Tutorial:Adventuring

The Minecraft community has developed some standards of gaming to help new Minecraft players become comfortable with the game. Millions of users have at some point been too inefficient or died unnecessarily. This guide should help new players who are well past the first few days get the grips of adventuring and being away from base for long periods of time.

Regardless of the advice given here, players should feel free to play the game in their own way.

Basic rules for adventuring

• Bring tools, weapons and gear: Keeping tools, weapons, shields, and other items on‑hand helps you gather resources and defend yourself against hostile mobs.

• Maintain an adequate food supply: In Minecraft, your character regenerates health by depleting hunger and saturation values, which are replenished by eating. In other words, eating restores health indirectly. This is the primary method of health recovery in early‑game survival.

• Avoid vertical mining: Digging straight down can send you falling into large caves, lava lakes or even ancient cities. Digging straight upward may bury you under gravel or drown you in water. Vertical‑direction mining is therefore strongly discouraged.

• Do not discard items carelessly: Keep seemingly‑useless items obtained early in survival; they may prove vital later on. Avoid throwing away items you do not immediately need unless you run out of storage space.

Goals

Going out on an adventuring means traveling for specific purposes: exploring terrain, locating generated structures (such as villages), selecting building sites, seeking out biomes, and so forth. Expedition goals include, but are not limited to:

• Find a suitable location to build wheat fields and other farms to secure your food supply, and locate additional crops to increase farm‑crop diversity.
• Travel across the Overworld, exploring varied structures, features, and biomes. Seek undiscovered ores, crops, and animals, fight mobs, and experience diverse terrain.
• Dig a mine shaft all the way down to bedrock to stockpile ores, especially diamonds (highly important; see Tutorial:Mining).
  • Locate monster rooms, natural caverns or mineshafts.
• Breed animals up to sufficient numbers for steady access to food, leather and other resources.
• Build a safe spot for fishing through the night or during thunderstorms, free from mob harassment.
• Fight mobs to gain experience and loot drops.
• Gather extra resources for building and crafting, and learn about craftable items.
  • Collect materials while traveling to prepare for various crafting recipes.
• Locate villages. Trade crops and meat for emeralds, then spend emeralds on better gear.
• If you encounter an ocean, craft a boat to explore and discover new landmasses. Remember to mark your way back home.
• Try building a fortress and role‑play as a “king”.
  • Erect walls or fences around your territory and light the area thoroughly, creating a safe base where you can move freely at night with no mobs spawning.
  • Expand your territory gradually and establish multiple outposts.
• Experiment with redstone circuits and mechanisms.
• Gather obsidian in preparation for building a Nether portal.
  • Venture into the Nether to obtain ingredients for potions and other advanced items.
• Develop a brewing setup to make a variety of useful or novelty potions.
• Progressively upgrade all your tools and armour until you obtain a full set of netherite‑quality tools and full netherite armour. Enchant your equipment further to grant special abilities.See also Tutorial:getting max gear.
• Locate an End portal, travel to The End, and take on the game’s main objective: defeating the ender dragon.
• Construct mob farm traps such as mob farm to efficiently collect gunpowder,string, arrows and other resources.

This overview list guides you through many types of gameplay and suggests common play‑style directions. Whatever your objective, be clear about how long your expedition will last and how far you intend to travel from home. It is equally important to understand your purpose and plan accordingly. For example: bring plenty of emeralds if heading for a village; bring weapons and high‑tier armor if you exploring a Woodland Mansion; pack several shulker boxes if you plan to visit many structures, and so on. With thorough preparation, even your very first expedition can go without trouble. Enjoy your adventuring!

Preparation

Before an adventuring, you may want to gather food and other supplies. You may need to spend a few days at your base before you set off.

This player's inventory is ready for deep caving: two iron pickaxes for soft stones, two diamond pickaxes for harder ones, an enchanted iron pickaxe for valuable diamonds and emeralds, a diamond sword and extra shield for protection, an iron shovel for gravel, sand, or clay; a stack of torches, a copper axes, and several colored bundles to organize their stackable tools and treasures.

The inventory provides only 36 inventory slots. One of the most‑common mistakes new players make is carrying excessive items while adventuring essential supplies. Listed below are genuinely useful items for going on expeditions. Of course, many items can also be found along the way, yet it is best to bring everything you can. You may be missing some of these items; this is usually not a major problem, but it is worth keeping in mind.

