Paragon Fury said:
Ok, I've finally broken down. I'm going to buy Minecraft tomorrow, just to see what the fuss is all about. But I'd like to know what I need to do to make sure my first few hours go well, just so I don't get pissed and right at the beginning quit because it doesn't go anywhere.
I figure here would be a decent place to ask, considering the massive rock-on The Escapist seems to have for Minecraft right now.
So what say you?
Well you have to get the first bits done in the first day, before night falls. In my opinion this part is like an RTS, because it's about gathering supplies to make tools to gather more supplies to make more tools to build your defenses and hole yourself up in a safe little place so you don't die when night falls and your enemies come and molest you.
The first thing you'll need to do is scout out a nice cliff-face or something to make your base in. The bare essentials for this are that you probably should keep it pretty close to your spawn point and within line-of-sight of water, and it's best if the hill you're digging into isn't too cramped, because that way you can just make a small cave and then make it more homey after night falls and you're safe inside, and that way you're not bored at night. Natural caves work too, but if it goes down too far you might have company down there, even before nightfall. If it's just the rock or whatever then you can just dig in and make your own nice little cozy cave. In order to dig though, you need some tools.
So go punch some trees, get a whole lot of wood. Actually you don't need all that much, just like four or five trees worth to start is more than plenty. You're going to turn a few of the blocks of wood into charcoal, but if there's coal (it looks like rock with black streaks in it) that works perfectly well too, but you'll need pickaxes to mine any of that out. If you go into your inventory there's a little 2x2 crafting area, you need to make a workbench before you do anything else. If you put your wood in one of the slots you can get planks from it, and if you put four planks in the crafting area (one in each corner) it'll give you a workbench, so put that in your usable inventory and throw it down somewhere, and click on it. It's a 3x3 crafting area, and you can craft tools on it.
Make a wooden pickaxe (I don't feel like explaining so here [http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Crafting]) and then you can use that to dig into stone and stuff. Once you have stone, and once you dig out your cave, you can make better pickaxes out of stone, and a furnace. The furnace will use fuel (anything wooden) to turn stuff (wood) into other stuff (charcoal) but you don't have to do that if you have enough coal from mining, if you did find any. Once you have that, you can make torches, and light up the inside of your place.
Then it's probably best to make a door. Make the wooden kind, and make sure to be outside your house when you put it in your doorway. That way, if there's an enemy right outside, you can hit it, but it can't hit you.
After that, what you do is up to you. You can mine down and explore and try to find natural cave systems or minerals, or you can build large towers and walls and things to keep the creepers out, or you can build giant cities in the sky or big tunnel networks underground, or monuments or art or absolutely anything you want. Learn, dig, build, explore, survive.
Hope that helps, and yeah, as others have said, go watch some tutorials or let's plays. Have fun!
