Absolute Beginner's Guide to Surviving Better Than Wolves

I wrote this for a couple of my friends who keep dying on my server, (they've never played BTW period, much less Hardcore Hunger - one of them is actually new to MC in general) and I thought it might be useful to some people. It's all text, no screenshots or videos, so if you want screenshots and videos, might I suggest some of the other fantastic guides already present on this very forum?

There may be some minor spoilers, but I couldn't fit that in the title, so it's here.

If you don't want anything spoiled for you, why are you reading a how-to guide anyway? 

Go get yourself killed a lot, that's what I did.

The scope of this is strictly the early stages of survival. It's more of a loose set of guidelines for what to do than a hard and fast guide. This encompasses what I've learned from my experiences so far. There is no one true way to actually play - this just seems to be the best way to pull it off without villages and without doing a lot of nomading.

That's a word now.

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The goal of early survival is attaining a sustainable food supply.

Early Game Tools:

Wood Pickaxe, Wood Shovel, Stone Pickaxe, Stone Axe

Early Game "Weapons":

Stone Axe (Extremely low durability, use only in an emergency!)

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Early Game Foods:

Brown Mushrooms, Pumpkin Seeds, Cooked Meat, Eggs

Note that mushrooms spread extremely slowly without bonemeal, which is not an immediately available resource, and pumpkins cannot be farmed until you have iron. Still, a nice dark mushroom-spreading area is a nice thought. Just be careful: it's quite possible that the mushroom farm will spawn monsters if you miscalculate even a little bit on the light level. It has to be low enough for mushrooms to spread, but high enough to keep monsters away - it's probably safer not to worry about it for now, especially if you're new to Minecraft in general and aren't sure what light level actually means.

Combat is to be avoided at all costs. Seriously, run away from combat if at all possible.

So the first thing you do in any version of Minecraft is punch wood. BTW is no different, so go gather a some wood. You'll want around ten wood logs to start with. Break them down into planks and the planks down into sticks, leaving enough wood for a wooden pickaxe. Mine all eleven cobblestone you can, and turn that cobblestone into a stone pickaxe and a furnace. Then mine more stone, then make a stone axe and some more stone pickaxes. If daylight still exists, consider getting more wood. You'll want it. 

Do not go out at night if you can at all help it. If night falls and you're unprepared, dig a big hole and cry in it. Hopefully you won't starve.

Now that basic supplies are out of the way, let's discuss food.

If you find a swamp, harvest most of the brown mushrooms you find (leaving a handful under trees in case of emergency and for repopulation purposes). If you find pumpkins, collect them. Hunt for meat, but beware that animals run away, and chasing animals may be a greater waste of food resources than it returns. One porkchop is not worth three or four shanks off your food meter because you ran and jumped all over the place. Punch all the tall grass you find: hemp seeds will be an extremely vital part of the settling-down process.

Beware of over-hunting: You're not the only 'person' trying to eat animals now. Keep at least two of every animal penned up somehow, even if you don't have the crops to breed them just yet, as they will become important later in the tech tree.

If you don't care about wool, then sheep would be your best target for over-hunting early on; you simply don't need sheep if you don't want wool, and by end-game you'll have other food supplies.

When you think you've got enough resources to settle down, find a place you'd like to build. My ideal place is near a desert for optimal windmill usage, but a desert is not necessary, and I'm actually currently settling in a swamp by an ocean.

Chickens provide the earliest, easily-sustainable food source: feeding chickens hemp seeds from tall grass will provide eggs, which when thrown will either hatch into a baby chicken OR will give you a raw egg.

You want chickens around.

Raw egg can be mixed with brown mushrooms to create an omelet, which can then be cooked for best results. Alternatively, you can mix the egg with a bucket of milk and a bowl for scrambled eggs, which can also be cooked, or you can cook the egg alone for some benefit, if you never find milk or mushrooms.

