Your first ten minutes

Move, dig, and make the four things that matter.

You start on the surface holding a Bolt Caster. It does four damage, breaks no terrain, and is deliberately feeble — it is the floor of the ladder, not a rung on it. Everything else you will make yourself.

Four things matter in the first ten minutes: light, fire, a bench, and a bed.

You will need

Nothing. Everything below comes out of the ground in front of you.

• Wood, from any tree
• Stone, from anywhere below the soil
• Coal, from the first dark seam you find

Steps

1. Learn the two mouse buttons. Left-click builds. Right-click digs. That is the opposite way round from most games and it is the single thing most likely to confuse you for the first minute.
2. Cut wood. Right-click a tree trunk. Wood is the input to almost everything you are about to make.
3. Dig down a little and find coal. It is the dark seam in the stone. You want at least a handful.
4. Press C for crafting. Not Tab — Tab is the item grid, which is a debug tool that hands you anything.
5. Make torches. 4 Wood + 1 Coal gives you 4 torches. Make several.
6. Make a Flint Striker — 4 Stone. This is the only way to start a fire in the early game, and nothing else you can reach is hot enough. See Making fire.
7. Make a Workbench — 4 Wood + 2 Stone. Put it down somewhere you will come back to.
8. Make a bed — 6 Wood + 6 Flax. Flax grows on the surface.

When it works

You are standing next to a workbench with the crafting menu open, and the list is much longer than it was ten minutes ago. Torches are on the walls around you and the area is lit.

That bench is now the centre of your world. The crafting ladder is built outward from it.

When it does not

Left-click is putting blocks down instead of digging. That is correct, and it is not a bug. Right-click digs.

Nothing happens when you click. Click the game window first to give it the keyboard and mouse — especially in the browser version.

You cannot find coal. Dig straight down past the soil into stone. Coal is a dark seam and it is common in the first few hundred cells. If you are still on grass, you have not gone deep enough.

The crafting list is short and greyed out. Most recipes need a station within reach. The 16 things you can make with bare hands are on the Hand page; everything else wants a bench or better.

You dug a hole and sand fell on you. Sand and dirt are powders and they fall. Tunnel sideways into stone rather than straight down under a beach.

You died to something in the dark. Read The dark is not scenery next. That is not a figure of speech — darkness is what creates the things that killed you.

Next

The dark is not scenery — why an unlit room fills up, and what a torch is actually buying you.

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