The Basics of Minecraft

The Basics of Minecraft.
Vol. 1 By: Benjamin D. H.

Making a world -> Once you start up Minecraft, what you have to do, (if have not already) is make a single-player world. To do so, you must click the button that says “singleplayer”, and it will pop up with a tab. And what you do, once you have opened the tab, is click the “create new world” button. This will open up a tab that will let you create a world by naming it, choosing what game-mode you are in, and there is a special tab that lets you customize even more! You will just want to leave it with the default game-mode for now, until you learn more. Name your world, and click the “create new world” button to create the world. Just leave the other tab alone for now.

Getting wood -> when you spawn, you’re going to want to find some trees. There are four types of tree; oak, spruce, jungle, and birch. You will find different ones depending on what biome you are in, more on that later. Once you find a tree, you are doing to look directly at it, and hold down left-click until the log breaks, and drops an item. Move near the item that was dropped (you might get an achievement for picking up the item), and continue to break the rest of the tree. Once you have done so, press the “E” button to open your inventory (you might get an achievement for that too). Move over the block of wood in your inventory and right-click the item. After that, move the mouse over to the 2x2 square in your inventory, and right-click again in the square to place it back in your inventory. When you do this, a little block of wood should appear in the direction of the small arrow in your inventory, if you right click it, you should pick it up, and the wood should disappear. What you have just done is “crafted” (crafting is when you put together a group of items to create an object). If you do this for the rest of the logs, you should get yourself quite a bit of wood.

Making a house -> the next thing you’re going to have to do is to build a house. To do this you have to place down the wooden planks you have just made. To do so, you just have to get out of your inventory by pressing “E” and then looking at the place you want to place the wood, and right-clicking (A thing to remember: right-click = place/activate, left click = break/attack). After you have placed all the wood you have, you’re going to have to cut down more trees, a LOT more trees. After that, continue making your house. To finish off your house, take four wooden planks (if you have none get more) and put the wood in the small 2x2 so that its full, and that should make you a crafting table! A crafting table allows you to craft using a 3x3 instead of a 2x2. Place down the crafting table and right-click to open the interface. Once in, take six wooden planks and place it in a rectangle facing downward, this should make you a door. Place the door down to finish your house, so you can wait out the night.

Crafting 101 -> After the night is over, there are some things you need to craft, so go out and gather some wood, and then open your crafting table. The first thing you need are sticks, craft these with two wooden planks on top of each other, these will help you to make everything you need. The second thing you need is a sword, craft this with a stick at the bottom, with two wood on top of it, this will help to fight monsters. The next thing you need is a pickaxe, craft this with three wood across the top, with two sticks under it, this will help you mine ores and stone. And the final thing you need to make is a chest, to make this, you need eight wooden planks, and make an “O” shape, and this should give you a chest, if you place it down and right-click it, you can open it and put your stuff in it.

Get digging -> after that, you’re going to have to start digging. To do so, go outside, find a good spot, and start digging with left-click, I suggest digging a long staircase. WARNING: '''NEVER DIG DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH YOURSELF!!! '''After your pickaxe breaks, you should have some stone, and maybe some coal. The first thing you do is go back to the surface, and get to your house, and open your crafting table. the first thing you craft is a furnace by taking eight stone, and making an “O” shape, this should get you a furnace witch you use to cook food, iron/gold, glass, ext. the next thing you make is a torch, (you can only do this if you have coal) to make a torch, take one stick, and one piece of coal, and put one over the other, and you should get a torch, this is used to light up things by placing it down. And the final thing you need is a stone pick, which is crafted like a wood pick, except stone instead of wooden planks. After this, you can get back to digging.

Smelting 101 -> after you dig for a while, you might have some iron ore that you have found, and maybe even some gold! But as you know, the ore as a block is not very helpful, so you need to smelt it in a furnace. To smelt ores and stuff, all you have to do is get some coal, and open the furnace interface, which you do by right-clicking the furnace. After you have opened the furnace, there are going to be two slots on top of each other. This part is easy, just put whatever you want to cook in the top slot, and coal in the bottom, and then wait a little while… then you get your iron, gold, glass, ext. here is a list of things you can cook: ores = ingot’s, sand = glass, raw food = cooked food, and cobble stone = smooth stone.

Note from the author -> this is just the beginning; there are many books to come! I plan for vol. 2 to come out soon.