Minecraft: Alone in the field with a pickaxe and diamonds

Minecraft is a single-player (for one player) game with extensive multiplayer (a mode where players can interact with each other) and co-op (where players with common interests can come together to play together) in the sandbox genre. This means that the player can directly influence the environment in the game by creating, destroying or modifying various objects. Minecraft's entire game space consists of cubic blocks half the size of the player's model.

The uncomplicated name "Minecraft" came from the fusion of two words: mine, to mine, and craft, to create. In fact, these are the aspects that will account for ninety percent of your time in this game. Climbing into a mine, mining resources, crafting, creating something and going back into the mine is romantic.

If by some remarkable coincidence you haven't had a chance to try Minecraft in 2023 - then this article will tell you everything you need to know about where to start and how to become the coolest miner.

"Don't act like that crazy man. If you see a green madman like that, get out."

First steps

For starters, it's a good idea to download Minecraft. Here you have the choice of playing the game on a computer or a phone/tablet. Once installed, it's worth figuring out how to move around, interact with objects in the environment, and create objects. And of course, you should try all three game modes - Survival, Creative Mode and Adventure.

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Game Modes

In Survival and Creative modes, the player finds himself in an unknown, procedurally generated world of blocks. This means that each world created by the player is unique and unrepeatable. And infinite, because beyond the limit of visibility, the world continues to be generated before the player's eyes as he moves. In an adventure, the player can create a world and within it challenges and quests (tasks). Then he shares the created world with a community of players so they can have the experience their creator intended. And he himself can enter the world created by another player. To live up to the author's idea, you can't just destroy blocks in adventure mode, you need special tools for that.

"Peace and quiet - that can be beautiful in Minecraft"

Survival 

In this mode, as can be easily guessed, the player must survive - explore the world, mine resources, build a shelter, craft armor and weapons, tools to work with the environment, defend against enemy mobs (non-playable characters controlled by the AI) and interact with friendly mobs.

Creativity

...or, as the players call it, creative - a move aimed at complete freedom of thought and creation: from the beginning of the game, the player has access to all tools, objects and blocks, suffers no hunger, takes no damage and can move freely through the air. And already here the player's goals are limited by a flight of imagination - you are the god of your world.

"Very cool creative work by players"

Since Creative is not particularly interesting and the adventure dictates its own rules to each player, this guide will be limited to rules and tips for survival, because it is a complex and multilayered mode with a lot of subtleties and nuances.

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Survival Guide

It's worth noting right away that play sessions in games of the sandbox genre are almost never the same. And yet, every experienced Minecraft player begins a playthrough of the game in roughly the same way.

After going through the world-building process, the player finds himself in an unknown location in one of the game's biomes (areas of the game world that are distinctly different from each other - deserts, plains, forests, winter biomes, etc.), so it's a good idea to look around first.

"Examples of several biomes"

After exploring the area, you should find the nearest tree and destroy its trunk. You can break it with your bare hands and in return you will get some wooden blocks, from which you can make boards in the character inventory menu. From these, in turn, you make a workbench by placing one block in each of the four slots for crafting items.

A workbench is needed to increase the size of the item crafting grid. You can only craft tools, furnishings, and armor on the workbench. The workbench is activated by pressing the E interaction key.

On the workbench you just built, you need to make a wooden pickaxe from sticks and boards. All the craft recipes can be found on the Internet; we will not dwell on them. A certain number of paving stones must be mined with the pickaxe. They will never be superfluous - they are one of the most needed resources in the game. Besides, you can already make stone tools from sticks and cobblestones, which will be able to cope with their tasks faster and will not break down so quickly.

"The main block in the game – workbench"

Build a kiln from eight blocks of cobblestones. With it you can smelt all kinds of ores into ingots, from which you can make other interesting things.

Oven

In the furnace interaction window, there are three windows through which the player can merge some materials with others. The lowest window is the fuel window. This is where combustible materials must be placed. The top one is the source component, from which the player gets what he is interested in. In the window to the right of the first two fields, the finished material that comes out of the processing appears after the delivery time.

You have a workbench and a stove. This is enough to create all the necessary conditions for survival. Now, depending on the biotope you are in, choose the materials with which to build your dwelling. Here there are no recommendations, but remember that loose materials such as sand or gravel are subject to gravity, so you can not build a ceiling from them.

