Kodeclik Blog
15 things Beginners should try doing in Minecraft 2021
1. Build a House
The most basic thing in Minecraft is to have a base of operations to store your items and to keep safe from hostile mobs. Create your house out of planks, cobblestone, wood and more decorative items. Make sure to light it up to prevent hostile mobs from spawning!
2. Food Farm
A Food Farm is essential for long term survival worlds as a player needs to rely on more reliable methods for food than just killing random animals. You can breed animals to get a lot of food as well as grow crops such as carrots, potatoes, and wheat which can be crafted into bread.
3. Mob Farm
Later on in your world you will find that you don’t have enough important materials such as arrows. You can farm arrows from skeletons. You can trick them into falling into holes using trapdoors or have a more complex redstone build to auto kill and collect their drops.
4. Transportation System
You will most likely do a lot of exploring and find many important structures and make cool builds in your world. You should have a simple Minecart rail system to travel from place to place. Simple, yet efficient.
5. Fight Hostile Mobs
Fighting hostile mobs is essential sometimes in survival. Mobs, such as witches can have useful drops. Furthermore fighting blazes is required since they drop blaze rods which are needed to beat the game.
6. Storage System
Further into your survival world you will start to get a lot of materials. Start a storage system early so you don’t have to worry about it later. You can have double chests full of a certain item or type of item labeled with a sign or item frame with a block/item representing the chest.
7. Trade with Villagers
Trading with villagers is a very useful feature in Minecraft that should definitely be exploited. Trading with villagers can give you food, books, weapons and more! Villagers either trade for emeralds or something that they might need for their assigned job for emeralds (e.g. a farmer will take wheat for you and give you emeralds in return).
8. Collect experience points and enchant
In Minecraft you can use experience to enchant items. For example, enchanting a sword to make it sharper requires experience. Experience can be acquired by killing animals, smelting items in a furnace, etc.
9. Find Iron
Iron is quite common and can be found in caves underground or secluded among other blocks. Iron will always be found below sea level. When mined, iron ore will drop “raw iron” which can be smelted into iron ingots which can be crafted into nuggets or blocks. You can use iron for tools, armor, and more!
10. Find Diamonds
Diamonds are one of the rarest items in Minecraft. You can find them underground in the form of ores. They are found deep in caves at y-15 or lower. Diamonds are typically around y 12 and 11. Make sure you mine them with an iron, diamond or netherite pickaxe!
In the Java edition diamonds are always close to circular clumps of clay underground and in the new 1.17 update they can always be found near lapis lazuli ore (Note: this is only for java). Diamonds can also be found in loot chests in places like Desert Temples.
11. Make a Nether Portal
The Nether is one of the three dimensions in Minecraft. Travel to the Nether using a portal to get important materials from Nether only mobs. Structures such as Fortresses and Bastians have excellent loot that’s yours to take. Furthermore to beat the game a player needs to acquire blaze rods which only drop from blazes which are found in the Nether.
To make a Nether portal, make at least a 3 long and two wide Nether Portal out of obsidian (you can cut off the corners so that only ten obsidian is required). The max dimensions are 23 x 23. To light the Nether Portal use a flint and steel and act as if you want to set it on fire. A purple substance should appear and going into the portal will take you to the Nether.
When you get to the Nether a portal should appear which will take you back to the overworld. Note: On Java one block in the Nether is eight blocks in the overworld so the Nether can be used to travel faster. On Bedrock, one block in the Nether is three blocks in the overworld. Because of this connection a Nether Portal can’t be made in the End dimension.
12. Defeat the Ender Dragon
Defeating the Ender Dragon is essentially beating the game. Go into the End prepared as the Ender Dragon is a formidable opponent. It can regenerate health from crystals on top of obsidian pillars. Destroy the crystals and proceed to kill the dragon.
Beds blow up in the Nether and End so they are a good source of weaponry against the Ender Dragon. Be prepared for the dragon to shoot you up high in the air and potentially kill you. The Ender Dragon has 200 health; ten times the amount of you. Also remember that enderman are all over the place so you don’t want to anger them. Unlike the Nether, you can only leave the End when you have defeated the Ender Dragon. Once the Dragon has been killed a dragon egg will appear.
13. Defeat the Wither
The Wither is the second boss in Minecraft and can only be spawned by the player. By placing two soul sand blocks on top of each other and two on each side of the top block, you can then put three Wither Skulls on top of the three top blocks of soul sand, you can summon Wither. The wither will start by exploding into creation and then proceeds to attack you or other mobs. The Wither has 300 health points. First attack the WIther with arrows, but when it gets to half health you will have to hit it with your sword, or other melee weapon. The Wither will drop a netherstar.
14. Craft a Beacon
A beacon can be crafted with three obsidian on the bottom, a netherstar in the center cell of the crafting table and the rest of the five cells filled with glass. Beacons can be placed on pyramids made out of items such as diamond blocks which can give away special effects.
15. Collect Advancements/Achievements
Advancements are a form of progress in Minecraft Java Edition. Things as little as making a crafting table and defeating the Ender Dragon are Advancements. These are nice things to collect. In Bedrock Edition there are achievements but these are saved between worlds. So if you defeat the Ender Dragon in one world and get an achievement you will not get it in another world.
Wow! That is a lot of activities to keep you busy! Enjoyed this blogpost? Checkout our blogpost on object-oriented programming which encourages you to view Minecraft through the lens of OOP. Also see our blogpost on the Minecraft Caves and Cliffs Update (Part 1; June 2021). Also see our blogpost on 25 questions about Minecraft. Once you are adept at Minecraft basics here, checkout how to install mods for Minecraft Education Edition or how to use Redstone in Minecraft!
Want to learn Minecraft modding? Checkout Kodeclik's 1:1 and small group classes.
