Starting in Minecraft- Your First Shelter (Basics)

So!  It’s your first day, and you’ve already spent about half of it gathering some wood and putting together a set of stone tools and torches to use.  What’s next?

Well, if you haven’t already, you’ll need to find a place where you can set up your first shelter.  Your first shelter doesn’t need to be permanent, it doesn’t need to be big- you shouldn’t even worry about whether or not it looks nice.  Your only concern should be having a safe place to spend the nighttime.  Fancy castles, elaborate towers, subterranean fortresses, and other elaborate architecture is all fine and dandy, but if it takes more than one day to set it up, it’s simply no use to you yet.

So, what does your first shelter need?  Before anything else, it needs a location.

You’re going to want four things out of this first shelter’s location.  First of all, you want to have resources near it.  The basic resources that you’re going to use regularly on minecraft are as follows: Trees for lumber, a place to dig for stone and ore, and something that you can use as a landmark to recall where it is and see it from a distance, so you’re not wasting the dusk searching for home and running out of time before night falls.

The second thing you want out of this first shelter is security.  No shelter will do you any good if it’s an unlit cave- in fact, that can be more dangerous even than being stuck on the surface during the night.  At least on the surface you can outrun the monsters- in a small penned in cave, you’ve got nowhere to go if something pops into existence near you and thinks you look tasty.  Especially since you can’t see in the dark, and they can.

The third thing you want is animals.  Apples are a nice convenience, but unless you spend all day chopping and planting trees (not that that’s not perfectly okay to do- I’ve done it myself on some occasions), you’re simply not going to have enough apples to keep your hunger bar full.  Specifically, you want to have either pigs, cows, or chickens nearby- and you definitely want sheep nearby.  Sheep are your source of wool, wool lets you make a bed, and a bed will let you put your spawn point inside your shelter, so that if you die and are forced to respawn, you respawn somewhere safe from mobs.

The fourth thing you want out of your first shelter is a landmark.  The best first shelters are usually near, on, or under something easily recognizable so that you don’t have to hunt very long for them- this lets you squeeze more time out of the day and avoid wandering around in the dark because you can’t remember exactly where your door is.  Narrow mountains, large chasms, islands, or unusual terrain (like a mountain with a tunnel through it) all make excellent landmarks.  If you’re in a bit of a bind for a marker, you can always make one- a popular choice is a very tall stack of dirt with a torch at the top.  This can easily be done by plunking down two dirt blocks side by side, then building up one side at a time and jumping from stack to stack until you’re high enough.  Plant a torch on top of one column, then stand on the other and dig down until you’re back at ground level, and you’ve just made yourself an easy marker.  There are other solutions, though.  If your first shelter happens to be up a tree, for instance, all you have to do is cut enough leaves off the top to plunk a torch down on the trunk, and your shelter has marked itself.

If you keep in mind these four elements- resources, security, animals, and a landmark, making yourself a starting shelter will always be easy.  Remember, if all else fails, dig a small pit and cover it with dirt, build four columns around a single square, climb to the top of a large tree and hunker down in the middle- whatever will keep you safe at night.  You can always improve your shelter once the sun comes up and while you may feel humiliated or put off, at least you won’t be spending your entire night dying again and again and possibly losing the precious resources and tools you gathered and crafted.

Of course, security needs more explanation- and that’s what the next article will be for.  I’ll see you in it, alright?  Have a good night, and enjoy your Minecraft!