As soon as the screen clears and you can look around, see what’s near your character. Let’s create a checklist to see if you have what you need to survive!
Checklist for Survival
- Are there trees in your line of sight?
- Do you see or hear any animals?
- Can you find a location that would be safe for building a house or a cave?
Wood
The three items in the preceding checklist are your immediate priorities. You need trees for Wood. That’s essential for your survival, because you need Wood for construction, basic tools, and for fire. It’s your lifeblood during the earliest parts of the game. If you can’t see any trees at all, either restart or move quickly in any direction to find an area that does have trees. You can survive without Wood, but it’ll be much tougher because you won’t be able to use any tools.
Animals
Many animals that you can see and hear during the day are useful. These creatures provide food, Wool, Leather, and other nice items for crafting. In the early game, edible animals are the best because they get you food much sooner than farming. We’ve sorted the common animals in the following list from most useful to least useful for a starting hero.
| Cows | Drop multiple pieces of meat and can be milked once you find a bit of Iron |
| Chickens | Easy to raise, drop meat when killed |
| Pigs | Drop meat when killed |
| Sheep | Drop Mutton when killed and have Wool for Beds |
| Horses | Not very useful in the early game |
Safe Housing
You can build a house darn near anywhere, but some locations are easier and faster to work with. Open, flat ground is nice if you want to have a free-standing house that looks nice. If you’re just interested in survival, you’re even better off scanning the area for a hill or mountain. Building into existing Dirt or Stone lets you create a defensive location very quickly, because you won’t need to put down many blocks of Wood or Stone to secure yourself. Instead, hollow out a small space and you’ll be good to go in almost no time at all.
Now that you know what to look for—is your area a good enough starting point? For a total beginner, we recommend you demand at least trees and either a safe area or animals. You don’t need to have all three right there in front of you, but going for two out of the three starting items is a good compromise.
What About Us?We thought you’d like to see where we started and what we did with our first 30 minutes. While looking around our starting point, we saw Pigs and a good forest nearby. The cliffs in the distance are too far away to use on the first day, but they could be nice to explore later on. This is absolutely a good starting point, so we’re happy to be here! 
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