How to Survive Your First Night in Minecraft

For most new Minecraft players, their first day in the game goes something like this: Figure out how to harvest resources. Harvest way too many resources. Get excited when you learn to craft something. Notice it’s getting dark. See some strange creatures you didn’t see in the daytime. Die.

If that’s the situation that you’ve found yourself in, I have some good news. First, you aren’t alone — it’s happened to all of us. Second, making it through the night can be very easy if you plan right. And that’s what this guide is going to help you with.

Though there are many different ways to survive that first night in Minecraft, this is the method that I always use. It’s easy, efficient, and will even teach you the basics of the game if you don’t already know them. If you follow this guide, you will have no problem surviving your first night in the game. Promise.

Step 1: Gather wood

Wood is without a doubt the most important resource you will need when it comes to making it through the first night. The good news is that trees are found in almost every biome, so you shouldn’t have a hard time finding some blocks to cut down when you first spawn.

While it might be tempting to go out and gather a ton of wood, that would be a waste of your time at this point. You don’t need it. At least not yet. On day 1, I would recommend gathering eight blocks of wood. That will be more than enough for anything you need to get through the night.

Step 2: Convert the wood to planks

Once you’ve gathered eight blocks of wood, it’s time to convert them to planks. If you haven’t done this before, you simply have to press ‘E’ to open your inventory and place your blocks into any of the four squares like this:

Right click the planks, and your blocks will be consumed. At this point, you will have 32 wood planks in your inventory. Woo-hoo!

Step 3: Create some sticks

You will need some sticks to make some of the tools you will need to survive the night, and now is as good of a time as any to make them.

Drop four planks into the crafting blocks like this. This will create 8 sticks:

Step 4: Create a crafting table

At this point, you might as well go ahead and create a crafting table so you can make some rudimentary tools. To create your crafting table, place four wooden planks in your crafting window like this:

Step 5: Make some tools

Now that you have your crafting table created, let’s create some basic tools. To get through the first night, I’d recommend crafting two wooden pickaxes (for digging / harvesting more quickly) and one wooden sword (for any necessary killing).

Place your crafting table on the ground and right click it. This will bring up your crafting menu.

This is how to make the tools you will need:

Wooden Pickaxe:

Sword:

When you’re finished crafting, equip your pickaxe and chop down your crafting table. Pick it up, and it will be added back to your inventory. You will need this again later.

Step 6: Dig your shelter

When I’m first starting out, I prefer to dig my shelter rather than build it. The reason is simple: building is very resource-intensive. Digging is not. So equip one of your pickaxes, locate a flat spot of land,  and dig a 3x2x3 hole. When you’re finished, it should look like this (note that I added a few dirt steps in the corner so I could get out of it).

Yes, it looks like a grave, but what can you do?

Step 7: Put a roof on it

Equip your wood planks, and put a roof on this puppy. Leave one hole in the middle, so you can keep an eye on the time of day. Don’t worry: no mobs in the game can fit through a 1×1 hole, so you won’t get invaded. Here’s my roof:

Step 8 (Optional): Find some sheep

At this point, you could drop down your hole and be safe for the night if you were so inclined. However, nights can be really boring in Minecraft at this point (since you have no armor and only a wooden sword, I wouldn’t advise that you go hunting quite yet).

To pass the time and skip the night entirely, you can build a bed if you have some wool. And, as you would probably guess, wool comes from sheep. If the sun isn’t too low in the sky at this point, equip your sword and search the area for some sheep.

Building a bed requires three pieces of wool, and you will need to kill three sheep in order to get it.

Once you find your wool, head back to your house / hole and place your crafting table on the ground. Right click it, and place your wool and planks like this to create your bed:

Equip your bed (sounds funny, I know), and place it on the floor of your home. Once the sun goes down, right click the bed to sleep. You’ll wake up in the morning.

Congratulations! You just survived your first night in Minecraft. Spend the next day gathering wood, meat, stone, and coal, and you’ll be well on your way to creating a great new world for yourself.