Last week, I talked about the first two steps to Minecraft success. Now you will learn about the settling and the starting of thriving.
The next step would be to settle your home. You could build it in a mountain or just on the land. I would recommend discounting fancy builds, and just build a wood and cobblestone hut with a basement, lit with torches. If you choose to make a mountain your home, just make a small hole in the side of it, light it up, and bam, you have a home. Now, you can make your cave home more comfortable, but that will be in a later step.
I’m going to assume that you have found a good spot to make your home. Once you build your home, I would recommend going out to either mine or collect materials on the surface. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of the two options.
Mining:
It gets you many much needed recourses, such as cobblestone, iron, and coal. Don’t go too deep right now, though. These recourses will help you in both adventures underground and on the surface.
Now for the disadvantages. The most nagging problem is the lack of food and materials from the overworld that you have probably used to make your house. With the food, you will probably end up eating rotten flesh, which poisons your hunger bar. Also, mining can be dangerous. One slip, and you could fall to your death or to lava. There could be anything around the corner, even a creeper waiting to blow you and your new materials to pieces. I would recommend staying away from mining and go for the latter choice, the surface.
Collecting materials on the surface
The advantages of this are obvious: during the day, no monsters will spawn on the surface, and you can sleep out the night. While it can become light again on the surface, only torches can solve the darkness in caves. Also, you can get good food, such as meat, and also collect seeds to make a farm. If you find an NPC village, then loot their crops and then replant them for later. Then, make sure you have enough to make your own farm.
The only disadvantage is that you are staying with stone tools and not moving up to iron. Also, you can’t get any armor better then leather, and anyways, Iron armor is much better.
These two steps are your steps to success. After one, do the other. These ARE from my own experiences in my minecraft survival, which I have been playing for two years. Due to updates, I DID transfer my world into another(I will talk about that later, so just don’t bother about it right now).
If you die, don’t panic. You are so early in the game that you are bound to start again and be ready again for this step within a few days. Panic could kill you again. YOU CAN TRY TO GET YOUR STUFF BACK, but if you chose to mine, don’t. Just start over again in that case.
This step is probably the biggest that early minecrafters will experience, and I would recommend trying to make this step worth something.
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