Minecraft Hardcore guide: Beginners tips and tricks you need to know

Hardcore is Minecraft's hardest game mode and, until recently, was a Java-exclusive feature. It was recently confirmed that Minecraft Bedrock would be getting hardcore, meaning a whole lot of the community is going to have their first chance to play the game mode.

And given the fact that hardcore is a completely different experience than vanilla or even gameplay with Minecraft's best modpacks, it will be important to go into the difficulty with some basic guidelines, the best of which are detailed below.

NOTE: This article is subjective and reflects the views of the writer.

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Life-saving Minecraft hardcore tips and tricks

1) Avoid caves and ravines

Surface caves can be a potential exception, but only during the day when it's safer. (Image via Mojang)

Now, this might seem counterintuitive at first. Ever since the Minecraft ore distribution revamp and caves and cliffs world generation overhaul, caves and ravines are much better for finding resources than strip mining. But they are also incredibly dangerous, especially to hardcore players, due to how they generate.

Ravines and large caves often generate in such a way as to allow for hostile mobs to drop directly onto a player. For zombies and skeletons, this is annoying but not deadly. Creepers make this quirk fatal, however. All it would take is a creeper falling behind a player to cut a playthrough short.

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2) Start some sort of crop farm on day one

Even a basic wheat farm is good enough for day one. (Image via Mojang)

Food is an unexpected and insidious hardcore killer. On hard, which this mode is based on, starvation can kill, so running out of food is guaranteed death. Additionally, keeping the Minecraft hunger bar high is required to regenerate health, which is necessary for staying as safe as possible.

This means that the sooner a player plants any seeds at all, the better. Even if it's as simple as planting a handful of wheat seeds along a nearby riverbank, setting up some sort of crop farm on day one is essential to a successful hardcore world.

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3) Avoid killing passive mobs

It's better to breed passive mobs, if possible, rather than kill them. (Image via Mojang)

Players should avoid killing any passive mobs near spawn for many of the same reasons that setting up a food farm is important. If a player can avoid killing these passive mobs, they can be captured on the first day and farmed. This converts them from a temporary food source to a permanent one.

Sheep are the sole potential exception to this. A player might find it better to kill sheep early on for the wool needed to make a bed and skip hostile mob-filled nights rather than pin them in for eventual shearing. That comes down to personal preference, but skipping nights is objectively safer than the alternative.

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4) Underwater caves are amazing

Despite the previous warning about caves and ravines, their underwater variants are a potential exception. The only hostile mobs that might be found in underwater caves or ravines would be drowned, which are only more dangerous than zombies if they have a trident.

This means that careful use of a shield, in combination with using doors to create air bubbles, can allow players to gather a ton of resources in almost complete safety.

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5) Keep the best gear equipped

One of the most counterintuitive parts of hardcore at first is learning that death doesn't matter. Not in the sense that there are no consequences; hardcore has a higher penalty for death than any other game mode, after all. Instead, death in hardcore doesn't matter in the sense that your inventory doesn't matter at that point.

Most players will keep their most valuable items, such as tipped arrows, totems of undying, or powerful enchanted weapons, safely tucked away for big boss fights and important events.

But in hardcore, where a single death means those items are gone anyway, there's simply no reason not to always have the best gear available equipped. Use the tipped arrows to get out of a dangerous situation, as having them around doesn't matter if you die before they get shot anyway.

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6) Shields are a necessity

As hinted earlier, shields are not just useful for hardcore; they are a near necessity. Shields are offhand items that allow players to stop incoming damage at the expense of shield durability.

The benefit here is obvious and immense. A dangerous surprise ravine creeper is much less deadly when a shield can block most of the explosion, for example. And the ability to put mending and unbreaking, two of Minecraft's best enchantments, on a shield makes them even better.

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7) Make some sort of night one shelter

Even a basic shack is good enough, so long as it's totally sealed. (Image via Mojang)

Minecraft's extensive mob roster poses a ton of different threats to a hardcore world. Zombies, skeletons, creepers, and spiders will all be issues as early as the first night, as after the sun sets, they will start spawning.

This makes setting up some sort of night-time solution essential. Players could go as far as to make basic Minecraft starter bases, keep things simple with a basic dirt hut, or board up a hole in a mountain's side. No matter what a player settles on, ensuring no hostile mobs can get it is required.

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8) Don't give up

Death is an opportunity to learn and grow as a player. (Image via Mojang)

This last Minecraft tip is less of a gameplay tip and more of a mindset tip. Hardcore is a brutal difficulty where even a single mistake can mean game over. Death is inevitable, and it's okay to get frustrated and upset at the loss of a beautiful world or a really cool Minecraft survival base.

But don't give up. As the number of attempts increases, so too does a player's experience with hardcore. Runs should become easier and more fulfilling each time. Also, just make sure to have fun with it. That's what the game is for, after all.