Tools: Iron‑tier tools are inexpensive and efficient. They are easy to craft and replace on‑the‑fly during adventuring, making them the go‑to choice for most situations.

Depending on the kind of expedition you plan, you may need several different tools. It is recommended to bring at least one pickaxe, axe, and shovel for mining and crafting other required gear. An axe can cut wood or strike hostile mobs, though it attacks more slowly than a sword.‌^{[JE only]}

Upgrade to diamond‑tier or better tools if resources permit.

Water Bucket & Bucket: A water bucket is an bucket filled with water. It can create waterfalls (for elevators or sweeping away mobs), put out fires, mitigate creeper‑explosion damage in confined spaces, clear ground debris, and negate fall damage, among other uses.

• Buckets can also collect lava (to burn mobs, build traps, or serve as fuel), as well as mobs such as fish, tadpoles and axolotls.

Shield: Blocks incoming attacks from hostile mobs; especially effective against creeper explosions and skeleton arrows.

Armor: Prepare a set of armor before setting out. If resources are scarce, prioritize the chestplate and leggings, as they grant more armor points than other armour pieces. When traveling to the Nether, equip a piece of gold armor — preferably golden boots — to prevent piglins from attacking you.

Light Sources: Bring enough torches to illuminate your path at night or inside caves.

Food: Ensure you carry ample food. Steaks and cooked porkchops are nutrient‑dense and relatively easy to obtain. If you are early‑game and have not built ranching yet, bread or baked potatoes work as substitutes. Try to conserve food while traveling.

Resources: Bring blocks such as logs and cobblestone to build small temporary bases, construct bridges, and replenish tools while away from home. Cobblestone is unnecessary if you intend to settle inside a cave, but some logs or planks are advised for crafting crafting tables and replacing broken tools. You may also bring a moderate amount of common crafting materials such as iron ingots.

Doors‌^{[JE only]}: Doors are useful for underwater breathing when diving, for instance in cave aquifers or oceans. Three doors suffice if you will not dive deeply or if the dive site features many platforms and valid door‑placement spots. For larger underwater zones, prepare 6‑12 doors and place them no more than seven breath bubbles apart from one another. Very large underwater areas may require up to 24 doors.

Bed: Bringing a bed offers multiple benefits. Sleeping skips nights filled with hostile mobs, phantoms and thunderstorms. It also sets your spawn point; should you die accidentally, you will respawn at the bed, shortening the distance you must travel to retrieve your dropped items. You may also sleep in village beds along your route or carry straw beds.

Leads and Fences: Used for gathering animals. While herding animals back to your base, terrain may snag them and break the lead. Place a fence post and tie leads to it to hold animals safely in place.

This player is ready for an adventure, with a special bundle for holding leads (13) and fences (12). This player is hoping to bring some animals back home for breeding.

Navigation Items: A book and quill lets you write down coordinates of caves, ravines, structures or biomes you want to explore later. On animal‑gathering expeditions, you can record coordinates for every location where animals are leashed. Without a lodestone compass, write down your base coordinates before departure. Lodestone compasses, regular compasses and maps all aid navigation. You can also place trail‑markers along your path to avoid getting lost.

Emergency Survival Items: Potions of healing, golden apples and totems of undying can pull you out of lethal danger during critical moments.

Storage‑related items:

• Bundles are highly‑practical, as they allow stacking many different item types together. Bundles can be renamed at an anvil and dyed in a crafting table or cauldron, helping you organize and categorise part of your inventory more conveniently.

• Portable chests or barrels may be carried to sort and store items collected en‑route. Barrels have a slightly lower average crafting cost than chests.

• Ender chests also provide item‑storage capacity. All ender chests in a world share one unified storage space for the same player. Use them to keep spare or infrequently‑used tools readily accessible. It is recommended to store all tool varieties other than your active set inside an ender chest. Do not break an ender chest with a pickaxe lacking the Silk Touch enchantment; doing so will only drop eight obsidian blocks.

Leaving base

Storage

Be sure to store all unnecessary items at your base to preserve extra inventory space. Most items can be mined or crafted while out on your journey.

Base

Make certain no mobs other than yourself can enter or exit; simply closing doors will usually suffice. Keep your base well‑lit so mobs cannot spawn inside. Also ensure your tamed mobs — such as wolves, cats, parrots, and llamas — are kept in a secure area, preventing you from accidentally bringing them along when you do not intend to.

