Minecraft 101:
A guide to Surviving in Minecraft
An active work in progress. I have a life too! I DO! REALLY!
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As soon as you get in-game, no matter the server or game-mode, that will be the Heads-Up Display (HUD) you will see. It can be broken down into three main parts -- Health (the hearts), Hunger (the slabs of meat), and Item Hotlist (the ten boxes below Health and Hunger).
When you press "E" on your keyboard, it opens up an expanded inventory and 2x2 crafting menu. To move items from your inventory to your hotlist, just click and drag. To drop items, click and drag out of the inventory box (ex: drag onto the grass beside you).
If your health gets to zero (no hearts), you will die. If your hunger gets to zero (no meat slabs, much like you can see in that screenshot), your health will slowly but steadily deteriorate until you either eat or die.
The point of Minecraft in it's raw current (1.8) form is to survive. You start with nothing but your bare hands, but don't fret! Through some series of events, your hands are as strong as piece of steel (perhaps you visited Aperture Science in your now-forgotten past?). With those two fists alone, you can start turning the barren land around you into your own utopia. Although you can't really work with stone and other rocks at this time, with your fists you can still cut down trees for wood and dig for dirt/sand/gravel/clay. If you were to try to mine with your fists, not only would it take a long time but you would get no rocks as a result. You need a pickaxe for that.
So, let's make a pickaxe! After you chop down a tree, you're going to need to turn the wood into planks. Select the wood and place it in the 2x2 crafting box. You should see this:
Select the planks and drag them into your inventory. Congratulations, you're now crafting! Now, there's still the pressing issue of a pickaxe. Wooden planks are one-half of the formula for a
pickaxe -- you need sticks. So, let's make some!
Place wooden planks as shown in the above image and click-and-drag the sticks to your inventory.
In order to make a pickaxe, you're going to need a crafting table. Place four pieces of wood planks into your 2x2 crafting box, and you should get something like this:
Select and drag the crafting table to your hotlist. Select the table (either via your mouse scroll-wheel or by pressing 1-0 on your keyboard). Right-click to place the table. If you right-click on the placed table, it will give you access to a 3x3 crafting table -- something key to surviving in style in Minecraft.
Now, you're ready to make the pickaxe. Place the items you have crafted thus far in this pattern on the crafting table:
Click and drag the pickaxe to your hotlist. You're now ready to start mining.
