Tutorials/Beginner's guide
This guide is intended for those who are not familiar with Minecraft. It describes how to play and survive the first night of Minecraft's Survival mode, assuming you are playing in a difficulty more challenging than "Peaceful" and in single player mode. It also assumes you are playing in single-player mode - for any number of reasons, you really should try a single-player world for your first game.
HideControls
If you are reading this tutorial while you are playing Minecraft, it's recommended that you go to the Minecraft window and press Esc to pause the game. By doing this, you will have plenty of time to gather resources and create a shelter for the night, and monsters will not come up and kill you while you are away.
Before you start, you should learn the controls for the game. A full discussion of controls on all platforms can be found on, naturally, the Controls page. Here we discuss the default PC (and Mac) controls. Most of these can be changed in the Options menu (which can be reached from either the main menu or the pause (Esc) menu. There is one case (see below) where you really do want to change the default....)
The default keys for movement are as follows:
W moves forward (double-tap and hold to sprint)
A moves left
S moves back
D moves right
space to jump. If in deep water, Hold space to swim upwards so you can breathe.
⇧ Left Shift to crouch/sneak (hold to prevent falling off blocks and sliding down ladders)
As you do various things, you will see "items" appear and float just off the ground. As you move toward them (or if you're already very close to them), they will fly toward you and disappear into your inventory. Later you will have chests to store things in, but for the first day or so, your inventory will be plenty big enough for all the items you find.
Use the mouse to look around the world, and to act on blocks:
Moving the mouse changes the direction you are looking, without moving your character. (That is, looking around is always safe, Endermen notwithstanding.)
Click and hold the left mouse button to break down (or mine) blocks. This is how you collect resources from the environment. Rapid clicking does not work, even though it may seem to.
Right click to place or use the currently highlighted item from your inventory hot bar. Blocks and items such as torches get placed where your cursor is pointing (if possible), while other (non-mining) tools will do their various "things". Right-click and hold to eat food, or (when you have one) draw your bow.
The mouse wheel cycles through the currently held item in your inventory hot bar, or you can use the number keys 1 - 9.
E opens your inventory window, which lets you arrange your items and decide what goes on the hotbar. See the inventory page for full details.
Q will drop whatever item you are holding. You should probably change the drop key to something else, like G. This is because the Q key is right next to the movement keys, which makes it all too easy to throw away your tools, perhaps dropping them off a cliff, into the ocean, or even into lava. Regardless of the key setting, you can also drop items by opening your inventory, and dragging the items out of the inventory window.
F1 will toggle the HUD (Heads Up Display), including your hotbar, the various other "bars" (health, food, experience, armor), debug info, and the item you are holding. This gives you a clear view of the scene.