"Furnace in the process of processing"

Choose a place and plan to build it. A tiny hut of 7 by 7 blocks is sufficient to start with. Build walls, a ceiling and a door - this is an insurmountable obstacle for most mobs.

Unless you are a very fast player, it is already approaching evening, and the nights in Minecraft are dark and dangerous. So we should build a bed - the only way to waste time in the game. To do this, you need to make a pair of scissors from two metal ingots, melted from iron ore. So look for a cave or a high mountain - somewhere there will be ore. Get it with a stone hoe.

Melt all available ores and use wood or coal as fuel. If the game does not throw you critical little ore, do not forget to make an iron pickaxe - with it you will be able to mine absolutely every ore in the game. Yes, not every rock in the game can be mined with an iron or stone pickaxe.

"Time to open the dacha season"

Make a pair of scissors out of two iron bars (you can do this without a workbench) and then find a sheep, or better, several. Use the scissors to cut off their wool, which you will need to make the bed. Yes, you can deprive a sheep of its wool by simply killing it, but we condemn such a thing and spare the sheep. After all, a shorn sheep will soon be fat again and able to give more wool.

With 3 pieces of wool and 3 blocks of boards in stock, you build your first bed on the workbench. It's been a hard day today, get some rest.

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Has the American dream come true?

You've found your place and built your shelter, but what's next? What is your goal? Of course, your next task is to conquer the edge and defeat the dragon. In fact, to reach the end proposed by the developers, you'll have to defeat a certain dragon that lives in a special reality called "The Edge". Although this reality is called Ender in the original English, from the word End - end, so something like "The Outskirts". However, in order to get to this dimension, you must first go to the "Nether" and find the Fortress there. You could say it's like an egg hunt game: Needle in the egg, egg in the duck, duck in the rabbit, rabbit in the chest. It's up to you to uncover this sequence and move on.

"Angular Toothless!"

So go to the Nether, explore it, find the fortress and collect all the resources and equipment you need to fight the dragon. Be careful, because the dragon is a very strong and dangerous opponent.

Get ready for an epic battle and use all your abilities and resources to defeat the dragon and end your Minecraft journey with a victory.

Preparing for the trek

Before you go in search of the dragon, it is important to prepare well. Get equipment, arrows, an armor and collect enough resources. Also, it's worth building a solid house, planting a tree, raising a cow and... what else is on the list?

Now you realize what this game is all about - mining and creation now take up almost all your time. There are many ways to mine mineral resources in Minecraft, but you should pay special attention to mining precious metals and fossils.

Gold, for example, can be extracted from mines. It is one of the basic materials for making useful items and tools. Explore the mines, look for gold mines and collect gold to be ready for the coming battle. Besides gold, you should also look for other useful resources like diamonds, iron and rare materials. Use your tools like pickaxe and shovel to mine ores and collect resources.

"There's a lot in Minecraft. Lots of. Items."

Don't forget crafting - the process of making items. Use the workbench to turn the resources you collect into useful items, weapons, armor and tools. So keep mining and crafting items to get the necessary equipment and resources for your journey to the edge. Gradually collect gold, find other useful materials and prepare for the big fight with the dragon.

You need good armor and weapons to have more security in the game. In Minecraft there are different minerals that you can use to make tools, armor and weapons. While tools can even be made from stone and wood, armor can only be made from valuable minerals such as iron, gold or diamonds.

By far the most durable armor in the game is Netherite, and the same goes for weapons, which do more damage compared to other materials. Therefore, two types of ores are the most valuable in mining: diamond ore and iron ore.

"What about the gold ore?" - you may ask. Yes, you can make weapons and armor from gold ore, but they will be much inferior in properties to iron ore. Given that gold ore is much rarer than iron ore, you don't want to waste it on less effective items.

If you find gold ore, by all means collect it, but don't focus too much on it. 

Without golden weapons or armor it is quite possible to play successfully!

"There is a set of ringed armor in the game (second from the left), but it is impossible to make it. You can only get it in the creative area or by hacking the game."

Where to look for ore in Minecraft?

The best question to ask yourself is, "How do I mine for ore?" because it is a process rather than a one-time action. One of the biggest challenges in ore mining is your vulnerability. Even with good equipment, you are not immune to falling from heights or having unexpected encounters with creepers. This is especially true at the beginning of the game, when even a single monster can become a deadly opponent.

