Minecraft is unique in the world of video games. Unlike most games, there’s no particular right way to play. Instead, you’re invited into a wide open world where you can choose your adventure.

This is why Minecraft is called a “sandbox game.” Playing in a Minecraft world is like building sand castles on the beach. You can dig anywhere and build anything you like. While this is a huge part of its appeal, it can also be confusing for new players.

The Usual Start

I’ll explain how many Minecraft players begin.

First, you’ll enter the world at a specific location called the spawn point. In Second Haven, the spawn point is a welcome area with guides and information. You’ll appear in a gazebo at the top of a hill overlooking rivers and groves of cherry blossom trees and houses.

Next, you can explore. Walk around anywhere you like, along paths or into the open landscape. You can always return to the spawn point by typing /spawn.

Be Sure to Eat

Once you have your bearings, you’ll want to find food. In our main world, you do not need to worry about dangerous creatures (called “hostile mobs”), but you’ll still need to eat. If you head over to the cafe (a small building on the side of the hill just past the bookshop), you can click on the character behind the counter, and she’ll give you free food. When you’re hungry, just hold the food in your hand and hold down your right mouse button.

Mine and Craft

It will come as no surprise that your next major activity will be to start breaking things and making things. You can mine by pointing your mouse at a block (such as dirt or a tree trunk) and holding the right button on your mouse. Hold the mouse button until the block breaks.

Once you begin mining, you’ll unlock the ability to craft new items. For example, after you mine the trunk of a tree, you’ll be able to craft wooden planks.

If this parts seems a little daunting, don’t worry, you’re not supposed to know everything. Not by a long shot. Part of the joy of Minecraft is discovering new materials and places to mine and new things you can craft. Sometimes just mining a tunnel can be relaxing, and finding new ores like diamonds or lapis lazuli, is oddly satisfying. Each new mining session leads to new discoveries. The region beneath the surface is unimaginably vast. Enjoy the adventure!

Build a Base

Your next step will be to find a location for your first home base. When you start mining and gathering resources, you’ll want a base where you can store your things. Your personal inventory (which you can view by pressing your e key) can only hold so much. Eventually you’ll want to craft chests to store more, and you cannot easily move chests, so the best place for your things is a base.

What should a base look like? Anything you can imagine! You can build something out of a fairy tale or an outpost, like what you might find on an alien planet. Your base can be small and cozy or huge. Whatever suits you. Your base can be high in the clouds, in the ocean, or underground. You can build it with dirt, wood, stone, iron, quartz, gold, bamboo, or a combination of many blocks. You can build it in the middle of nowhere or add onto an existing village.

The best part? You can create as many bases as you want. The world is your canvas.

What’s the Objective?

This is an interesting question, because in Minecraft, you choose your objective. You decide what adventures you want to experience and what goals or projects you want to pursue.

Reach “the End”

Minecraft does have typical game objectives embedded within it, but you could play for years and never take this path. One objective is to find an end portal, enter a realm called “The End,” and defeat the dragon. During the ten years I’ve been playing Minecraft, I’ve only done this a few times. Lots of fun, but not the reason I play.

If you approach Minecraft as a typical game where the ultimate goal is to level up and defeat the dragon, it’s easy to feel a sense of completion, and some players will move on to new worlds after this momentous event, but it’s just one of countless missions and goals you can take on in the endless worlds of Minecraft.

Create a World Together

With food and a base, you can begin gathering more resources, mining, and crafting to build new structures, paths, and anything you like.

For example, one Havener constructed a giant mushroom. Another created a race track out of ice. Others have built villages, gardens, games, an aquarium, an airport, and even a fully automated redstone elevator.

You can learn more in our World Guide wiki section: Places. Check back often as we are always adding new points of interest.