An aftermath of somebody's base, when coming home from an adventure

Bring proper weapons

Carrying a reliable weapon is especially critical during dangerous situations. Swords (iron or better) and tridents are excellent choices. Also remember to hold a shield in your off‑hand.

Traveling

• Sprinting and jumping add extra hunger‑level consumption. When you have sufficient food or are playing in Peaceful mode, press the sprint key to sprint and increase movement speed. Repeatedly jumping while sprinting lets you move even faster.
• Conserve food by using ladders instead of constant jumping, or placing stairs along frequently‑traversed slopes.
• Much like machetes cutting through undergrowth in real‑world forests, you can use shears, a hoe, or a sword to quickly break leaves and pass through dense woodland in Minecraft. This can be faster than seeking an alternate route, yet it depletes tool durability.
• Be cautious of powder snow: you can sink into it and take freeze damage. Wearing leather boots prevents sinking. If you do sink, break surrounding powder‑snow blocks and stand on solid blocks to avoid injury.

• Coordinates in the Nether follow a 1:8 ratio relative to Overworld coordinates. You can leverage this property with Nether portals to build fast‑travel routes. See Tutorial:Nether hub.

Ender Pearls

Ender pearls enable fast long‑distance travel. However, every ender‑pearl teleport inflicts 5HP fall damage on the player. Enchanted armor — especially boots with Feather Falling — is strongly recommended to mitigate this damage.

• An ender pearl still triggers teleportation upon striking the side face of a block. This may send you plummeting, taking injury or death, and possibly dumping you into lava seas or the Void. To avoid misjudged throws, practice aiming with snowballs first, as they have the exact same trajectory as ender pearls.

• Build a pillar to raise your position before throwing an ender pearl; this lowers teleport‑attempt difficulty and risk. For touch‑screen gameplay, enable Split Controls within Settings‑‑Touchscreen.

If you fall due to a misthrow, try throwing another ender pearl toward solid ground you can stand on. You may also place blocks against cliff sides to halt further falling. Eating chorus fruit is another way to teleport back toward solid ground.‌^{[JE only]}

• Ender pearls anger mobs such as zombified piglins if the mob is struck by the pearl.

Elytra

Elytra paired with firework rockets allow faster, more efficient terrain exploration, though several caveats apply.

• Keep track of elytra durability. Durability depletes with flight time. At 1 durability point remaining, flight becomes impossible. You face severe fall‑damage or death, and risk losing your dropped items.
• Fly primarily in open areas. Avoid colliding with obstacles such as jungle trees, ice spikes in the Ice Spikes biome, or cave walls. Some terrain is highly convoluted; safe flat landing spots may be hard to find, resulting in substantial damage.
• The Nether abounds with basalt pillars, sheer cliffs and dead‑end passages. You may collide with terrain, stall and plummet into lava seas, or get shot down by piglins or ghasts. Flying above Y=128 (above the Nether’s bedrock ceiling) is a viable workaround. ‌^{[JE only]}See Tutorial:Breaking bedrock.
• Gliding at steep angles reduces forward speed. A 60‑degree angle relative to the ground eliminates all horizontal elytra‑provided momentum and is enough to cause fall damage; a 90‑degree angle triggers full free fall. Firework rockets can quickly pull you out of a stall.

Bear in mind that elytra grant zero armor points. Swap back to a chestplate once you land safely.

Horses, donkeys, and camels

Horses grant rapid overland travel without consuming your hunger or saturation, particularly across hilly or mountainous terrain. Higher‑speed horses are obviously preferable; jump height matters less overall, though useful for clearing rivers or multi‑block‑high obstacles. Donkeys and camels serve comparable purposes.

Camels dash when you press jump. Normally each dash covers at most 10 blocks forward and 1 block upward. Do not dash while riding camels around sharp elevation changes such as hills, canyons or lava‑lake margins. The camel may take damage or die, leaving you stranded.

Boats

Boats are the most convenient way to travel over water. Craft a chest boat to effectively double your inventory capacity while underway. A boat seats up to two passengers (including yourself); the chest counts as one passenger slot. Adult horses, donkeys, and camels cannot board boats, but will follow behind if leashed. Leads can be attached to boats just as they are to fence posts.

