Walkthroughs

How to survive your first night in Minecraft - Pocket Edition on iPhone and Android

Crafting tools, making houses, hiding from zombies

How to survive your first night in Minecraft - Pocket Edition on iPhone and Android
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In the latest update to Minecraft - Pocket Edition, we are finally given the chance to fiddle with the crafting menu. This handy option lets us turn natural resources like wood and cobblestone into invaluable man-made tools like shovels and doors.

In this beginners' guide to Survival mode, we'll walk you through the first day of Minecraft - Pocket Edition, and show you how to make tools and torches; harvest hardy materials like stone; and build a safe haven from roaming zombies.

Step 1 - Get wood

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The first material we need to find is wood. Walk up to a tree (it doesn't matter if it's a brown oak or a white birch) and tap and hold on its trunk to punch. Hold long enough and the tree will shatter, giving you a block of wood. Do this to every block of wood, on two or three trees.

Step 2 - Make a crafting table

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Enter the 'crafting' menu (hit the ellipsis button on your inventory, then tap 'craft') and turn all of your wood into wooden planks. Do this by choosing planks, then tapping the material list on the right.

Now, make a crafting table. You need one bit of wood to make four planks, and four planks to make a crafting table.

Step 3 - Place your crafting table

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Place down your crafting table. To do this, select it from your inventory, then aim your cursor at a blank space on the ground, and tap the space. Now, tap the crafting table to open it up.

This will open a menu identical in function to the craft menu, but it allows you to build bigger and more useful objects.

Step 4 - Craft your first toolkit

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Turn some (but not all) of your wooden planks into sticks, in either the crafting menu or at your crafting table.

Use the sticks and planks to craft a wooden pickaxe, and then you can use any leftover sticks to make wooden swords, axes, and shovels.

The pickaxe requires three planks and two sticks; the shovel needs one plank and two sticks; the sword needs two planks and one stick; and the axe needs three planks and two sticks.

Step 5 - Mine for cobblestone minecraft-guide-05

Use your new wooden pickaxe to start mining cobblestone (the basic grey blocks you find at the foot of any mountain).

This will break your wooden tool really quickly, but you'll have enough stone to build the next set of tools.

If you're running low on sticks or planks, harvest more wood from trees. If you crafted a wooden axe in the previous step, the process will be a lot quicker.

Step 6 - Upgrade to stone tools minecraft-guide-06

Go back to your crafting table and use your sticks and cobblestone to make a cobblestone pickaxe. You can also use your leftover resources to make axes, swords, and shovels.

The pickaxe requires three stones and two sticks; the shovel needs one stone and two sticks; the sword needs two stones and one stick; and the axe needs three stones and two sticks.

Now, smash up your crafting table (tap and hold it) to put it in your inventory.

Step 7 - Get some coal

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Now, we want to find some coal ore. This stuff is everywhere, but look for it near large amounts of cobblestone. Smash away at it with your cobblestone pickaxe to produce coal.

Step 8 - Make torches minecraft-guide-08

Use the crafting menu to turn coal and sticks into torches. These light up dark areas (which will be handy when the sun sets) and will help scare off zombies.

Step 9 - Build a house minecraft-guide-09

Harvest a lot more cobblestone (you might want to craft a new pickaxe if the first one shatters), and use the stones to build a rudimentary house.

Use the glass blocks in your inventory to build some windows*, and pop down your crafting table. Also, put your torches on the walls - inside and out.

If you have four wooden planks left over, use your crafting table to make a door, and pop it in a doorway. This will let you leave your house in the morning without needing a pickaxe and some brute force.

*Update: In a more recent update to Minecraft: Pocket Edition, you no longer have glass in your inventory by default. Instead, you'll need sand and a furnace to make windows. Find out more in our smelting guide.

Step 10 - Begin your adventure

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Congratulations! You now you have a base of operations, somewhere safe to go to when the zombies come out at night, and the knowledge to build new tools.

What you do next is entirely up to you. You can build quarries underground; make the other objects in the crafting menu; and use bricks, cobblestone, and glass to build magnificent structures.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer