But.. Where do i start?!

So, you've just bought minecraft and you want to know what to hit and what to run from? Fair enough, We all started somewhere, and at some point, we all were clueless so don't feel left out!

First thing is first. Launch the Minecraft program, you'll go through some splash screens and you will come to this menu -

Click on 'Single Player', you'll be brought to a menu with a few options. The only one you need to know for now is 'Create New World'. Hit that and you will be brought to a world creating page. 

• World Name - The name you will give your new world.
• Game Mode - Survival (Original Minecraft. Surviving through the night, getting supplies and exploring). Hardcore - The same as Survival but you have only ONE LIFE so beware. Creative - Unlimited supply of almost all blocks and the ability to destroy blocks in one hit. Very good for creative structures or pixel art.
• More World Options - In here you will find options for a: Seeds - When a world is created it creates a seed, this is the unique code to the world that will be generated. Seeds can be entered here to obtain a world someone else may or may have not already created. Generate Structures - This decides whether NPC villages can spawn or not. World Type - This is un-used until the snapshot came out released by jeb which means you can make a FLAT landed world.

When you have chosen all the settings you want and how you want them, click 'Create new world'. This will begin the process which creates your unique never ending world of fun! 

WOAH! What's this you ask? That is your world. ALL yours. 

Now what? Well. where do i start?

First off, press esc and then options. in here you can see.. well.. your options. I'll let you explore them yourself, they are pretty simple. But i will explain what the 'Difficulty' button does. This button decides the.. erm.. difficulty. Easy - Medium - Hard - Peaceful. Pretty simple. Easy - Hard is same explanatory, The mobs get harder to kill. that is all. Peaceful however means ALL hostile mobs are removed from game and health regenerates over time. 

Daytime lasts for 10 minutes, and so does night-time. 

There are 2 essentials required before nightfall, these are (on any difficulty besides peaceful):

• Some where safe, protected from mobs (a house or a hole in the ground).
• A light source (Torch)

While in game, if you look at the bottom of the screen you will see your hot-bar, this is the pane with 9 box's. This is where you can select items. Above it are 10 hearts, this is your health as you guessed. The other 10 objects next to the hearts are hunger, hunger depletes after time and runs out quicker when running/jumping often. The small bar below your hearts and hunger bar is your xp bar, this get filled up from killing mobs. It is used to enchant items with special powers and upgrades. 

Now to start playing.

If you look at the sky, the sun will be just starting to rise. This means you have 10 minutes to get your bearings together and sort things out. Yes, daytime only lasts 10 minutes, but so does night time so its not all bad.

Depending where you spawn, it may be harder or easier to survive the night. if you spawned in a forest like me then it is easy. If you spawned in a desert or in a snow biome then i recommend making a new world just so you can get to grips easier.

Step 1 - Find a tree. No problem for me as i spawned in a forest.

Step 2 - Walk up to a tree using WASD and aim your cross-hairs at it. Hold down your left mouse button and you will begin to break the block. Once destroyed walk on top of it to pick it up. Keep doping this until you have roughly 2/3 blocks of logs.

Step 3 - Press 'E' to open up your inventory. Click on your logs which will pick them up, drag them over to your 'Crafting' section at the top right and drop them in there. This will display some planks in the 'Output section' which is the singular box to the right of the crafting section.

Step 4 - Drop all the logs into the crafting section and click on the output box to receive planks. Well done! you've completed the first major step into Minecraftia! Next, you want to turn these planks into something useful, so while having the planks clicked on, hover over your crafting section and right click to drop one plank into any box of the crafting 4x4 section. Once you have done that, place another block in the box underneath or above the plank you just placed into the Crafting section. You should now have 'Sticks' in the output section. Click on the stick to receive 4 sticks. Only make 4 sticks as you still need some planks for making tools.

 Step 5 - Put 1 plank into all 4 of the crafting sections boxes. This will put a 'Crafting Table' into the output section. Grab that and place it into your Hotbar. Exit out of your inventory and move your mouse scroller over to the crafting table. Once that is completed look at the floor infront of you and press the right mouse button to place it down.

Step 6 - Right click the crafting table, you should stick have some planks left now and the sticks you made earlier. if not, make more! Duh! You now have the same as what was in your inventory but it is bigger and you can make more items in this version. Place the sticks and planks into the following orders and then take the Wooden tools out of the output box. All tools have health bars in the hot bar under the image of them. this gets shorter and shorter until it vanishes.

You also get an achievement, achievements can be viewed in the menu.

Step 7 - You now have a pickaxe and a shovel! The pickaxe is for blocks like Stone and ores etc.. The shovel is for dirt, sand and gravel. The pickaxe and shovel make gaining items quicker and in some cases actually possible. You can use the tools by placing them in your hot bar and hovering over them using your scroll-wheel on your mouse. Find some stone by looking for a block that looks like the block below. (the grey one). 

 Step 8 - Once you have found stone, there should be coal nearby. Try getting some stone by scrolling over to the pickaxe and holding your left mouse button and standing close to it. Once that is completed, you have the basics completed. Try gathering some dirt the same way, but use your shovel instead. Now that is out the way, try and find some coal which is picture below. (stone with black spots all over it). Strike that with your pickaxe. it will take a few seconds longer than stone because it is more important, then pick up the coal it drops.

Step 9 - Now you have some coal, go back to either your crafting table or open your inventory. Make sure you have some sticks. Put the sticks in a lower box of the Crafting section and put coal in the box directly ontop of the sticks. This will have an output of torches. 

Step 10 - Now you have these, you have a light source! This will stop mobs spawning! But don't waste them yet. Now you want to build a shelter. To build your first shelter you will want to use dirt, just because this is by far the quickest block to get and is the easiest to find. You will more than likely be standing on some right now, so get your shovel and start digging! Try and get around 30-50 pieces of dirt, yes that is a lot but it should still be light if you hurry! Now you have that, its time to start building! Try to make the house have enough room to move around slightly but not so big that you run out of dirt. Make sure it has a roof and all walls are complete so nothing can get out or in.

Step 11 - Make sure you place torches inside to make sure NO MONSTERS spawn inside! that would suck! Now you have the basics sorted, you can survive your first night, even though it is a very boring one! You can always leave your computer alone for 10 minutes until it is day time or your can make a bed which makes the night fly by in 5 seconds. But that is for another tutorial. 

Anyway, thanks a lot for reading. i really hope it helped, please comment with ANY questions at all and ill be happy to help. Happy exploring! 

(Please let me know if this helped!)