How to Survive The First Night in Minecraft

As somebody, somewhere, once said, the first night is always the hardest. On Minecraft, that’s definitely the case. After a random world has been generated for you, you’re on your own in a vast wilderness. And there’s no familiarity if you’ve seen Minecraft before – it generates a unique landscape for you. It could be dominated by water, sand, grassy fields, be covered in steep cliffs, be infested by pigs (believe me, it happens) or be covered in snow. It’s pretty hard, even if it’s Easy (if that makes sense. It probably doesn’t), to survive the first night. So for the first of my weekly Minecraft tutorial… things, I’ll be showing you how to survive your first night in Minecraft. You can trust me. Honestly. I think.

A new world

Once you’ve been plonked feet-first into the wild, there’s the temptation to wander around and explore your surroundings. That’s an alright idea if you’re a tad more competent than me (that’s not hard), but if you’re a complete beginner then the first thing you need to do is go and chop down some wood. Once you’ve collected enough wood (25 is a good amount), you should then craft it into build-able wooden planks, then you’re ready to start building your house. The house should be about 6 across and 3 up, (roof optional), and by the time you’ve finished slaving away it should be dark, but there’s one last thing you should do before you go to sleep; find some comfy bedding to rest your cute pixelated head upon. Wool can be collected by punching sheep (yes, I know. Minecraft is not the game for you if you’re a vegan), and once you’ve got some wool, it is time to craft a bed out of wool and wood. Finally, build a wooden door (you don’t need one, it’s just handy), pop it on the side of your house and go to sleep. Oh, and shut the door too. Don’t make my mistakes.

Is it a monster? Yes, it’s a monster, and it’s in my bloody house

If your house has a design flaw, (or more rarely, if you’ve built your house just above a mob spawner, nothing like waking up in the middle of the night to find monsters seemingly coming from nowhere) you’ll know about it sooner rather than later. Usually, when you sleep you’ll wake up in the morning, but sometimes you get woken up by invading monsters. You can still make it through the night unscathed (or at least not dead) in the event of a monster… breach. Ideally, sleep with a crafted wooden or stone sword since that’s all you’re gonna get in your first day if you’re anything like me), so you can pummel them if you are rudely awaken. If possible, patch up the flaw in your house and go back to sleep. If you don’t have the resources, just hold on all night, and you should make it. Unless you come across the house-destroying exploding creeper, that is…

And morning rises

So if you’ve woken up and it’s light, or the creatures invading your house are burning to cinders, then congratulations! You made it through the first night, and while it isn’t plain sailing from here (Four words: Unexpected holes = Fall damage), it certainly gets a lot easier from now on. You can explore the world, expand your house, go mining, kill some animals, chop down trees, go base jumping (not a good idea) or wait til the second night and go monster hunting (I said this was fun in my Xbox 360 Edition review a few days ago, but I went hunting again and I got killed a lot. And I mean A LOT). You’ve now entered the world of Minecraft. Sort of.

Part two of this weekly series, ‘How to Mine in Minecraft‘, will be posted on Thursday June 14.