A beginners Guide to Minecraft A guide to all the aspects of the game.
Contents Seeing if minecraft is the game for you:................................................................................................ 2 Downloading and installing Minecraft: ................................................................................................. 5 Controls: ................................................................................................................................................. 8 Surviving your first night: ........................................
Seeing if minecraft is the game for you: In order to download, install and (in some cases) play minecraft, you will need access to … A computer The internet Your credit card However seeing as you are going to be playing the free “trial” version, you will not need to pay anything. The first step is to go the minecraft web site, www.minecraft.net.
When minecraft finishes downloading, you will get a window that looks something like this … (please note that the terrain may be different for you) In this version you will have unlimited resources and instant mining. The bar at the bottom of the screen is your interactive inventory. At the moment your inventory will contain (from left to rite) Stone, Cobble stone, Brick, Dirt, Wooden plank, Wood, Leaves, Glass and Stone Slab.
Although you may be limited to the materials that you can use, that doesn’t mean that you can’t turn what you have into a something good! Alright, its decision time! If you feel that minecraft is the game for you, then the next section will show you how to download and install the full version of minecraft.
Downloading and installing Minecraft: Click on the “Minecraft” logo in the top rite hand corner of the screen, it will take you back to the home screen. Before you can purchase a copy of minecraft, you’ll need to make an account. Click on the “register” link on the top rite of the screen. Now it’s time to make an account. Just enter the a valid user name and password, and your e-mail address.
Once you have found a valid username and password. You will be sent a verification code via e-mail. This is the e-mail that you are looking for … inside the e-mail will be a link, click on the link and it will take you back to the page you left it at, but this time, you will get a message that says Now it’s time to purchase the game! Once you are back on the home screen, click on the already purchased a copy of minecraft).
Once you have finished paying for the game, you can either download it or play it in the browser. In this tutorial we are going to download it. Click on the “Download” link showen in the picture opposite. im going to assume that your running windows (if not just follow the prompts in the link “show all platforms”. Click on the link “Minecraft.exe (270 KB)” then select where you want to put Minecraft (I recommend the desktop).
Controls: To start the game click on the “singleplayer” button and “create new world”. The controls to Minecraft are very simple. To move, simply press the W key to go forward; the A key to go left; the D key to go rite and the S key to go backwards. Use the mouse to look around and the mouse wheel to scroll through your interactive inventory. Use the left mouse button to destroy blocks (as I have done in the picture below). Now that you have destroyed a block you need to pick it up.
Surviving your first night: your first going to need to start a new game, to do this go to the main menu of Minecraft and select the option “Singleplayer” from there select “create new world”. make sure that your screen looks like the image above (excluding the World name, you can call your world what you like). Now click “Create new World”. Once the game has finished loading you will be confronted with a huge world! Your character can spawn in either Snow, grass land, wooded areas or deserts.
Before you go anywhere you should set your render distance. Do this by pressing the ESC key and going to Options then video options. After that you should get a screen that looks like this … If you are not running a 64 bit Java installation, you will receive this message at the bottom of the screen. Make sure that you set your render distance to “Normal”. This will help to controll the lagg you may encounter while playing minecraft.
Click on the piece of wood that should be in your inventory. Move it into the “crafting” section of your inventory. Next to the arrow a wooden plank should appear by clicking on it you should receive 4 wooden planks. Go and gather some more wood. You can craft more than just wood, however to do that you’re going to need to step it up a notch. In order to that you’re going to need a “crafting table”.
Place your crafting table and rite click on it, you will get a menu that looks like this. Now place 2 of your wooden planks in the crafting table, one on top of the other, this should create sticks. collect these sticks and place them where you had placed your wooden planks. From there place 3 wooden planks on top of them, this will create a wooden pic axe. Collect the pic axe and go and mine some stone! (stone is a grey block) you have to dig to find it.
Remember when I said to keep one of your pieces of wood, well now’s the time to use it. When your inside the furnace place your piece of wood in the top square and some wooden planks in the bottom. When the arrow is fully white a piece of charcoal should appear. This is the same as coal. By placing the charcoal on top of a stick you will create 4 torches. Now it’s time to make a shelter. Keep in mind that your first shelter will not be the most glamorous thing.
Oh no! It’s starting to get dark! Get inside your shelter. Or if you’re feeling adventuress craft yourself a sword and take on the horrors of the night! If there are some sheep around you can try and kill them and take the wool they drop (you’ll need 3). When you get 3 wool and 3 wooden planks you can make a bed, place the 3 wooden planks on the bottom row and then the wool on the top of the wood. (The bed recipe and the sword recipe will be shown below). A bed will allow you to skip the night.
Mobs: All “living” things you encounter in minecraft are called “mobs”. These range from peaceful animals, such as pigs. To aggressive mobs such as skeletons. We’ll run threw them below. Friendly mobs: This is a pig. They are used as a source of food. This is a chicken. They are used for food in more than 1 way. They can be killed and then you can eat the chicken breast or you can wait and pick up the eggs they often drop.
Hostel mobs: This is a creeper. They are the only hostel mob that can survive in sunlight. Once they see you, they run at you and when they get within range, they explode! And seeing as the entire world of minecraft is interactive, they will leave a huge crater or destroy the structure you were working on. Skeletons are equipped with a bow and arrows. They are deadly at medium and close range. However, they cannot survive outside a cave in the light of day.
Endermen are slightly creepy. They are tall back mobs with glowing purple eyes. If you look at them, they will drop their lower jaw, start to shake and then disappear! Only to reappear somewhere near you! They will damage you slightly then vanish again! They will keep doing this until one of you are dead. However Endermen will only attack you if you look directly at them. They cannot survive the light of day and are damaged by water.
The nether: In order to get to the nether, you’ll need obsidian and a flint and tinder. to make obsidian, you’ll need to mix still lava with still water. From there you’ll need mine it with a diamond pick axe. (it does take a while). From there arrange the obsidian in a 5 x 4 rectangle and then light it with the flint and tinder.
Game modes: Minecraft has 2 different game modes. These are “survival” and “creative”. We have already touched on survival, so lets look at creative. Once the designers of minecraft realised that most players loved the building feature of the game, they decided to include it as a legitimate aspect of the game (rather than having people download mods). To go into creative mode, you’ll need to make a new game. Make sure that you set the game mode to creative! Then click “Create new world”.
All of the above images are legitimate builds that people have made in creative mode. For more amazing builds, YouTube: minecraft Timelaps.
The mysterious “eye of ender”: The eye of ender is a mysterious object that you collect from dead Endermen. At first this item might seem useless, however if you left click while holding it, it will levitate into the air and travel in a certain direction, then drop down. We’re going to follow these eyes of ender! follow the eye of ender until it starts to go down into the ground …. You may be walking for a while.
After digging down where the eye of ender went into the ground, you should drop into a dungeon of some sorts. after exploring for a while, you should come across something that looks like this you’ll need to place an eye of ender on each of the blocks. Once you have done this, a portal will appear! Now it’s time to take the plunge! I hope you brought a bow and a heap of arrows! … or a sword.
It’s a dragon! Your going to need some arrows! Its drawing health from somewhere. You’re going to need to take out those Towers to even scratch the dragon. Shooting an arrow at it, seems to do the trick. Once you drain all of the dragons health, you’ll be rewarded with a light show.
You will get a very deep and philosophical ending to Minecraft. It explains, not much about the game, but about the gamer. And then the credits roll. (if you don’t want to watch all of the credits, press the Esc key).
