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends, as well as a feature film, but that core game is still where most people spend their time. As open-ended as Minecraft is, no tutorial can cover all the important bases. That shouldn’t stop you from giving the game a try, no matter how intimidating it might look. We’ll give you a complete guide on all the essential tips and tricks you need to become a master crafter in Minecraft.
Mining and crafting
The name Minecraft isn’t just a catchy moniker but tells you the two most important mechanics in the game: mining and crafting.
Mine efficiently
Almost everything in Minecraft requires mining to find or collect. This includes oars, materials, and loot that don’t appear anywhere else. Because you’re going to do so much of it, it is important to do it as efficiently as possible.
The first tip is to never mine straight down below your character’s feet. There are several reasons for this, but the biggest ones being that you have no idea what is below you. Minecraft has tons of randomly generated caves, underground ravines, and lava pools. Digging straight down leaves you with no way to react if you break through a block above a death trap. Secondarily, it makes getting back up and out a major pain.
Initially, you should either use a staircase mining method where you dig down one, over one, and repeat to make a steady diagonal slope down. Or, you can mine in a spiral pattern to drill straight down. Once you reach the depth you want, mine it in straight lines with two blocks’ width when you turn and go back the other way. This allows you to see every block face to know if it has a material you want without wasting time mining extra stone for no reason.
If you encounter a pool of lava, know that you can use all that stone you’ve been collecting to replace the lava blocks and make it safe to walk over if need be.
Craft the essentials
As mentioned, Minecraft has nearly limitless items you can craft, but most are not useful in the early game. At the start, you want to focus on making a few key items.
The first is your basic crafting table. Without this, you can only make the most basic of items, so your first order of business should always be to get some wood, turn it into four wood planks, and make a crafting table.
From there, make yourself the best quality set of mining tools you can, which will likely be stone. You should always carry at least one or two backup pickaxes since you will run through them very quickly, plus a regular axe, shovel, and sword for some defense.
Before you go exploring or mining into dangerous caves, you need to set up your base. You don’t have to craft anything to build a little house out of wood or stone, but you must prioritize making a bed. Choose a location you are happy setting up for the long haul in and search out some sheep and some more trees to get three wool and three planks to make your bed. This serves two main functions, with the first giving you a safe way to skip the night phase of the game when enemy mobs can appear anywhere and everywhere. The second is that using a bed sets your spawn point at that spot instead of wherever it was when you first appeared in the world. You can always place a new bed and sleep there to make a new spawn point if you feel like moving at any point.
Lastly, you should understand how each tier of tool stacks up. Wood is the lowest, followed by stone, iron, diamond, netherite, and then gold. However, don’t bother using gold to make any tools or armor. While it does have the strongest stats for mining or damage, it also has lower durability than even wood so it will break it just a few swings. Netherite is the best, generally, but you won’t find that until much later, so focus on iron and then diamond first.
From there, things like furnaces will be your next order of business to refine all the ore you’re mining. Things will get much deeper from here on out, so always refer to your in-game recipe list to get a quick example of how to make anything you have the ingredients for if you’re stuck.
Enchanting
Enchanting your items is never required, but something every experienced Minecraft player takes advantage of. It allows you to upgrade nearly any piece of gear, armor, or weapon with extra buffs or effects that make your life easier. The first step in enchanting will be, of course, to make an enchanting table.
Crafting an enchanting table requires four obsidian, two diamond, and one book. However, you can increase the power of your table by surrounding it with bookcases. Either way, once you have the table, you can interact with it and drop in an item of choice and lapis lazuli to fuel the enchantment. On the right side you will get three potential enchantments to pick from, each costing a certain number of levels you’ve earned that you can see at the bottom of your screen. The more powerful the enchantment, the more levels it will take.
The enchantment you want will depend on the item you’re enchanting, but tools typically do best with Unbreaking to last longer, armor with Protection to reduce damage further, and weapons with Sharpness to deal more damage.
You can enchant nearly any usable item in Minecraft, and many have unique enchantments, so experiment with seeing what ways they can be buffed.
Mobs
Mobs is the catch-all term for the enemies in Minecraft. Dozens of monsters and creatures in the world are just waiting to take you out, and they all fight and act in unique ways. In the early game, you will want to avoid almost all of them until you get equipped. There are far too many in the game across all the biomes to give tips on all of them, but these are the common ones you will see and how to deal with them.
Creepers: The iconic Minecraft mob. These green creatures will attempt to get close to you before self-destructing and taking out everything around them. If you spot one, either run away or lure it away from anything you’ve built and trigger its explosion in a safe spot.
Zombies: These shambling mobs aren’t too dangerous and simply walk toward you and deal damage up close. You can easily hit them back without risk so long as you see them coming.
Skeleton Archers: Probably the deadliest early-game enemy, these ranged foes will snipe you from a decent distance. Either stay inside or behind some cover or run until you have some armor.
Spiders: Like zombies, they attack directly but are much more deadly thanks to their jump attacks. They can also scale walls so you can’t rely on high ground to keep them from reaching you.
Endermen: If you’re unlucky enough to see a very tall black figure, do not make eye contact. These are deadly even in the mid-game but will only become aggressive if you look them in the eye. Keep your head down and you should be safe.
Taming and breeding animals
Outside of mining for materials, animals are your other primary source of crafting items. Cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs are the most common and important animals to have access to early on, but you can’t rely on simply walking across them when you need one. Instead, build yourself a farm and lure them into it so you can have easy access to meat, milk, feathers, wool, and more. Once you have at least two of one animal type, you can breed them to make and raise babies to have an infinite supply.
Other animals, like wolves and cats, can be tamed as well to help you in other ways. These are more for fun than being strictly useful, but a cool thing to know how to do.
Multiplayer
Minecraft is way more fun playing with friends than by yourself. Since the game is fully cross-platform (unless you’re playing the Java Edition) you can play multiplayer with friends no matter where they own the game on the same server. If you know people who are already familiar with Minecraft, then playing together is the best way to learn.
Mods
Eventually, you may become interested in the hundreds of Minecraft mods out there. There are some built-in console commands to do some light tweaking, but mods can completely transform the experience.
Before you go too crazy with more transformative mods, we suggest sticking to things like graphical mods that add new shaders or texture packs that give the game a new look but leave the core game the same. Once you’ve mastered and done everything there is to do in the base experience, then you can go nuts with the more experimental mods.
