Minecraft Beginner Guide: How to Survive Your First Night

Find the nearest tree and hold the attack button on a log to break it. Collect at least 10 to 15 logs before you do anything else. Wood is the base of almost every early item, and you will need more than you think.

Open your inventory and turn logs into planks. Four planks make a crafting table, which unlocks the full 3x3 crafting grid. Place it near you, then turn two planks into sticks.

Craft a wooden pickaxe at the crafting table and use it only to mine stone. Stone gives you cobblestone, and cobblestone tools are much better: make a stone pickaxe, a stone axe and a stone sword. A stone shovel is useful too if you plan to dig a shelter.

Collect at least 8 extra cobblestone. That is exactly what a furnace needs, and you will want one before night.

Coal ore looks like stone with black spots and is common on cliff faces and in shallow caves. One piece of coal and one stick make four torches. Light is your best defence: hostile mobs do not spawn in well-lit places, so a few torches around your shelter make a huge difference.

If you cannot find coal, put logs in a furnace and use more wood as fuel to make charcoal. It works the same way for torches.

Your hunger bar drops as you run, jump and fight. Cows, pigs, chickens and sheep drop raw meat, and cooking it in your furnace makes it far more filling. A few pieces of cooked meat are enough for the first day.

While you are hunting, look for sheep. Three wool of the same colour and three planks make a bed. Sleeping in a bed at night skips straight to morning and also sets your respawn point, so if something goes wrong you come back next to your base instead of at the world spawn.

Your first shelter does not need to be pretty. The fastest option is to dig a small room into the side of a hill, close the entrance with a block or a door, and place a torch inside. A small wooden hut works too, as long as it has a roof and no gaps.

Put your crafting table, furnace and bed inside. When the sky starts to turn orange, go in, close the door and sleep. If someone else in a multiplayer world is still awake, use the night to craft, cook and organise a chest.

Do not dig straight down: you can fall into a cave or lava with no way back up. Do not wander far from your base when the light gets low. Keep an ear out for the hiss of a creeper and step back right away. And do not stand in water at night without a plan, because drowned and other mobs can surround you there.

Once you have survived the first night, the next goals are iron tools, a bigger base and a farm, and eventually a trip to the Nether. Our guide to building a Nether portal explains that step.