Building a Safehouse

Written by Ellsworth
Edited by Darren Polkowski

When firing up Minecraft for the first time, it is not uncommon to have a “WTF” reaction. There is no tutorial, no tips, no guidance whatsoever. You're dropped into the world without a pot to piss in. Most likely you will spend the first ten minutes hitting random keys to find out what does what, and in the process, opening up your inventory only to find that you have zilch. By the time you figure this out, the sun will have gone down, and the monster mash will have begun. Without any means to defend yourself, you will die, respawn, and most likely die again soon thereafter. Fun game, huh? It gets better, I promise.

It's very important that you have some place to hide when night falls, so you need to build a safehouse of some kind as soon as possible. This structure will also serve as your base for storing tools and resources. I'm going to walk you through some steps to get a safehouse up fast, but if you find yourself beneath the setting sun before your walls are built, dig a hole, hop in, and seal it up. If you follow these steps quickly, you can have dirt walls up in ten minutes, and your safehouse built within one and a half game days.

Some players will suggest that it's much easier and faster to gouge a safehouse out of a hill or mountainside, but I'd much rather build a temporary structure that doesn't tear up the terrain.

Step 1: Pick a plot and punch down a tree.

Don't waste time looking for a nice location. Find some place that is relatively flat with some trees around it. Do it quickly. Gather wood for making tools by left clicking on a tree to punch out the wood tiles. Punch down one short tree.

Step 2: Craft a crafting table.

You will need a crafting table to craft all the necessary tools and building supplies. To build a crafting table, craft the wood you gathered into wooden planks so that you can use them to craft a crafting table. To start work on the table, open your inventory. Place the wood into one of the boxes in the inventory crafting grid. Next, remove the wooden planks from the output box to the right (Fig. 1). Save a couple of pieces of wood as you will need them to make torches later on.

Now put a piece of wooden plank in each of the four boxes in the inventory crafting grid. A crafting table will appear in the output box (Fig. 2). Pull the crafting table from your inventory down into your hotbar. Next, highlight it to put it in your hand, then right click to place it where you intend to build your safehouse.