When passing over whirlpools generated by underwater magma blocks, both your boat and tethered mobs get pulled beneath the surface. In deep water you may lack time to pull animals clear before magma‑block damage occurs. Non‑player mobs will not disembark voluntarily; you must break the boat to retrieve them once you finish your voyage. Avoid breaking boats with swords, as sweep attacks may injure onboard mobs.‌^{[JE only]}

Additionally, boats can transport mobs over land similarly to on water. Player‑steered land travel is slow (except on ice‑type blocks), and boats cannot climb elevation changes. Use a lead pulling the boat for faster over‑land transport.

Exploring structures, features and biomes

Once you have built up adequate survival competence, the wider world opens up to you. Structures and features decorate the Minecraft world and may hold valuable loot. Different biomes grant access to distinct resources. Exploring them is both a necessary way to obtain certain resources and one of Minecraft’s greatest sources of enjoyment.

This chapter covers techniques for locating and conquering selected structures, land‑features and biomes. Only noteworthy key points are presented here. For more thorough information, consult the relevant tutorial guides for each respective structure, feature, or biome. If no dedicated tutorial exists, specialised guidance is likely unnecessary for exploring those locations. If you are unsure about their exact spawn locations, search for the corresponding entry on this wiki and view its article page.

Locating

Most structures generate only within specific biomes. You may first locate the target biome and then search for the structure inside it.

You can also purchase explorer maps from villagers or find treasure maps inside shipwrecks to quickly pinpoint related structures or treasure.

If you already know precise coordinates for your destination, you may travel rapidly by utilising the Nether roof. This does not work in Bedrock Edition because you cannot place blocks up there like you can in Java Edition, so you can't build portals.

Of course, if you are not set on hunting for one particular structure or biome, you may simply travel steadily in one direction and conquer whatever structures and biomes you encounter along your path.

Locating via cheat methods

When game rules and circumstances permit, you may use certain cheat‑based methods to quickly find structures or biomes if you wish to skip lengthy searching. Heavy reliance on these approaches, however, may diminish the intrinsic fun of exploration.

The simplest method is the /locate  command, which directly returns coordinates for the nearest structure or biome.

You may also use  /seed  to retrieve your world seed, then input that seed into third‑party tools such as （Chunkbase） to look up all nearby structures and biomes.

Overworld

Desert Pyramid

The treasure room

Beneath the blue terracotta at the center of a desert pyramid lies an 11‑block‑deep secret cellar holding four loot chests. A stone pressure plate in the center is connected to nine TNT blocks.

The safest approach is to dig straight down two blocks away from the blue terracotta; this avoids fall damage and accidental pressure‑plate activation. If you are confident you can survive the fall, break any block adjacent to the blue terracotta and jump down — take great care not to step onto the pressure plate.

Upon reaching the cellar, immediately mine away the pressure plate to prevent accidents. Never break the blue terracotta directly, as this will very likely trigger the pressure plate and blow up the loot.

Dig down seven blocks behind, and two blocks left or right from the blue terracotta. You will find a staircase underneath the bottom‑floor blocks. Follow the staircase down to enter the cellar. Suspicious sand generates inside the cellar, so bring a brush for archaeology.

Pillager Outpost

One loot chest sits atop the pillager outpost. Obtaining this loot is straightforward, yet the structure’s true value comes from pillager captains that spawn here.

If no captain is present when you arrive, build roughly 20 blocks upward from the tower roof and wait for one to spawn. Once you spot a captain, kill it quickly with a ranged weapon, collect the ominous bottle, and leave.

To farm ominous bottles repeatedly, you can completely flatten the spawn area to boost spawn rates, or build a mob farm for automatic drops.

Woodland Mansion

Obsidian room

Lava room

Woodland mansions generate extremely rarely within dark forests and pale gardens. Vindicators and evokers found inside deal high damage, so do not underestimate them. Some loot chests are well‑hidden and require careful searching.

Prison rooms often contain many allays. If you plan to bring them home, prepare at least ten leads before setting out.

You may safely ignore storage rooms filled with chests, as those chests are always empty. Each of the two rooms shown in the illustration hides one block of diamond.

Ancient City

Ancient cities frequently generate beneath high‑elevation biomes such as mountains, which you can use to locate them. Ancient cities hold abundant loot yet are extremely dangerous. Bring plenty of totems of undying and building blocks before you venture in. A hoe is recommended for quickly breaking sculk shriekers when necessary.

While exploring, build out bridges at least 30 blocks above ground to evade the warden’s ranged attacks. After locating a loot chest, place water on your bridge, swim down to the bottom, grab loot swiftly, and swim back up to your bridge.

