Minecraft Strategy Guide (Xbox 360)

If you spawned in a relatively flat area, a shelter can be a little trickier. You should start collecting dirt from around your location. You will need at least 22 blocks of dirt before we move on to sealing you up. After you have collected your dirt, find a patch that you want to set up camp and dig a hole that is 1 block deep, 3 blocks wide and 3 blocks long. From there dig out 2 more blocks in the middle of one of the sides. (This will be your front.) Build 3 walls on the sides that you did not dig your 1 by 2 trench on. Your walls should be 2 blocks tall and 3 blocks wide. On the side you dug your trench, place 2 block tall on both sides of your trench and then 1 block at the top in the middle. You should be left with a 1 block wide, 2 block tall opening into your trench. Place your door here. Now you need to seal your ceiling. Use the blocks you gained from digging your main hole to make a ceiling across the top layer of your wall (Note: You will have to place one on top of one of your walls to allow the ceiling to connect, then break it). You should now be in a small, but effective room.

Once you are sealed in your shelter, you can mine from here into whatever your safe surface is. if you’re in a hill, that would be towards the hill. if you’re in the ground, that would be down. Never mine straight down! You should mine the block in front of your feet and not the block you are on. Also you should never mine directly up, you could find a dangerous thing that could fall on you (lava, water, sand, monster, etc.) Once you have found 8 cobblestone, return to the heart of your shelter. Place your crafting table down and make a furnace. Place that down also. I like to keep them next to each other just for simplicity, but wherever is convenient. if you did not harvest any surface coal, or find any in your mine, place on piece of raw wood in the top part of your furnace and whatever planks you have left into the bottom part. Once that is done you will have a piece of charcoal. At your crafting table, turn another block of wood into sticks. Make a set of torches out of the charcoal and sticks, also while you are here, make a stone pickaxe with the sticks you have left. This will be more durable than your wooden one, and also allow you to harvest iron ore, should you come across it. With your last stick I would make a stone sword just in case you do end up coming across an enemy. Place a few torches into your shelter to keep monsters from spawning there.

From here, you should have a functional safe spot. it won’t be pretty, but it will get the job done for now. if you like the location, you can fortify it during the day, expand it, do whatever you want, just make sure that by nightfall that it is sealed up properly. The advantages of having a safe house near the initial spawn are: if you die before you make a bed, you dont have far to go for shelter, and new players to your world will have a safe spot near their initial spawn. My suggestion for expanding your safe house, should you choose to keep the location, is to frame the outer walls of your new structure around your existing structure. Building can take a lot of time and use a lot of resources that you may have to go back to a chest and recover. By doing this, it lets you create a larger, more functional shelter with minimal risk, as you don’t have to keep breaking your original camp walls. Once your new outer walls and roof are built, then you can tear down the tempory building.

Well, that’s the basics on how to get a safe base and start your minecraft adventure. Play the game however you see fit, but with my tips you should be able to keep yourself out of harm’s way as much as possible. Once yourself an established camp, you can then get a little more adventurous with exploring your new world.

(Written by LoneReaper115)