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Block Atlas

Guide

Punch a tree. Last until morning. Then decide.

There is no required plot. There is a loop everyone ends up in, because the game withholds the next tool until you have the previous one.

The first day

  1. Punch a tree. Logs in a crafting grid become planks, then a crafting table and sticks.
  2. Wooden pickaxe, then stone. Stone is the first tool that does not feel like a joke.
  3. Shelter before dark. Hostile mobs spawn where the light is low. A dirt hut with a door counts.
  4. A bed, three wool and three planks, sets your respawn point and skips the night. You still have to survive the walk to the sheep.

Food is the other clock. Meat, bread, or anything cooked on a furnace keeps the hunger bar from emptying. An empty bar stops healing. On Hard, it can kill you. Kill animals with intent, then breed them so the second week is not another desperate pig chase.

The tool ladder

Wood, stone, iron, diamond, netherite. Each pick mines the next ore. Coal smelts. Iron makes a bucket, a shield and armour that matters. Diamonds generate below Y 16, and they are most common near the bottom of the world. Netherite is not mined as a tool — ancient debris from the Nether is upgraded onto diamond gear at a smithing table, and since 1.20 that upgrade also wants a netherite template from a bastion.

Do not strip-mine at eye level and call it a strategy. Caves since 1.18 are large enough to be the mine. Bring torches, food, a water bucket, and a way back. A water bucket turns a lava floor into obsidian and a long fall into a story you can tell.

Farms, because grinding is optional

Wheat, carrots, potatoes and animals make food boring, which is the point. A sugar-cane patch feeds books. Villagers, once you have a bed and a job block for each, trade emeralds for gear you are tired of mining. Automatic farms come later, when you care about redstone. A composter and a hoe are enough for a long time.

The run to the credits

  1. Iron armour, a shield, and enough food that a cave is a trip and not a gamble.
  2. Nether portal. Find a fortress. Blaze rods and nether wart. The dimensions page has the portal and the 8:1 coordinate rule.
  3. Brew, or at least carry water and a spare pick. Eyes of Ender point at a stronghold.
  4. Ender Dragon. Then outer islands, elytra, shulker boxes.

After the credits, “late game” is whatever you point it at: a base you will not be embarrassed by, a perimeter, a trading hall, a server, or redstone that moves items while you are offline. The game does not announce this. The dragon was the only boss with an ending attached. The Wither and the warden are optional problems.

Seeds and difficulty

A seed is a number, or a phrase hashed into one, that rebuilds the same terrain. Share it and a friend can generate the same mountains in a new world. It does not copy your builds. Difficulty — Peaceful through Hard — is explained with the modes. If a world is shared, write the rules down before the first TNT test. That list lives under Realms and small SMPs.