Do not stay on the lower level for long. Minimize noise and move while sneaking. Leave existing pathways intact for a fast emergency escape.

If you accidentally activate sculk shriekers and summon a warden, retreat immediately to your bridge. Either defeat it using ranged attacks or wait for it to burrow underground. Never engage the warden in melee combat unless you are absolutely certain you will prevail.

Monster room

If you spot mossy cobblestone or regular cobblestone underground, you have most likely found a monster room. Each spawner chamber contains one spawner and up to two loot chests.

Before opening any chests, place torches on top of the spawner to halt further mob spawning. You can later convert the spawner into a mob farm. If you no longer need it, you can break it outright.

Mineshaft

Mineshafts feature tangled, complex passages. Mark your path or use other underground navigation techniques to avoid getting lost.

When encountering a cave spider spawner encased in heavy cobwebs, clear the webs quickly using shears, a sword, or flowing water to access the spawner.

Avoid lingering on overhanging bridge segments, or you may get shot off by distant skeletons.

Trial Chambers

When you discover tuff bricks or copper blocks underground, you have likely found a trial chamber. If you are confident in your abilities, before entering, drink an ominous bottle to gain the Bad Omen effect. Approaching a trial spawner with Bad Omen will convert Bad Omen into Trial Omen, turning the trial spawner into an ominous trial spawner. Challenges become harder, but rewards are significantly better.

Ominous trial keys obtained from ominous trials open ominous vaults, the only source of the heavy core. Heavy cores have an extremely low drop chance. After finishing your first run, wait 30 minutes for the cooldown to end to enable repeated attempts. During this time, you may want to modify the area for easier combat.

Ocean Monument

The treasure room

Ocean monuments generate in deep ocean biomes. Wear armor enchanted with Respiration and Aqua Affinity for exploration.

When running low on oxygen, stand flush against a wall facing it, and rapidly use a water bucket to replenish your air supply.

Three elder guardians inside the monument inflict Mining Fatigue on players. Defeat them first for smoother exploration. The central treasure chamber shown in the reference image contains eight gold blocks. Wet sponges spawn in some rooms; bring a hoe to harvest them.

Ocean Ruin

Loot chests in ocean ruins yield relatively poor rewards; their main value lies in archaeology. Wear Respiration‑enchanted armor while exploring. Ocean ruins are usually close to the water surface, so you can surface directly to refill oxygen.

Only suspicious sand within tropical ocean ruins can yield sniffer eggs, and the drop rate remains low. If hunting exclusively for sniffer eggs, be ready for lengthy exploration sessions.

When clearing sand and gravel, avoid overly high‑efficiency shovels. Remove layers gradually so you do not accidentally break suspicious sand or suspicious gravel.

The Nether

Nether Fortress

Nether fortresses often generate above lava seas. Fireballs shot by blazes can set you on fire, so bring plenty of potions of Fire Resistance. Blazes tend to attack from afar; ranged weapons are highly recommended.

If you want to farm large quantities of blaze rods, fully enclose the blaze‑spawner’s spawning zone with blocks. This restricts blaze movement and prevents outside interference.

Bastion Remnant

The treasure room

Bridge

Bastion remnants contain substantial loot, but several chests are well‑concealed and demand careful searching. Treasure‑chamber variants offer the richest rewards: one or two loot chests plus large quantities of gold blocks sit in the middle of lava pools. Bridge‑type bastions also hold many gold blocks on their extended sections. The other two variants have comparatively meagre loot.

Brutes within bastion remnants deal heavy damage; use ranged weapons or lava against them. Equip a golden helmet or golden boots during exploration to prevent piglin aggression.

The End

End City

End ship

End cities are the sole structure in the End and the only source of elytra. Locating end cities can require traveling thousands of blocks, so stock up on building blocks before you depart.

Elytra generate exclusively inside end ships. If elytra are your only goal, ignore any end cities with no attached end ship.

Shulker bullets fired by shulkers apply Levitation. Wear boots enchanted with Feather Falling to prevent fatal falls. Shulkers only take arrow damage while their shells are open. Destroy incoming shulker bullets with melee strikes or arrows. While levitating, always ensure the void is not directly beneath you.

Some end cities possess intricate layouts with many branches. To explore them completely without missing sections, follow this method; when reaching a junction, explore the forward‑most branch first. Once that branch terminates, return to the previous intersection and explore remaining branches clockwise. Repeat this process to guarantee full coverage of the entire structure.