If the chicken hatches, on the other hand, then you have access to more chicken meat or another source of eggs, depending on your preference, as soon as the baby chicken grows up.

It's important to note that you should create a safe chicken coop with a roof on top: the chickens' primary predators (other than you) do not care about walls!

After you've got your chicken situation settled, you should move on to farming properly. This will require at least eighteen iron ore to create the hoe, so it's time to start digging. You want as much iron and coal as you can get. Do not use the coal to smelt the iron you find; logs cook for variable times based on species but are now just about as effective as (char)coal in terms of fuel. You're going to want torches. Torches are important, and torches are much more valuable in BTW.

You will need a lot of stone pickaxes: the durability on them is not particularly spectacular, and you can no longer repair them by banging them together until they're fixed.

Suggestions for branch mining can be found all over the place, but I find that it's the most effective way to locate pretty much any mineral resource in vMC, and BTW doesn't change ore-spawning rules. 

A general guideline I use is:

1: Dig to bedrock.
2: Go back up five blocks. This should put you right above the lava layer.
3: Dig in a straight line about three blocks high until you run into open air or something you can't actually mine.
4: Stop (it's hammer time).
5: Turn cobblestone into cobblestone slabs.
6: On your way back to the start of your mine, place half-slabs on the ground to prevent monster spawning.
7: Your mine will be very dark. You can use torches at important locations, but I would recommend only placing them as you absolutely need them: coal is much more valuable than cobblestone.
8: Dig side branches following the same guideline as #3.
9: Rinse and repeat.

You will also want stone stairs to take you to and from your mine. You can crawl up stairs when starving to death, but you can't jump. Besides, jumping wastes food resources. At this stage in the game, you do not have food resources to spare.

You should also consider this principle when terraforming the land around your home. Dirt half-slabs are an amazing invention. Use them liberally because you do not want to jump everywhere. You just don't. Stairs are also effective. 

Running and jumping should be avoided unless it is absolutely necessary.

So, mining. You have some options on what you want to create out of iron. If you find diamonds, consider saving up twenty-seven iron ore instead of just eighteen. Two diamonds can be used to make a hoe, and your first iron pickaxe is a major milestone. Otherwise, just save up the eighteen iron ore you need to make a hoe, and craft it as soon as possible.

Yes, I said a hoe for your first two diamonds. Not a sword. You want to avoid combat at all costs. Combat will cripple you, and crippled Steves die horribly. The end.

Now that you've gotten a hoe somehow (we'll go with magic for this one), it's time to start up your real farming endeavors.

If you were lucky enough to get pumpkins in your early nomadic stages, great! Add pumpkin seeds to your farm, leaving a blank plot of dirt for each stem you plant. Note that pumpkin growth is pretty slow, but you can eat pumpkin seeds raw for 1/2 a shank of hunger each, at the same level as brown mushrooms on their own. Pumpkin pie is not available at this level unless you somehow wandered across an inhabited village and it had wheat - this guide is mostly about surviving without a village, so we're skipping pumpkin pie entirely. 

You will want a decently-sized farm for hemp and hemp-seeds regardless of the presence or absence of pumpkins. Not only will this assist with feeding your chickens, resulting in more eggs and chicken meat, but a good hemp farm is also the first step towards the first major technological development in BTW: the windmill. Remember that your hemp farm must have open air or glass above it - and nothing else - or the hemp won't grow. 

If you've found any bones in your travels from dead skeletons, or temples, or other players who had bones on them when they died (get creative! And remember, don't engage in combat if you can help it) you may want a millstone and hand crank to make bonemeal. The exact recipes can be found on the wiki, found here:http://sargunster.com/btw/index.php?title=Main_Page, so go take a moment to look that up now. The materials are things you should already have on hand if you've been following along. 

(Hint: Wood and stone. Entirely. Some of it has to be processed.)

The hand-crank drains hunger extremely quickly, so always make sure you've got food to spare for this!

