Topic: How do I Minecraft?

I, like, literally can't even.

I want to figure out the game.... and i still can't figure it out. What is the gameplay loop?

More importantly how are 6 year olds the main player base, while i find it extremely complicated and hard to figure out? I feel like a failure .....i refuse to be showed up by 4 year olds!

You dig, get lost in caves, and get blown up by Creepers.

First, punch punch punch.

Then, put put put.

Lastly, hide from the monsters until you get bored.

Lol you guys are cracking me up. That's what it SEEMS like...... but that crafting system seems insanely intricate to me. The hierarchies of materials crafted from other materials made at tables made and fueled from other hierarches.... as a kid there's no way i could have comprehended that. I still can't

And then i dig a hole and sit in the dark hiding from monsters.... just letting the console sit there for 10-15 minutes. There has to be something i missed?

The console version has the option of using the simplified crafting system from the mobile game, where you have a list of things you can currently craft and then you just select them.

The original system is more fun if you ask me, there you put the materials in different formations and see if it comes up with something.

The things you can craft on your own is limited, to get access to more things, you need a crafting table. Create one with four plank blocks.

To advance time during the night, build a BED with three plank blocks and three wool blocks. You can only sleep at night and when there's no monsters around.

The Switch version should allow for the simplified crafting systems of the mobile editions, just like any other console. There you see what you can craft and what you need to accomplish it There's even a 3x3 diagram showing how to craft that thing with the classic crafting system enabled.

Really, though, there's only so many combinations you'll need on a regular basis, i.e. the weapons, torches. Plus, there's also only so much you can do with a 3x3 table so as long as you know what you'll need, and it's always better to get more than you need atm, you'll figure it out. Plus, there's no shame in looking up one of the many online Minecraft crafting lexika. I do it, my friends do it, probably the six years old target group does it.

Also, just a little bonus, and you may already know this, but I'd recommend hunting sheep for the first day (next to punching and cutting down trees, of course!) so you can make beds and skip night.

Honest that was like me. I tried Minecraft but I just found it boring and couldn't figure out how it is so popular. I tried Portal Knights recent ad I enjoy that but that's probably because of the RPG elements Portal Knights has.

Creation games.... This I kkinda wanna try... But I cant even make creative SMMaker levels let alone Minecraft stuff... I want to though.

Like Meowpheel stated, the mouse version makes a lot more sense with players laying sticks and minerals in a T shape to build a pickaxe. Just try and mine down to get steel, refine it, and craft a pickaxe, sword, shovel, bucket, and then eventually a steel armor set. Explore and set up a working shelter / base in a place you like with good access to water, and soil. Later you can develop your base more, mine, farm, and explore without losing your way back.

Man, I kind of want to play Minecraft again...

...Except for Playstation users...because Sony is a butt.

The achievements also give you a nice progressive list of things to do, so be sure to check those.

Sony isn't a butt, they're just corporation driven by pretty human self-interest that should not be allowed to monopolize the medium.

Sheesh, when I was 6, we were into Pokemon. Way simpler. Then again, the RBY games had the difficulty of not telling a whole lot at the beginning of the game, and you had to figure a lot of stuff on your own. Like how status changes don't carry over after the battle ends, how you can stop wondering why enemy Golbat's Confuse Ray never seems to miss, how to get past an enemy that's faster than you AND knows wrap, what the heck Dire Hit even does, how to get past the Rock Tunnel. All of these things confused the heck out of my 6 year old self. Plus the developers decided that Rock Type was the best introductory Gym type, when none of your Pokemon know moves that are going to do any damage? Especially those that picked Charmander? Yet it was what everyone and my brother was playing, and we had all the time in the world back then, so it was clearly the best way to spend it Face it. When it comes to wasting hours trying to figure out a complicated game, little kids have us beat.

Well, I've never played Minecraft , so can you veterans tell me if the game is worth playing single-player? I usually see people playing it with friends, but I'm always nervous playing cooperatively with voice chat until I've gotten used to the game first.

It's a game that requires the right mindset.

It can be extremely addicting and recomforting one week, then you may feel an existencial crisis about the futility of collecting cobblestone blocks and not play for a month.... Just to go back and create a five story mansion and repeat the cycle.

