How to Survive your First Day

The following how-to is an exclusive excerpt from the Minecraft Guide to Exploration. Along with the all new Minecraft Guide to Creative, it'll be released tomorrow on May 30th in the US and June 1st in the UK. You can pre-order the book here.

When you first spawn it’s a race against time to gather resources before night falls and the hostile mobs come looking for you. Every adventure is different but this step-by- step guide is one option that will keep you safe until day two.

1. Mark your spawn point with a dirt pillar, and/or note the coordinates.
2. Find some trees and hit them with your hands to collect 20 wood blocks. 
3. Drag the wood into your crafting grid to turn it into wood planks. 
4. Make a crafting table from 4 wood planks and place it on the ground.

1. Interact with your crafting table, then craft sticks from wood planks. 
2. Use your sticks and planks to craft a wooden pickaxe, axe, sword and shovel. 
3. Find a hill, and use your pickaxe to collect 20 blocks of cobblestone. 
4. Craft stone tools and weapons – these are more durable than wood.

1. Gather another 20 blocks of wood using your stone axe instead of your hand.
2. Kill some animals with your stone sword. Collect the items they drop. 
3. Kill 3 sheep, then craft a bed. This allows you to sleep through the night.
4. Craft a furnace. This allows you to smelt items into more useful forms.
5. Use your wooden tools as fuel to cook the raw meat (you don’t need them now).

1. Eat the cooked meat when your food bar starts to go down.
2. Go back to the hill, and dig farther in until you spot some coal ore. 
3. Mine as many blocks of coal ore as you can – each will drop 1 coal.
4. Craft torches. These can be placed on other blocks to provide light.
5. Now you can use coal in your furnace – it’ll smelt more items.
6. Expand the hole into an L-shape shelter, so you can hide round the corner.
7. Craft a wooden door and place it on your shelter from the outside.

1. Light up your hole using torches to prevent hostile mobs spawning overnight. Shut the door and either sleep in your bed or wait until morning. Hide round the corner, out of sight of the door.

If you found this handy, there are loads more tips in the full Guide to Exploration. Even old pros may find some useful info! Pre-order the book here.