What could be worse than losing all your accumulated wealth in an accidental death? Sure, you can try to run to the place of your demise and retrieve your belongings in time, but there is a risk that you will lose them or simply not make it in time and all your valuables will be lost forever.

Therefore, in our opinion, the safest tactic in ore mining is to avoid natural caves, ravines, labyrinths, and the like. In these places there are often hostile creatures that can not only kill you, but also simply throw you off a cliff. The best and most convenient way to find ore is to dig your own tunnels.

This way you can find the ore you need more safely and quickly. And since most of the diamond deposits are located at the very bottom of "The Overworld", the other types of ore can be found there as well.

"The most coveted find - diamond ore"

Simply put, dig down to the bottom (either to lava or to indestructible blocks), climb up 5-8 blocks, and start searching for diamond ore by building tunnels 2-3 blocks wide. In your search you will also come across iron, gold, emerald and lapis lazuli ore.

The descent can be done with block steps, or you can simply dig a vertical shaft one block wide and use a ladder to climb up. And then you orient yourself and continue your search.

This way you can mine more efficiently and avoid some of the dangers associated with natural caves. Do not forget about the other minerals you will encounter during the game. Regardless of how you search for ores, remember the importance of conserving your equipment and resources. After all, valuable materials such as diamonds, gold and iron are needed to create better armor, weapons and tools.

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How does one go to hell? (It is not only for sinners)

Well, you have successfully mined ore, made armor, weapons, diamond pickaxe, sword, ax, but now you want more. It's time to go to hell, or as it's called, "The Nether". 

"The Nether" is the second dimension in the game, a lava-filled dimension where it's never night and you can't sleep (yes, that's right, don't try).

"Russian banya"

The way to the Nether is pretty simple. Take a diamond pickaxe, get obsidian, build a portal, take a flamethrower, shoot it at the portal, open the portal and go to hell. You can make obsidian yourself by simply pouring a bucket of water over the lava or vice versa - fill a bucket with lava and pour it over the water.

For the portal to work, it must be at least 4 blocks wide and 5 blocks high. It is recommended to build a portal near your house or even in the next room, so that you can return more easily in case of your death.

It is also recommended to close the room with the portal and install a door so that the mobs from the Nether can not get to you.

Welcome to The Nether. For the first time, we recommend that you leave all valuables at home and take only what you are willing to lose. Exciting adventures and new opportunities await you in The Nether. Be prepared for dangers and gain maximum experience and resources to survive in this dark but amazing world.

I'm in Hell, what's next?

What can you do in The Nether? First of all, you should set up a safe zone around your portal, preferably with stone blocks. Once you have set up the portal and explored your surroundings, go in search of The Nether Fortress.

If you do not find a fortress near the portal, you should continue your search. The fortress can be located in any direction, so it doesn't make much difference where you go - pick any direction and sooner or later you will stumble upon it.

"The place is on fire!"

The fortress is built of nether bricks, so you probably won't miss it. As you search, leave signs along your path so you can easily return later. It is also helpful to set the "Visibility" setting as high as possible.

Once you find the fortress, mark the path from the portal to the fortress and make it as safe as possible. Inside the fortress you need to find Spawners (from the word spawn. A place where mobs appear) Blazes. Blazes are The Nether mobs and they are the only source of the fire sticks you need to reach the Edge. Killing Blazes will also give you a considerable amount of experience. To simplify farming (from the word "farm" - to care for, collect, accumulate. Farming is the process of obtaining certain resources) easier, you can build a space around the spoons, so that newly appearing Blazes can not fly far. And never break the ifrit spoon Blazes - otherwise you will have to find a new one.

"Blaze spouter"

If you encounter Piglin zombies on your way, do not rush to attack them, as they are neutral towards you. If you do not show aggression, they will not attack you either. Above all, be careful when you encounter Gusts - large white flying creatures. If you encounter them, shoot them with your bow or try to hide to avoid their fireballs. Gusts can destroy blocks and set them on fire, so be alert.

Besides the fortresses and guesthouses, there are other interesting places to explore in The Nether. You can find lava lakes where you can collect lava, as well as rare resources like neser and quartz. These materials can be useful in the manufacture of various items and blocks.

Also, the Nether is inhabited by mobs that are different from the ones you encountered in the normal world.

"Gast. A rather cute creature at first glance"

Also remember that there is no day or night in the Nether, so mobs can appear at any time. Stay alert and remember to take care of your safety.

