Minecraft/Surviving the First Night

Punching Trees
Congratulations! You have now spawned in the world of Minecraft! Take a second to orient yourself with the controls, but not too long, because the sun will eventually set, and at night the world is a lot more dangerous.

You want to find a tree. Although there are four kinds of wood in Minecraft, any kind of wood will work fine. Walk up to the tree and begin punching it. When the block breaks, you will get wood. Punch one or two trees, then return to where you spawned (where you were when you first entered the world.) Press E to open your inventory and drag all the wood you got into the crafting grid. As you can see, this will create four wooden planks for every piece of wood. Shift-click to collect the planks.

Building Shelter
Now you need to build a house of some sort out of the planks. You can always expand it later, so don't worry too much about the size - just make it big enough to stand in and put a few things in it. A simple 2 meter high house with 12 square meters of space will suffice in a pinch. If you run out of planks, go punch more trees and make more.

Alternatively, you can build your house into the side of a hill and construct it out of dirt. Eventually you'll hit rock, which can form the back wall of your house while the hill itself becomes a ceiling. This is recommended in areas where trees are more scarce.

Crafting Table
Once you have made your house (make sure it has a roof!) you are ready to begin crafting your first bits of machinery and useful tools. In your house, get four wooden planks and place one in each slot of your crafting grid. You will see this can make you a crafting table! Make one and place it somewhere in your house. You will find that if you right-click on it, you will see another crafting grid - however, it is 3x3 instead of 2x2. There are various things you need to make, so let's get working.

Place two wooden planks in the grid, one on top of the other, to make sticks. Now we are going to make wooden tools. For a pickaxe, place two sticks in the bottom and middle center slots and three wooden planks across the top. For a shovel, do the same but with one plank on the top. For a hoe, do the same but with two planks on the top. For an axe, do the same but two planks on the top and one on the side-center. Finally, for a sword, put one stick on the bottom and two planks in the center and top center.

One last thing - put six planks in the crafting table, covering two-thirds of the grid (the first two columns should be filled.) This will make a door, put it in the house entrance. If you run out of planks or sticks at all during this procedure, go punch more trees and make more planks and sticks.

Another thing you can make is a chest - put planks in a square in the crafting grid so that every space is filled but the center. This chest allows you to put items in it and free up space in your inventory. If you die, your inventory is dropped where you died, but if you put what you don't need in a chest, it'll be spared if you cannot get to your death point in time. Remember to make lots of chests to hoard your items!

Getting Coal
Okay, let's learn how to use your Wooden Pickaxe. You may have tried punching grass before. You may also notice that it takes an absurdly long time to punch stone, which is under grass. Well, this is what your pick is for - it can dig out stone much faster than your hand! Make a mine somewhere near your house in a stair-like pattern - make sure you don't dig straight down, or you will have to dig out stairs later which can take a while. Mine until you find a stone that appears to have some black marks on it. This is coal. Mine it out (it takes slightly longer than stone) and try to get a bunch of it. However, don't spend too much time!

You may have noticed that when you mine the stone, it gives you something called cobblestone. There is a way to make normal stone, but most crafting recipes use cobblestone, not normal (or 'smooth') stone. You may also notice your tools have a sort of 'health-bar'. This bar will soon empty and the tool will break. That's okay, though - you can make more! If you need to get more wood, try cutting the tree down with your wooden axe - it's faster.

When you get back to your house (hopefully it's not night yet) go to your crafting table and put a piece of coal on top of a stick. This will make torches. Put torches inside your house and just outside. Congratulations, your house is now safe to stay in! If it's night, wait until the next day to proceed to the next step. If it's still day, however, carry on.

Getting Wool and Meat
There are two more basic things you need to learn in order to be able to survive. Let's try out that Wooden Sword of yours!

You've probably noticed the sheep, pigs, chickens and cows that roam the land. Well, as it turns out, they are vital to your survival. The first thing you'll want to do is find a sheep and hit it with your Wooden Sword. Now you have wool! Kill enough sheep to get three wool, then return to your home. Fill up the middle row of your crafting table with wool and the bottom row with planks to make a bed. You can sleep in this bed by right-clicking on it at night if no monsters are around, this will let you skip the night if you don't want to stand around in your house for a long time.

Have you noticed the hunger bar on your HUD? It's probably low by now, right? Go find cows, pigs or chickens and kill them with swords. They will probably drop raw meat. You can eat this meat, but it doesn't fill up your hunger that much.

On the next part of the walkthrough, we will create a furnace, cook our meat, mine more, and build stone and iron tools!