How to Be Successful Quickly in Minecraft

Hey guys
This Instructable will show you how to start playing Minecraft, along with how to mine. I hope you like it! FYI, this is mainly a beginner's guide.

Place a pillar of dirt blocks, dig a small hole, or do something else to mark the place you spawned at.

You will have an extremely difficult time in Minecraft without trees.

Punch some trees until you have about 15-20 wood blocks.

This isn't gonna be a permanent house, just somewhere to keep your chests and crafting table until you upgrade. Go back to somewhere near your spawn point, and find a hill or mountain. Start digging a 1 by 2 block hole in the side of the hill for your door.

Build a crafting table and put it down near your spawn point. (You'll need to make planks by putting a block of wood in the crafting grid, then put 4 wood planks in the crafting grid. Presto. You've got a crafting table.)

Use your new crafting table to make a pickaxe.

You'll need stronger tools than wood, so use your shiny new pickaxe to mine some stone from your house, expanding it as you go. Make your house in a small square shape. You can make it bigger later.

Use stone to craft a furnace on your crafting table. The recipe is stone on every slot except the middle.

Now, you'll need to make a set of stone tools. This is a pretty good order of importance: pickaxe, sword, axe, shovel, hoe. Make one of each, if you can.

You need a bed so you can set your spawn point. A bed takes three blocks of wool. Put all the stuff you won't need in your chest, except for the pickaxe and sword. Go find as many sheep as you need, and hit them with your sword until they die. If you didn't make a sword for whatever reason, an axe will work too. Don't wander too far though, you don't want to get lost. You will also get some mutton from them, so yay! You won't starve to death!

Go back to your base near your spawn point. Craft a bed on your crafting table. The recipe is 3 peices of wool on the bottom row, and 3 wooden planks in the middle row. Wait for night, then sleep in the bed. This will set it as your new spawn point. Cook the mutton in the furnace.

First, you will need to put a block of wood in each slot of your furnace. This will craft charcoal. Then when it's done, you will need to put it on your crafting table along with a stick. The stick goes on the bottom, and the charcoal goes on top. You should repeat this step until you have at least 20 torches.

Ok, first of all, go to your crafting table and make 3 more stone pickaxes. If you don't have enough stone, take this opportunity to expand your house a little. Put everything in a chest except: your 4 pickaxes, 4 blocks of wood, the mutton, all of your torches, a chest, and an extra crafting table, which you can craft now. Now you need to go to a corner of your house and start mining into the floor. Remember the #1 rule in Minecraft, never dig straight down. I use a staircase formation when I mine.

Keep going down in a staircase formation until you hit bedrock, placing torches periodically. If you hit coal, iron ore, or anything valuable, mine it out and then fill up the spot you mined with cobblestone. Once you find iron ore, go up to your house and smelt it in your furnace. Go back down, bringing the pickaxe with you.

Once you hit bedrock, you have a couple options. You can start room mining, or branch mining. Room mining is (obviously) mining in a big chamber. Branch mining is making a bunch of long passageways, which meet at one point. I'm going to show you how to room mine, as I've tried both and that's what I think works best.

As soon as you hit bedrock, place a chest and dump all your valuables into it. This is where most of the ores, like diamond, hang out, but there is also a lot of lava, so be careful. Now you need to start making a chamber about 3 blocks high, and as wide as you want. I would start with about 6x6.

Keep mining neatly, making sure the chamber stays a rectangle shape. When you find something valuable, stick it in the chest immediately. If you fall in lava or get attacked by a monster, you don't want to lose it. By the way, you will only be able to mine valuable ores like gold, redstone, and diamond with your iron pickaxe.

Once you think you've found enough (or you ran out of pickaxes), head back up to the surface, bringing everything but the chest and crafting table with you.

Put everything you don't need in your chest. You may need to make another one, you probably have a lot of stuff by now.

There is so much more to Minecraft than what I showed you here, this what just to help you get started. You will get those diamonds eventually, just keep mining and playing! I hope this Instructable helped you a little, thanks for reading all the way down to the end! I would really appreciate your votes if you enjoyed this Instructable.
Thanks for reading
-ranwithjesus