A Quick Guide To Minecraft

If you are a PC gamer you have probably heard of the game ‘Minecraft’ or ‘MC’ for short. But what is this game about, you may ask. Well Minecraft is a sandbox indie game. So the concept is that you get dropped in a world of blocks that is entirely your own. You have no quests to do or storyline to follow. You are the boss. Sounds boring right?  But there is more to it, otherwise there wouldn’t be more than 10 million people who bought the game. The beauty of the game is that it stimulates your creativity, after all you are the creator of your own world!

Credit: Minecraft

History

Minecraft is created by Markus Persson who is known under his pseudonym Notch. Later it was developed by Mojang, Markus’ Company. The alpha release was on the 7th of May 2009 and it was only available for PC. The official PC release was on November 18, 2011. At the time of writing the game has also an Android, IOS and Xbox version. The game also recieved several awards on game festivals and was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the category of Best Downloadable Game in 2012.

The Game

Minecraft is a sandbox game that has no specific goals to accomplish or storyline to play. So as the player you can choose entirely free how you want to play the game. You can go out and gather resources (such as dirt, sand, stone, water, etc.) and create other tools with them or build an underground city. Everything you can imagine actually.

In the beginning your character is randomly placed on the surface of a random generated world. You can encounter different biomes on your journey from deserts to snowy mountains. The game works with a time cycle of 20 minutes. 10 minutes day time, 10 minutes nighttime. While you’re playing you will see various animals and monsters, known as mobs.

Gamemodes

Survival Mode

This is the basic game mode, you spawn and need to gather resources to survive your first night. After that you can collect materials to make tools or to craft armour or to build structures. At night various hostile mobs spawn so you will have to defend against them. To survive you will have to gather food so that you can replenish your health. There are literally tons of things to do here. And if you are tired of the normal survival mode you can try some alternative things to do

Hardcore Mode

Mostly the same as Survival mode. The only difference is that you can’t change the difficulty, and it’s set on the hardest (mobs hit more and they have more health.) Plus you don’t respawn if you die and your world will be deleted. Then the game is over.

Creative Mode

In this game mode you have unlimited resources. Just open your inventory and you have all the blocks available. You can place and remove them instantly without mining the block or anything. The player also has the ability to fly around and he can’t receive any damage from mobs or because he fell from to high, fell in lava etc. This game mode was created so that people could make large projects without gathering the materials and taking hits.

Adventure Mode

This game mode is made to play custom created maps from other players or to start adventures. The overall gameplay is the same as Survival Mode but it has a lot of restrictions like players can’t place or destroy blocks without the appropriate tools. This way players can only get items  and play the adventure in the way that the creator of the map wanted it. A new block that was created for Adventure Mode is the command block, with this block a map maker can interact with the user through server commands.

Multiplayer Mode

There is a dutch saying that says: “Hoe meer zielen hoe meer vreugd”. What means the more the better. Minecraft’s multiplayer game mode allows players to team up and survive together. Or build an enormous project together. The multiplayer is available with player hosted servers. Or you can set up a little local area network server that allows players on your network to join you in your adventures. There are again tons of options when you are in a multiplayer server. There are Hunger Game servers, PvP (Player vs Player) servers and even RPG (Role Playing Game) servers. And it’s not even hard to host your own!

The First Day

I can’t put you in the wild without some preparations, can I? When you start a new world on minecraft you spawn on a random place. From that point you have 10 minutes to gather some basic supplies and find a shelter for the night. So from the moment you spawn, look around for some trees. Wood will be your first priority, try to gather 10 pieces of it. With the wood you will make planks and with the planks you will make a crafting table. Now convert some planks to sticks and use your crafting table to make a wooden pickaxe. As soon as you got your pickaxe search for coal. Search for a mountain and start mining in it. As soon as you find a block with some black ores in it you’ve found coal. With the coal you can make torches so you can light up your shelter in the night. When you didn’t find coal and it’s getting dark don’t worry. Make a cave in a mountain and close it off. Just wait here for the night to pass. In the meantime you could mine up some more stone and maybe if you are lucky you will find some coal in the process.

I hope you enjoyed this article. What I wrote here was only the top of the iceberg! You can install mods (Modifications of the minecraft code) or play spleef tournaments. The minecraft community shares it’s creativity with other people so that they can enjoy it to. There are even some ways to make money from Minecraft. But that would be too much to cover. For now I will point you to the Minecraft Wiki.