Bonemeal does not grow plants instantly in BTW, nor even at the rate that vMC now provides. It does, however, accelerate plant growth, including hemp plants and pumpkin stems. 

So, now's a good time to analyze your resources. Do you have enough food to power the hand-crank to make bonemeal, and regardless of that, do you have enough food to survive the wait for your plants to grow? You should also consider whether or not you've encountered any wolves yet. If you have, you may consider using the raw bones to tame them instead, as they are a vital part of the later tech tree, can help you in combat, and may do as a food source in a pinch.

Never directly attack your (or anyone else's) wolves. It won't end well. Also feeding them their fallen kin is a Bad Idea.

If you don't have bones, of course, this is obviously a pointless consideration until you feel you are ready to fight skeletons, you create a mob grinder, or until the dawn greets you with a lucky stockpile of monster drops.

Regardless of the presence or absence of bones, you should focus on improving your food supply so you can grind the roughly 70 hemp plants you'll need to collect for a windmill and axles. Remember to only cut the top half of the hemp plant, as it will grow back much, much faster than growing a whole new hemp plant.

More in-depth guides cover advancing through the tech tree from here. One of the best guides is actually the front page of the BTW wiki, so take a peek at that to see where you should go next. 

At this point you're mostly settled in, so your survival is entirely dependent on you.

Some considerations for your next goal: a compass is nice for finding the original spawn point. Building a road back to the original spawn may help you find your way back to wherever it is you settled if you die. If you've died a few times, there are good odds you have no idea where either point actually is until you build a compass and/or a map.

You will also soon want a nether portal to continue climbing the tech tree. More diamonds are therefore in order, as Hardcore Buckets does not allow for the bucket method of building such a portal. Just make sure your nether portal is someplace secured from the outside world. Optimally, nothing (except you) comes out, nothing (except you) should go in.

That's basically it!

Feedback is appreciated, as well as any other tips for absolute, complete nooblets.

Chapter 31: Bloodlust

((Only a month 'til Skyrim! Better get cracking on this!))

Stay quiet, follow me.

Lyssi kept her focus on the other Bosmer as she gently tugged him away from the staircase, toward a side door she'd noticed before. His eyes were wide, and he'd become almost as pale as she was, but he didn't speak. He couldn't speak. She made sure of that, focusing every bit of her power on that one thought.  

Stay quiet, follow me.

She sat him down on a barrel in what appeared to be a storage room, then shuffled her backpack off of her shoulder. She'd been expecting the torches and pitchforks response, and she'd expected to have to flee. It landed with a heavy thump, the thin blanket following. She fished the dead drop out of her pack, holding it up for the boy to see.

Enilroth became as pale as the white-gold tower of the Imperial City, trembling so badly that it shook the barrel he sat on. He recognized the package. She could taste his fear in the air, and it took too much work to convince herself she didn't enjoy it. The predator inside her knew the scent of an easy kill.

She split her attention now, letting the boy speak if he chose to - she scratched letters into the air, light following her fingertips.

"Who gave you this." The boy's suspicious activity was too recent. Combined with, his age, his raw terror - he was prey, not predator. He wasn't the traitor, he wasn't even a Brother. He had never taken a life, she was as sure of that as she was her own name. He was shaking almost violently, now.

"I'm... I'm sorry!" The boy barely got the words out past his terror. She raised an eyebrow, gesturing for him to continue. "I didn't mean to do anything wrong ... it ... it was the robed man!"

The traitor. Yes. She grinned to herself. Finally.


Enilroth was apparently encouraged by her smile. Maybe he was just terrified - probably, he was just terrified. "He... he paid me to put those things in the barrel. The ... the coins, I still have them, if ... I mean, I meant to ... please don't hurt me?" The boy swallowed heavily.

"The man." Let the boy think she'd kill him if he didn't tell her more. It was almost amusing.