This place can offer you many new adventures and resources, such as Netherite, the most useful material for armor and weapons. Explore the Nether, collect valuable materials, fight mobs and expand your abilities in this dangerous but exciting dimension.

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Hell may be fun, but I'm a farmer.

While we are at it, what is the purpose of a farm in Minecraft? Let us start with the fact that the farm is an important element of the game that can make your life much easier and provide a lot of useful resources.

The most important thing to mention is fire staff mining. Mining fire sticks may require a large number of arrows, as does killing a dragon. You must have enough feathers, which are the main component for making arrows. The farm can also provide you with the resources you need to craft enchanted armor. Enchantments significantly improve the properties of items and help in battles, especially in the fight against the Dragon of the Edge. You can get the edge beads, which you need for crafting enchanted armor, only from so-called enderms. If you have your own farm, you can get these rare resources without having to search and fight mobs.

"Cute. And he hits hard"

In addition, the farm can be useful for growing food crops such as wheat, carrots, potatoes and others. Thus, you'll have a constant source of food, which is especially important in a long-term game or in survival mode.

Therefore, the farm in Minecraft is an essential element of the gameplay. It gives you the possibility to mine rare resources, improve your equipment and provide yourself with a constant source of food. Therefore, you should not overlook the importance of the farm and the vegetable garden when you play through the game.

Cattle breeding

To build your farm, you need to collect animals and put them in an enclosure so they can't escape. Then you need to feed them with their favorite food - each animal has a different one. To start breeding, it is enough if you have two animals of the same species: Just feed them, and a new "offspring" will be formed. From then on, it's business as usual.

By the way, you can experiment with breeding any animals you find. All decisions are at your discretion. However, for our purposes, we need chickens and cows to get feathers and pelts.

It is practical to build a wooden fence to prevent the animals from escaping. Since you need a large number of animals, this will make it easier to manage them. To confine an animal, you can feed it and it will follow you, or you can put it on a leash. Cows eat wheat and chickens eat seeds. So it's best to create a vegetable garden near the farm to grow these crops immediately.

"Universal idyll"

Gardening

Creating a vegetable garden is quite simple: dig a trench and then fill it with a bucket of water. Then you need to dig the soil around the trench with a hoe and plant the seeds in the moistened soil. You can get the seeds by simply mowing the grass.

By the way, you need a lot of paper to create future books, that is, you need to grow reeds. Reeds are easy to find near any water source. If you have a body of water nearby, you can plant reeds on its banks. You can also dig a ditch, fill it with water and plant reeds around it. This will give you enough reeds to make paper.

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Alchemy and enchantment

Almost all the necessary ingredients have been prepared and now it is time for the final journey. Before you set out, however, you can increase your chances of survival by improving your stats with potions and enchantments. While the alchemy is relatively self-explanatory, there may be questions with the enchantments.

To get the best enchantments, you must first set up an enchantment table and equip it with bookshelves. It is recommended to set up at least 15 bookshelves. A large cow farm will be very useful for this purpose, since you will need at least 46 leather pieces to reach level 30 of the enchantment.

"This is how bookcases should be arranged"

By the way, have you ever wondered why you need experience in the game? Experience is used to enchant items. If you don't have enough experience, you won't be able to get high-quality enchantments for your armor and weapons. Therefore, it is important that you get experience and use it wisely to get the best results when enchanting important items.

Final

Let's summarize a little bit: If you already have non-destroyed armor, arrows, fire staves, enchanted armor, and maybe even potions, it's time to move on. To travel to the edge, you will need to find a portal to this world. The portal is located underground in the overworld. To find it, you'll need the Eye of Edge, which can be made from fire powder and edge beads. If you already have fire powder, you can easily make it at fire rods. The edge beads require a bit of work, however, as they only fall out after killing Endermen. Searching for the Endermen by running around the Nether or spending nights in the Overworld can be very time consuming. However, we have found a great and straightforward way to farm walkers.

"Portal to the Edge before its activation"

First, enclose your territory with a high fence and provide good lighting. Next to your territory, build a flat and spacious area where enemy mobs, including edge walkers (sometimes 2-3 at a time) will appear every night. This way, every night when you go out on patrol, you will easily be able to collect a few beads. Another helpful tip: walkers don't like rain, so try to keep your farm dry.

So to find the portal to the edge, you need the eye of the edge, which is made of Blaze powder and Ender Pearl.

If you have several of these items, pick one up and use it by right-clicking on an open area.

