You Have 10 Minutes to Work Safely

The sun is up for about 10 minutes each day, and nighttime lasts just as long. Because the freaks come out at night, you need to have someplace safe to stay once it gets dark. That leaves only a short time to get everything done!

Goal #1: Harvest Three Blocks of Wood

Run toward the nearest tree and attack it. You have only your hands to work with, so breaking through the bark will take a few seconds. Hold down the Attack command the entire time. If you stop at any point, the damage to the Wood disappears and you’ll have to start again.

Attack the tree in a single spot and watch the Wood break. Eventually, the block disappears and a small piece of Wood falls to the ground. Move over the piece to pick up the Wood. A faint popping noise lets you know that your character grabbed the item, and it goes into your inventory. Yay! Success.

Do this again for two more pieces of Wood, so you have three total pieces to work with.

Goal #2: Make an Axe for Yourself

Go into your inventory and put the three pieces of Wood into your crafting area. Notice that a new item appears on the right side of the screen. The displayed item represents the results if you choose to craft those pieces of Wood. Every piece turns into four Planks of Wood. Turn your three pieces of Wood into 12 Planks.

You then need to craft several items with your new Planks. Fill the entire crafting box with Planks (one in each slot, as shown). These four Planks are turned into a Crafting Table. Put that into one of your hotbar slots at the bottom of the inventory screen.

Leave that screen and use your appropriate quickslot command to put the Crafting Table down somewhere close. These tables allow you to work with a far greater variety of items. When you interact with a Crafting Table, it brings up a larger interface, so you can put up to nine ingredients into your crafting. Other versions of the game simplify this, but they still require you to use a Crafting Table to make most of the items.

Next, put two Planks into your crafting slots (while using use the Crafting Table or your normal inventory interface for crafting). Putting two Planks together, one above the other, lets you make Sticks. Sticks are required for a huge number of tools.

Look at the next picture to see how to make a Wooden Axe. Two Sticks and three Planks go together to make this happen. Now that you have a Wooden Axe, it’s much easier to chop Wood. Get several more pieces of Wood now.

Goal #3: Make a Pickaxe and a Shovel

Many tools are made almost exactly the same way, so use your new supply of Wood to make a Pickaxe and a Shovel. They require a similar setup, with two Sticks to form a handle, and then one or two pieces of Wood to complete the tool, depending on what you’re making.

Once you have a Wooden Pickaxe, Shovel, and Axe, put all three of them on your hotbar. You can then start the next phase of your project. We’re going to hunt for Stone!

Goal #4: Find a Source of Stone and Harvest at Least Six Pieces

Select your Shovel and dig into the Dirt until you find Stone (usually a few spaces down). If there are deposits of Stone nearby—in a cliff or wherever—then go ahead and rush over to those instead. The general rule is that if you can’t find Stone, just start digging downward. It’ll be there.

Once you hit Stone, stop using your Shovel. Switch to your Pickaxe and hit the Stone just like you hit the trees with your Axe and the Dirt with your Shovel. Harvest at least six pieces of Stone as soon as possible, and then return to your Crafting Table.

If you dug down into the earth to get your Stone, you might not be able to get directly back to the surface. If that happens, then carve a crude set of steps out of the blocks around you. Your character can jump as high as a single block, so cut the blocks around you until you can jump up one block in front of your character. Then cut until you can do that again and again until you’re back on the surface. There are ways to make nicer steps that don’t require these big jumps, but you’re on a schedule and don’t need to worry about that just yet.

Goal #5: Switch to Stone Tools

Use your Crafting Table and recreate your Pickaxe, Shovel, and Axe. This time, use Stone and Sticks instead of Wood and Sticks. The final products are Stone tools. These last longer and are faster at their tasks compared to Wooden tools, so this is a very big upgrade without having spent much of your time. After this point, you can stop using Wooden Tools entirely; they have practically no value to you. However, hang onto yours for the moment—you’ll use them for fuel in the furnace you’re about to build.

Goal #6: Make Shelter for the Evening

Use the remaining time in your day to build shelter for yourself. Dig into a rockface, a hill, or use a tunnel into the ground at the base for your evening’s home. Or, if you have more time than that, build a Stone or Wood structure around yourself. This takes more resources and time, but it’s 100% possible if you work quickly before nightfall.

Once you have your shelter, make a Crafting Table to put in there, so you can keep making items during the evening. It’s possible to chop down your old table with an Axe and bring it inside, but that often takes more time.

Using a full box of Cobblestone (as shown in our picture), you should also make a Furnace. These are major items to help keep you alive. You can cook food in them (such as any Raw Chicken, Beef, or Pork gathered from animals in your area). Furnaces also get you Charcoal. If there isn’t Coal Ore mixed in with the Stone in your area, you’ll need some Charcoal tonight. So let’s talk about how to get some!

Goal #7: Setting Up Your Furnace, Door, and Light

Place your Furnace near the Crafting Table, and throw your old Wooden Tools into the lower slot of the Furnace. That’s your fuel. The tools won’t burn for long, but they’ll get the job done. Use Wooden Blocks in the Furnace’s upper box. That’s the item that you’re trying to cook. Burn through several pieces of Wood (using your tools as fuel), and collect the Charcoal that is created. Charcoal is very efficient fuel for your Furnace, so you can now cook plenty of other items during the late afternoon and evening. Burn Wood when more Charcoal is needed. Also, cook any meat that you harvested today. Don’t eat raw meat because it’s not as filling for your character, and sometimes it’s even dangerous (raw meat can poison your character).

Furnaces light the area while they’re cooking, so you can see in the dark or even underground while this is going on. Take six Planks of Wood to make a Door for your house. Block off the rest of the entryway, so there is only a narrow space one block wide and two blocks high leading into your shelter. Put the Door there to keep enemies from entering.

The finishing touch is to use Sticks and Charcoal to craft a few Torches. Once you make them, these simple devices keep your home and area well lit. That’s important for getting around, but it’s also great for keeping monsters off your back. Monsters only appear in dark areas. As long as you keep your home lit, nothing horrible will appear there, even when your character is away. Monsters can still come after you, or walk through open doors, but they can’t magically appear anywhere that’s properly lit.

Put Torches on your hotbar, and hang them on walls inside and around your house. Don’t worry; they won’t burn anything down! They also won’t need to be replaced or reset. Torches burn forever.

Progress On Our End In our world, things are going pretty well. Like you, we’ve rushed to get Stone tools as soon as we could. Running with a full set, we’ve burrowed into the earth and made a small room for ourselves below ground level. Just before night fell, we also hunted several Pigs for food and Sheep for Wool. Some Porkchops are roasting in the Furnace now, and we used spare Wood to make Charcoal, since there wasn’t any Coal in the area where we started mining. All is well! Our house is smaller than usual, but we have Torches, plenty of tools, spare materials, food, and even a bed (luxury for the first evening). If we wanted to, we could sleep now and immediately skip to the morning of day two, but we won’t. There’s too much work yet to be done.