Minecraft is an adventure survival game where the world is sculpted by your whim. Best described as digital Legos, you can build anything your imagination can come up with. There is more to Minecraft than just building though, dig deep to find precious ores to craft new objects, and be afraid of the dark, for creatures appear who want nothing more than to see you die.

Materials needed for this tutorial:
--Computer (Mac or PC)
--Minecraft
--Your imagination!

Time Required:
--Anywhere from 20 minutes to the rest of your life.

Step 1: Buy Minecraft

If you do not already have Minecraft go here http://www.minecraft.net/ and buy it already. If you want to try it before you buy it, you can try the creative version of the game where there are no monsters, but you can still build stuff.

Step 2: Making Your New World

Before you can get start playing Minecraft, you need to make a world. Just click on the Create New World button, Enter the name for your world and click Create New World. This makes a new and random world for you to start in.

Step 3: Getting Started in Your New World

Where you start off in your world is your spawn point. If (when) you die, you will start back here unless you craft a bed and use it to reset your spawn point.

Look around using your mouse to take in your surroundings.
Use W,A,S,D to move in the world.
Left click to use the item currently held in your hand. R
Right click to place a block if you are holding one in your hand, or to interact with something in the world.

The boxes on the bottom are part of your quick access bar. Put items and tools in these for quick access to them.
Above the quick access bar is your experience bar. You get experience by killing monsters.
The hearts above the quick access bar is your current health, when it reaches zero you die!
The row of meat to the right of your life is your food meter, when it is full you slowly regenerate life, but when it is empty you lose health.

Step 4: Punch Some Trees!

The first thing you need when you start is wood. You need wood to craft the first tools you will need, and it will help while building your shelter for the night.

Move your cursor over the wood until the black border appears around it, and hold down the left mouse button until it breaks. Move over the tiny block that appears to pick it up.

Step 5: Make a Crafting Table

Hit i to enter your inventory screen.

Drag the logs from the trees you punched into the 2x2 crafting square on the left of the arrow. Planks will appear to the right of the arrow, click these to pick them up.

Now take the planks, and put one into each square of the crafting square to the left of the arrow. This will make a crafting table, which you need to craft almost everything in the game.

To use your crafting table drag it to the bottom row of your inventory. This puts it on the quick use bar. When it is on the quick use bar you can access it outside your inventory screen by pushing the number associated with the square, or using your mouse wheel to scroll through all the items on it. When you have the table in your hand right click on the ground the set it down. Finally to use it right click on it to bring up a bigger crafting 3x3 crafting square.

Step 6: Make Some Tools

Now that you have made your crafting table, you are ready to make some tools.

First you will need to make sticks. Using the planks we made earlier arrange two stacks of planks, one right above the other. Pick up the sticks that appear on the right side of the arrow.

Shown in the picture is an ax made out of wood. Arrange your sticks and planks as shown to make your ax.

To make a pickaxe put the sticks in the same place and place planks along the top row of the crafting square.

To make a sword put a stick in the bottom middle square, and then put a plank in the two squares above it.

For more crafting recipes go to http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Crafting to see the complete list.

Step 7: Build Your Shelter

Now that you have your tools, you can use them to gather blocks and ores faster. Use the ax to chop down trees faster and use your pickax to break up stone faster. Now it must be getting close to dark, which means that monsters will start to spawn. To protect you a shelter will be necessary. This can be anything from a hole in the ground, to a wooden abode, to a grand stone castle. Anything with walls and a ceiling will do.

Step 8: Permanent Shelter

If you did not build a permanent shelter during your first night, you will want to start looking for a spot to put a permanent dwelling. Permanent dwellings should contain things like chests to store all the items you have crafted and gathered, a bed to sleep in and save your spawn point, and pretty much anything else you would want in a real house.

Step 9: Food

As you play you may notice your food meter being slowly depleted. To fill this back you you will need to eat some food. The easiest way to obtain food is to find a pig or cow and kill it. After you kill the pig or cow they will drop raw pork chops or raw beef respectively. Raw meat does not fill up your food meter a lot, but you can throw the meat in a furnace to cook, but be careful not to burn it! You can also pick up eggs that chickens will lay from time to time. There are some non animal products to eat if you happen to be a vegan. You can plant wheat seeds, harvest the wheat, and turn the wheat into bread to eat.

Step 10: Monsters!!

By now you have probably seen some of the monsters that Minecraft will throw at you. I will go over a list of the common monsters and provide a short description

Zombie: The easiest monster to deal with, has a slow movement speed and can only attack you at very close range

Spider: Fast and annoying, they will leap at you to attack. They are able to scale walls so hiding on top of your house may not be safe

Skeleton: Attacks you with at long range with a bow.

Creeper: This no armed monster will run straight at you as soon as it sees you. It may not look dangerous but beware! It's only attack is to blow itself up! This explosion severely hurts you and it also blows up any nearby blocks.

Endermen: the oddest of the monsters, they appear as a tall person wrapped in shadow. While not immediately hostile, if you look directly at them they start to shake. If you move at all during this period they become hostile and will attack you. If you out- stare them they will just teleport away

Step 11: Delve Deeper!

With the basics down, now is the time to dig deep into the earth! Deep underground you will find the rarest of ores that you can use to make better weapons and armor, transportation, and even materials you can use to get to another world. However the further you dig the easier it gets for monsters to spawn, making it much more dangerous. Perhaps an even greater threat is getting lost, being in cramped and dark tunnels can be disorienting, making it difficult to find your way back to the surface.