4 tips for beginners in Minecraft

Minecraft is one of the best-selling games of all time, perhaps only outsold by Tetris and its variants. It might be hard to imagine there being new gamers in Minecraft, but the sales figures every year suggest that there are plenty just getting started with the game.

Minecraft is a simple yet complex game. A lot of beginners spend time wandering around aimlessly, not knowing what they can and can't do. This list will help beginners find their footing so they can enjoy the game more and not get stuck on the simple stuff.

Here's a look at four such things:

#1 How to make a crafting table in Minecraft

Crafting table is essential to almost every element of Minecraft.

It's inconceivable that there are people do not know how to make a crafting table. Yet a quick google search will lead to things like Reddit explaining how to do just that, which implies that a lot of people struggle with making one. The game is not eniterly clear on how to do that, yet crafting tables is the key to almost everything you can build in the game.

To start off, you can craft a few things without the table, like sticks. What you can't make without a crafting table is a pickaxe. So, punch a tree till you get at least one log. Go to the crafting menu, and turn it into four wooden planks. Take the four planks, and place one in each square to get a crafting table.

You can also drop and take the crafting table anywhere you go. If you want a mobile base, or don't want to stay in the first area you set up, just take your crafting table with you. You can mine it with your bare hands, if required.

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#2 Sweet Berry Farm

Most farms require water to function properly. For someone who has been playing for a while, that's not a problem. For a beginner, though, it might take a while to even work up to even some basic farms. Food not only helps in general survival, but it allows you to regenerate your health, so the food situation should be resolved as soon as you can.

There's a simple solution. Sweet berries can be found almost anywhere but mostly in colder biomes. You pick one plant, and it would usually yield at least 2-3 berries. Take those, and designate a square; plant them, and you can build a wild berry farm. Make spaces between the berries, as touching the plant can hurt your character.

There are way better plants out there for farming. However, if you make a decent berry farm, you can stack 64 berries and go wherever you need to. Later on, there's automatic harvesting, but that's something you have to work for.

They may only heal one hunger point, but if you have easy access to 64 berries, you don't need better food in most cases. Just harvest whenever you run low.

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#3 Waterfall Elevators

Travel up and down the waterfalls for easy access to upper and lower areas.

Most Minecraft players eventually want to go to the caves, especially the deep ones. They want all those great ores and diamonds too. If you're new to the game, and you want to go deep quickly, find a waterfall. You can ride them up and down. You can even alter the course of the water to try to go deeper.

One thing you should do, though, is find a waterfall that takes you into the deep caves. You should widen the zone where the water lands so that it covers several blocks.

If you fall from great heights, you will die unless you land on water. If you have a buck, you can even create waterfalls specifically to make high drops without dying. Note that are ways you can vastly improve waterfall elevators, but this list is for beginner tips.

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#4 Torches & Mobs

A well lit cave is a safer cave for exploration and mining.

Most first-time Minecraft players are in for a shock when they get killed by their first mob. What a lot of players don't realize is that most mobs only spawn in zero light areas. Mobs can still run into lighted areas, but at least you can keep them from spawning by you.

The best usage of that is in cave exploration. If you go into a dark cave, you will run into mobs. If you clear that section of the cave, just put down the torches. Of course, if you're a beginner, you will need to know how to make torches. One piece of coal and one stick can make four torches.

If you fill an entire cave with torches, the only mob you'll encounter is slime. They're much easier to deal with than two or three skeletons. If you're in an area with a lot of mobs and can't fight them, run in; drop a torch or two, and run far away. If you go far enough to get out of view, they may be despawned. When you return, you may find less, or none at all. So the cave is safe for mining.

These were 4 tips for beginners in Minecraft! For more complex tips, IBXToyCat, released a video called 101 tips for Minecraft that can take you all the way to end game.

You can find that here: