So now you’ve got your first shelter- you’ve picked out an area, checked your available spots, placed your initial shelter, and stepped inside (or atop) it to spend your first night somewhere safe from monsters. But what should you be keeping here, so that you can use this place as a good base for your Minecraft operations until you can set up something nicer?
Look no further, for here comes explanation!
......okay, yeah, that was kind of lame. Anyways.
In order to better illustrate what I’m going to explain in this article, I’ve started a new single-player game of Minecraft, so I can show as well as tell. Because of what I started with, I’ll be showing you a basic shelter dug into the side of a chasm, though yours certainly doesn’t need to be in a chasm as well.
Upon starting my game, I found myself on a hillside beside a desert. Rather than trek out into the sandy wastes looking for something useful (a fruitless proposition without some more advanced skill use) I chose to climb to the top of the hillside and look around- and found myself in a large field of grass with pigs, chickens, -and- sheep in it. There were even frequent, if slightly scattered, trees there- so I already had most of what I would need right there, near my spawn point, and I would only have to remember to go uphill if I should die and need to respawn.
A winning proposition if ever I heard one, which leaves only finding coal. And, as luck would have it, I almost immediately ran across a large chasm. Happily, it had not only coal in abundance, but several veins of iron exposed as well!
This makes it an ideal location for my first shelter, and possibly for later construction as well. With that decided, my next step was obvious- chop down and replant a couple of trees for wood.
One crafting table and a wooden pick later, the next step was also pretty simple- carve out a stairway down into the chasm so I could get down without jumping in and breaking my legs. This would also provide me with an opportunity to carve out some coal and get plenty of stone for my first set of tools. Choosing a likely spot, I dug down into the side of the chasm- and then found a natural stone bridge raised across the middle of it, providing my way down with protection against the monsters that would likely wander out of the caverns at either end of the chasm. What’s more, there was coal at the far side of that bridge- so I set about digging it out. Now with a freshly made nook, I had an ideal place to carve out my first shelter for the game- so I did.
I immediately set about digging out a room four blocks long by three blocks wide by three blocks high. I’m aware that making my room three blocks high puts me at some risk of an Enderman popping in for tea and possibly also my skull, but I’ve always felt a bit cramped in areas where the space is only two blocks high. Something about hitting my head, I expect.
Now I needed to set things up during my first night, so my shelter would be an ideal base location.
Funny enough, only three things are really needed to make your first shelter right, though you’ll want two more soon after.
The three basic things are: a crafting table, a box, and a torch.
The torch provides light, the crafting table gives you a place to make things, but the box is the most essential part of your shelter.
Generally speaking, the only resources you want to carry with you if you can possibly help it are the tools you need to use, torches for light, and, if you have any, some kind of food to keep yourself from starving. Any and everything else you have, you want to store in a box, so that if you die, you don’t drop it- potentially into lava, down a pit, or in the middle of a batch of hostile monsters. To this end, you want to start out working near your temporary shelter so you can repeatedly return to it and dump your valuables into the box you keep there. Large boxes are very important, because you’re likely to quickly generate a lot of stuff you want to store- even stone and dirt are important to keep ahold of. Also, a box gives you a space to keep a set of spare tools, so that if you die and respawn, you can grab those instead of having to re-craft them or go wandering around without a sword and pick.
There are two other things you’re likely to want in your shelter, and you should make sure that as soon as you’ve built your shelter it already has space for them. These two things are a furnace and a bed. The furnace is simple and I could easily have already placed it, but I didn’t terribly feel like it just yet, as the furnace really isn’t needed until you have some ore to smelt or food to cook, neither of which I had time for on my first day.
The second thing is the bed, which is possibly the fourth most important tool in the game (behind the torch, crafting table, and pick). Remember when making your shelter that beds take up two blocks that share a face, and need two blocks of additional space above them or you won’t be able to use the bed. Because of this, wherever you place your bed needs to be a three-block-high space- which is another good reason to make your first shelter a touch on the tall side.
With all of this done, you’re ready- and all you need to do is wait out the rest of your first night. You can spend it making your shelter bigger, of course, if you want to, but remember that you have no food yet, so it’ll be very easy to work yourself into starvation- and that will make you very vulnerable.
Now that I’ve guided you through making and occupying your first shelter, it’s time to bring this series of articles to a close. Good night, and happy Minecrafting!
