5 steps to unleash your inner blockhead and start your Minecraft odyssey 🎮 🪨 ⛏️

So you've finally bought Minecraft and created your Xbox profile account.

Photo by Nina Rivas on Unsplash

You sit down, load the game and select your character, Steve (male) or Alex (female).

Now what?

It's time to unleash your inner adventurer, that's what! Start your first Minecraft world and live to tell the tale.

Minecraft is a sandbox video game where you explore and create virtual worlds made up of blocks.

You can start a singleplayer world or join an existing multiplayer server.

You can customize settings like name, difficulty, and game mode in any world you create.

Set your spawn point by sleeping in a bed or using a /spawnpoint command. Your spawn point is the location where your character will generate in the Minecraft world when joining for the first time or upon death.

When choosing your game mode, think about what you want to do in your new world.

• Survival mode: gather resources and survive thunderstorms and monster attacks.

• Creative mode: you have unlimited resources and are free to build and explore.

• Adventure mode: play custom maps created by other players, but you typically can't break or place blocks.

• Spectator mode: explore the world without interacting with it.

Explore your new world and gather basic resources like wood, stone, iron, coal, and food.You'll need these to feed yourself, craft tools, build structures, and survive hostile mob attacks in the game.

• To gather wood, hit a tree with your hands or any tool you have.

• To gather wool, kill a sheep. Once you craft shears, you can shear them instead.

• To gather stone, break gray blocks on cliffs.

• To gather iron and coal, find an entrance to a cave and break gray blocks with tan (for iron) and black (for coal) spots using a stone pickaxe.

• Any animals and crops you see in the wild can be your food source. For best results, don't kill baby animals, and prepare the soil before you plant the seeds.

Use the crafting menu to turn your gathered resources into useful tools and items.

• Gather wood and turn it into planks. Use the planks to create a crafting table. Use the table to craft other things.

• Gather wood and stone to craft tools (like a shovel and a pickaxe).

• Gather iron to craft weapons to protect yourself (like a sword or an axe).

• Gather food and coal to cook the food.

• Craft a bed to set your spawn point and rest. Hostile mobs that appear at night can't hurt you when you're in bed.

As you gather more resources and become familiar with the game, you can start building structures. Start by planning and building your base, then consider more complex structures.

You can explore caves for valuable ores, and experiment with redstone (aka Minecraft electricity).

You can use redstone to craft:

• items and blocks needed to build power doors, gates, and trapdoors

• defense systems

• redstone lamps and torches, and more

At this stage in the game, the only things limiting you are your imagination and adulting. Good luck!

Ready for more?