Minecraft First Night Guide: Shelter, Food and a Bed

For unmodded Java and Bedrock Survival with default rules. Your first priorities are food, a small shelter and enough light to use it. A bed is useful if you find sheep nearby, but you can survive the night without one.

Gather wood and make your first tools

Stay close to a spot you can recognise. Break several normal tree logs by hand and collect them. Around ten logs is a comfortable starting target for this route; keep at least two as logs for charcoal and turn the rest into planks as needed.

One log makes four planks. Fill the four squares of your inventory crafting grid with planks to make a crafting table. Put it on the ground and use it to open the larger 3×3 grid. Make sticks, then a wooden pickaxe using the layouts below.

Find exposed stone or cut a short staircase into a hillside. Mine stone with the wooden pickaxe to collect cobblestone. Collect 11 cobblestone: three make a stone pickaxe and eight make a furnace. Do not dig straight down or remove the block you are standing on.

Item	Ingredients and layout	Output
Planks	One log in a crafting square	Four planks
Sticks	Two planks stacked vertically	Four sticks
Crafting table	Four planks filling a 2×2 square	One table
Wooden pickaxe	Three planks across the top; a stick in the centre of each row below	One pickaxe
Stone pickaxe	The same pickaxe layout, using three cobblestone and two sticks	One pickaxe
Furnace	Eight cobblestone around an empty centre	One furnace
Torches	One coal or charcoal directly above one stick	Four torches
Bed	A row of three same-colour wool directly above a row of three planks	One bed

Find food and make light

Collect food while you can still see your route home. Cows, pigs and sheep are useful early sources of meat. Cook the raw meat in your furnace: put it in the upper input slot and fuel in the lower slot, wait for the result, then move the cooked food into your inventory. Eat when your food bar needs filling; a full food bar supports health regeneration.

If you have coal, use it as fuel and save some for torches. If you have not found coal, use the wood you kept:

1. Put one normal tree log in the furnace’s upper slot.
2. Add two sticks as fuel in the lower slot.
3. Collect the charcoal.
4. Craft that charcoal above one stick to make four torches.

Make more charcoal for cooking or extra torches if time allows. Converting every log into planks removes this immediate charcoal option, so leave a few logs uncrafted.

Seal a small shelter before dusk

A compact room cut into a hillside works, as does a small box of collected blocks. Give it a roof and solid walls, block the entrance from inside, and place your torches around the interior. Keep the crafting table and furnace inside so you can use the night to cook and prepare supplies.

Make the shelter first if sunset catches you short. You can improve the building tomorrow. Avoid opening a dark cave as part of your first room, and close any accidental opening into unknown space.

If you have no bed, stay inside until daylight. Being short of wool does not require a night-time search for sheep.

Use a bed if you have wool

Get three wool blocks of the same colour from sheep and combine them with three planks. Killing sheep is an early way to get wool; once you have shears, you can shear them instead. Oak planks are a simple choice for the example recipe.

Place the bed in your shelter, leave room around it, and use it. Confirm the Respawn point set message. At night, sleeping advances a single-player world to morning. On a multiplayer world, follow the on-screen sleeping requirement for that world.

If monsters prevent sleep, remain sheltered and wait. If you move or break the bed, use its new location to reset your respawn point; otherwise the old bed position will no longer be usable.

Recover and get ready for morning

Problem	What to do
It is already getting dark	Stop collecting and seal the nearest suitable shelter.
Cooking stops	Check that the input and fuel slots both contain suitable items. Add fuel if it ran out.
You cannot sleep	Stay inside, keep the room lit and try again when the bed allows it.
You die	Return with basic supplies to collect your drops. They can disappear after five minutes while their area is loaded; lava can destroy them immediately.

Before leaving in the morning, check the entrance for surviving mobs. Record your home coordinates so you can find it again: Settings → Game → Show Coordinates in Bedrock; F3 in Java, with F3 + F6 opening Debug Options if position information is hidden.

Your next useful job is to take the stone pickaxe, food and torches on a short iron-finding trip, then return to this shelter to smelt what you collect.

Keep going

• Mine iron and diamonds
• Prepare a Nether trip

Independent fan guide. Not an official Minecraft product; not approved by or associated with Mojang or Microsoft.