3 Strategies to Help You Survive the First Night in Minecraft - For Dummies

The first night in Minecraft can be a doozy if you’re not prepared! Knowing a few simple strategies can help you make it out alive, and set the pace to stay alive (you hope) throughout the game.

Strategy 1: Implement the basic strategy

The first approach we suggest that you take to survive the night is basic, and it’s one used quite frequently by players of Minecraft. Here’s a summary of the basic strategy:

1. Harvest trees by punching wood.

   

2. Build a crafting table.

3. Construct a shelter.

4. Craft wooden tools and a sword.

If you’re playing in Peaceful mode, it isn’t necessary to build a shelter or sword. You can choose any optional activities or try your hand at building an effective house.

Strategy 2: Use the safe strategy with popular optional activities

Though the first strategy prepares you for the night, it leaves a bit of risk and little protection. The second strategy for surviving the night ensures that you’ve covered all the bases to make yourself completely safe. These steps, though perhaps requiring a little more work to achieve, ensure a peaceful night of sleep with little interruption from mobs on your first night:

Begin by harvesting trees, creating a crafting table and chest. Then obtain tools as desired. Next, look for sheep and craft a bed. Then look for a place to build a shelter and create your house. Using the remaining daylight, look for animals and trap them by digging a hole, trying to get at least two of each animal except for chickens, which requires only one. Finally, start looking for caves or dig a staircase mine.

Here are the steps:

1. Harvest trees.

   You can do so by punching wood.

2. Create a crafting table and chest.

3. Craft tools and weapons.

4. Find and kill sheep and craft a bed.

   Just like real life, in Minecraft sheep are one of the animals you can kill to get meat to feed yourself and wool to build beds and other things. Fortunately, the sheep in Minecraft are 8-bit pixel animals and the killing is hardly violent. After you’ve killed some sheep, you’ll want to craft a bed.

5. Create a simple shelter.

6. Trap animals other than sheep.

   Using the remaining daylight, look for animals and trap them by digging a hole, trying to get at least two of each animal. Trapping animals allows you to have food and energy when you need it, and by having more than one animal they will spawn and produce even more animals in your hole!

   

7. Look for caves or dig a staircase mine.

   You can do this by looking for caves or digging a staircase mine.

Strategy 3: Plan an adventure strategy

The strategy we describe in this section is for more adventurous players, who are comfortable fighting a mob or two and who want to take much more risk on their first night. As in all other strategies we describe for surviving the first night, we start by punching wood (harvesting trees). Next, you should craft a sword because you will be fighting. The bed you sleep in won’t work if mobs are nearby.

After all the tools you want have been crafted, break the crafting table and take it with you. Look for sheep so that you can craft that all-important bed. Now it’s time to travel on your adventure. Start moving and look for anything — a cave, a village, or even a pyramid! Villages work well for starter homes, but you’ll have to fight off the zombies. This strategy is targeted at exploring the Minecraft world nomad-style rather than create a large house (or base) with connecting farms and mines. There’s no single correct way to play Minecraft!

If you have crafted a bed and sword, you do not need a shelter, because you can either fight off mobs or sleep the night away.

You can choose from plenty of other successful strategies using a combination of required and optional Day One activities. Many players like to experiment with different ideas and strategies every time they play, whereas others stick to a single method that proves effective.

When it’s daytime again, the world becomes safer. The undead catch fire in sunlight, spiders no longer attack you, and endermen disappear as they teleport away from the harmful light; creepers are still harmful, but they eventually leave as well. If you’re in any mode other than Peaceful mode, congratulations on surviving your first night! Now you can turn your attention to mastering the basic skills needed to survive hunger.