The eye will quickly rise into the air and fly towards the portal, then fall to the ground after a few meters (if you're lucky, if not, try using a new eye). Now simply move in the direction of the eye's flight, occasionally restarting it to correct your direction. When the eye of the ledge approaches the ground, start digging to find the fortress where the portal to the ledge is located.

You must fill in the missing blocks of the Eye of the Edge portal by inserting them into the free blocks in the portal frame. Once you have done this, the portal will be activated and ready for use. Be sure to position each eye correctly on the block. The easiest way to do this is to stand to the side and place the eye on the opposite side of the portal from you.

Once the portal is activated, you can travel to the edge, but keep in mind that you cannot return afterwards without killing the dragon! It is therefore advisable to take some stones with you to build bridges or expand the platform.

"How beautiful summer Mytishchi is at night"

The game's wiki states, "Once a character moves to the edge, they will find themselves on a 551 Obsidian platform - it can be on the surface of the central island, inside, or a short distance away. If a platform is suspended in the air near an island, the player can drop a pearl to teleport to it. If the player has never killed a dragon, there is no turning back - you must die or kill it. 

The dragon appears immediately and will fly around the obsidian columns. At the top of each column is a crystal, some of which are protected with iron bars. These crystals heal the dragon - to destroy them, the player must hit them with something: for example, a snowball."

There are many tactics to fight the dragon in Minecraft, and we would like to present to you the simplest tactic that we have used ourselves.

It's a raid tactic. Knowing that death can occur in the first few minutes, we advise you to take only an iron pickaxe, food and a few stacks (if the number of some items exceeds 64, they will begin to accumulate in another cell of the inventory. Such a packed cell is called a "stack") of stone blocks. The portal was in the air, far from the main island, and while the bridge was built to it, the dragon burned our mob with its fire.

After reviving in the saved bed near the portal and picking up a new pickaxe and stone blocks, we head to the portal again. After building a bridge to the island, we dug a small underground passage to rest and prepare. The next objective is to destroy the crystals that heal the dragon. Climb the tower and build blocks underneath. Smash the crystal. When we die, go back to the portal to destroy the next one.

"The logical outcome"

After destroying all the crystals, take the bow and arrows and climb back up one of the towers. But not all the way to the top, stop somewhere in the middle. So you need to stand on a block, facing the center of the island. When the dragon approaches, shoot it calmly. While the walkers are thinking about how to get to you, we calmly hit the dragon.

If you bring empty glass jars, you can collect dragon's breath in them to make potions after your victory. And if you have enough gold, you can make golden apples that instantly restore health, or even enchanted golden apples that not only restore health, but also give positive effects like health regeneration and extra defense. This certainly makes the task of slaying a dragon easier. However, as you can see, it is also possible to kill a dragon without enchanted or golden apples. After you kill the dragon, a portal will open that will send you home, and before that you will see the credits.

"Local peddlers with emerald eyes and souls."

Of course, Minecraft doesn't necessarily end there for you. After you "pass" the game, there are still a number of activities, which, by the way, are just as exciting. For example, in the game world you can find villages - that is, several houses that are located next to each other, including both dwellings, where chests contain food and all sorts of useful things, and, for example, blacksmiths, where you can find a working furnace and all sorts of materials.

The villages are inhabited by friendly mobs. They will gladly trade you interesting things for a few or three emeralds. Yes, they only accept emeralds in exchange for their goods. It is not known where they got so much jewelry.

And also Minecraft can objectively serve as an introduction to electrical engineering, because in the game you can build the most realistic mechanisms, ranging from useful to decorative to generally infinite. To this end, the game has a whole range of objects, special blocks, interaction elements, etc., which you can combine at will, limited only by your imagination.

"Installation for pixel art in Minecraft"

But to survive in Minecraft and its passage is no longer relevant, and since you managed to get into hell and get out alive, build a portal to a dimension on the edge of the universe and defeat the dragon, which many do not even know about, and with the essence of the mechanisms in the game too easily understand. Especially since the craftsmen have been posting countless different mechanisms on YouTube for almost 12 years, creating some truly majestic things. And I can not help but recommend that you familiarize yourself with them.

Mine, build, win, and repeat: "I had a great time in Minecraft!".

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Minecraft is not only fun, but also helps develop your programming skills. With Minecraft, you can learn Python and create your own mobs! We invite you to a course on Minecraft in AI.

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