Having friends to play with makes things more fun, but it's perfectly playable solo.

I think the survival/crafting mechanics at the start are just as engaging as Breath of the Wild's. Worse combat, better house building. And of course Minecraft is randomly generated.

Thanks for all the input so far guys! I've come away with a few questions. I created a small world (is medium still the max on Switch?), but the world still seems inexplicably huge! Maybe I didn't set small correctly.

How do you find sheep? I created 3 new worlds. The first I found a cow, a pig, and then nothing. Then nightfall came and I had mined nothing. The second I found TWO sheep......then nightfall came and I had mined nothing. The third I found a bunch of sheep, but then nightfall came, and I didn't even have a crafting table let alone wood to make a bed. (I really really hate killing the sheep as they baa away....that's just cruel whacking at them like a psychopath ) Basically I can't seem to get the resources for torches and a bed in time for nightfall, let alone carving out a place and/or barricading it. It's always nightfall before I'm done figuring out what to get and where it is.

@Nicolai Hah, I didn't even know it HAD multiplayer until this thread! I saw "online server" options in the setup, but didn't pay it much attention. I'd never considered a game like this wouldn't be single player. But since when do kids have that much time? I remember being bogged down by homework all the time (which I happily shirked off more than should have been done for a new attempt at figure out what "Dodongo Dislikes Smoke" may mean...... and kids today seem to have ten billion activities to be schlepped off to...soccer practice on tuesday and basket ball practice on wednesday and then billy's birthday party on thursday, and then summer camp all summer, and then on and on and on I'd have retired by age 9 if that were MY childhood. Can't imagine how they still find time for gaming at all, honestly. Pokemon....that was one thing (Believe it or not, I never played Pokemon until B&W. I think when it came out I'd just gotten my Virtual Boy and been jaded, and drooled over Mario 64 and was just about transitioning into PC for a period so I missed the whole Pokemon hysteria and caught up with it in recent times ) But with Pokemon it's somewhat linear. You have to get from step to step to continue....so you wander...but you learn things as you learn things, you level numerically, and there's enemy-gated passages to complete in order. So it does a good job of telling you what to do by making clear what you can't do and how you go about doing more. THIS is just "here's a world, there's a ridiculously complicated hierarchy. Do stuff. No goals." It's not so much the wandering though...it's the crafting. Both systems are complex. Way too complex for kids to get into at least to me. Apparently it isn't, but I surely don't get how not. That kind of structured thinking and complex tables to memorize seem out of reach of kiddom....at least it used to be. Kids used to struggle with the rules of Monopoly!

@DarthNocturnal I haven't even SEEN villages other than the tutorial! But how do you set up farming systems?

@Haru17 @Meowpheel I saw the checkbox for the classic crafting system earlier before this thread and wondered what the difference was. That's interesting. Honestly I think the "simple" one is pretty complex with the combination of raw and crafted ingredients for other things. I can't imagine having to play with only guesswork about making things. Seems like the kind of game that, back on PC, was designed to have a browser open with a wiki on one screen and the game on the other just to figure out what to make. I'm grateful for the simple system, but even that's confusing. Though I admit I think the UI design is half of what makes it confusing. It's just plain bad. A list of hierarchies, not presented as hierarchies, across a spaghettied set of tabs. If the "simple" one seems complicated, I don't want to think of the "classic" one

So is Microsoft

...and Nintendo I guess.

@NEStalgia Maybe I don't appreciate how complicated the crafting system is, but we were memorizing Pokemon type charts alongside multiplication tables. Kid's brains are beautifully like sponges.

And maybe multiplayer is the key, too. I always see my little cousins playing online with a similarly-aged friend. Maybe Minecraft is the kind of game that's taught rather than learned on your own.

The classic system is actually pretty intuitive, and you really only need to rememeber a few recipes.

You can just... Kill the sheep. It will drop food and wool. It's a bit sad, but having a bed early on is extremely useful.

Plants need to be at least 4 squares from a source of water to stay planted, if not then the dirt will dry and revert to "not farmland". Crops also need light to grow, so they will go dormant at night unless you put some torches around.

Do keep in mind that if you skip night by going to sleep, so will everything else. So plant's wont grow while you sleep.