The grid
Your inventory has a 2×2 grid. That is enough for planks, sticks and a crafting table. The table is 3×3, and almost every recipe in the game is a shape in that square. Shift-click moves the result straight into your inventory. The recipe book shows what you can make from what you are holding, which is legal and not cheating.
Some recipes care about shape (a pickaxe is not three ingots in a row). Others, mostly dyes and a few later recipes, do not. If a guide from 2013 shows a missing recipe, the recipe book in your version is the one that is right.
Heat, repair, upgrade
- Furnace — smelts ore and cooks food. Coal, charcoal, lava and a few other fuels work.
- Blast furnace and smoker — faster specialists, one for ore, one for food. They will not do each other’s jobs.
- Anvil — repairs, combines enchantments, and renames. It spends experience levels, and the cost climbs until the anvil is too expensive. That is intentional.
- Smithing table — turns diamond gear into netherite with an ingot and, since 1.20, a netherite upgrade template. Netherite does not burn in lava. That is the whole sales pitch, and it is a good one.
- Grindstone — strips enchantments off an item and gives some of the experience back.
Enchanting
An enchanting table spends lapis and experience levels. Bookshelves around it, with one block of air between shelf and table, raise the level offered. Fifteen shelves is the cap, level 30. The enchantment you get is partly hidden until you pick it. A librarian villager sells a specific book if you are willing to break and replace their lectern until the trade is the one you wanted. That is tedious. It is also how serious worlds get Mending without gambling.
Combat
On Java, after the 1.9 update, a weapon has an attack cooldown. Swing too early and the hit barely counts. Wait for the bar. Bedrock does not use that cooldown; spam-clicking still works, and shields and axes are tuned differently. A tutorial that says “axe is the best weapon” is talking about Java. Check the edition before you rebuild your hotbar. Editions themselves are on the editions page.
Armour points soak damage. A shield blocks most frontal attacks if you are facing them and not still cooling down from an axe hit. Bows and crossbows are the honest way to fight a creeper. Tridents, from drowned, are a late side-grade. Potions and golden apples are how you stop dying to your own overconfidence.
Brewing
A brewing stand needs blaze powder as fuel, which means a Nether fortress and a blaze. The useful sequence is: water bottle, then nether wart, which makes an Awkward Potion. Awkward does nothing by itself. A second ingredient turns it into something — sugar for Speed, a ghast tear for Regeneration, a magma cream for Fire Resistance. Gunpowder makes it a splash potion. Dragon’s breath makes it linger. Redstone stretches the time. Glowstone makes the effect stronger and usually shorter.
You do not need any of that for the first week. You need it before the dragon if you want the fight to feel fair. The route there is the survival loop.