"I don't know his name, and his face was in shadow. He ... he called to me yesterday as I walked by the lighthouse. I think he lives there! Or he did, anyway? I don't know. He ... He told me he was leaving Anvil. I'm sorry, but that's all I know!"

Leaving. Her grin became a scowl. The traitor had slipped out of her grasp because she was weak. She felt her fingers flex. Because of the demons, and the priest-turned-emperor, and her gods-cursed festering wounds, she hadn't been fast enough to intercept the traitor.

And now she was forced to wait another day ... she found herself pacing, trying to think of a way to protect herself from the sunlight.

There was nothing for it. She'd have to investigate this lighthouse, but she was confined to the smithy until the sun set. "You're ... you are, aren't you?" The boy sounded nervous still, but also curious. For the moment, she'd forgotten he was still there - of course, she stood between him and the door.

She glanced over at him, scratching her response into the air. The light flickered, shimmering into - and out of - existence, dying mere moments after she'd finished writing. She was almost out of magic. "Are what."

"A - a vampire. You really are a vampire, aren't you?" He sounded more curious than afraid, now. Suddenly, she wished she'd thought to bind him. Something about his curiousity unsettled her. He wasn't afraid enough for that kind of a revelation. She nodded once, hesitantly. "You're nothing like I thought you'd be. You're real pretty and ... well, you don't have wings, or ... or claws, or cloven feet or anything. You're practically a real person."

Pretty? She raised an eyebrow, tilting her head to the side, folding her arms - or well, folding her right arm over her chest. Her left arm still hung limply.

He leaned forward. "What's it like? When you bite people, I mean. You - do still, you know, bite people, right?" She frowned slightly. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn't fed recently. She thought she might be on the mend - she no longer felt sick just thinking about food. "In all the stories and everything, I mean ... that is ... they all say it feels ... um."

In fact, she could go for a bite after all. She smiled, making sure he could see her teeth.

He swallowed heavily, and she put a finger to his lips.

Then she leaned forward, tugging his head gently to the right. She lapped at his throat, feeling his pulse jump under her careful ministrations. He would enjoy this, she'd make sure of it.

She had enough control for that, at least, didn't she?

Her fangs were razor sharp - she knew it didn't hurt when she applied just a little pressure, but already he was bleeding. He was so nervous, and his heart beat so quickly. She let herself enjoy his fear, licking at the tiny wounds she'd made. Just a taste, before the main course.

The boy actually moaned quietly. She knew he'd enjoy it.

She sank her fangs in again, this time a bit deeper, blood shooting into her mouth when she suckled, ever so gently. It tasted like she imagined ambrosia might. Hunger always had been the best spice, and she hadn't realized how starved she'd let herself become. She felt the blood knitting her injuries back together. The boy wouldn't miss the little blood she needed to survive, she reasoned - only, some rational part of her pointed out, she'd taken far more than she normally did.

She ignored that rational part. Her left arm joined her right in holding the boy still - he didn't seem to be able to hold himself upright anymore.


The door slammed open, and she heard steel scrape on steel.

"That's enough, I think."

$15 Social Life

So, let's play some Elder Scrolls. I haven't done that in a while, and TES5 has been announced. Glee and joy, Skyrim!

I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It's kind of my favorite, partially since I got introduced to Morrowind after Oblivion's release and the graphics did not age well. My $15/month goes to playing WoW as a glorified chat room, while in the foreground the character creation screen boots up. Ah, Oblivion, how I've missed you.

12:03 PM 1/29/11
Behold: in darkness, a doom sweeps the land ...

12:04 - You know, this game's facial graphics haven't really aged well, but the rest of it is still beautiful.

12:05 - Dunmer for min-maxing, or Bosmer for looks. HM.

12:09 - This persistent "staring at the sky" thing is seriously starting to bug me. Given my plans for a Dunmer to be the new Madgod, sure. She can be a space cadet.

12:16 - She looks dull, and a bit sad.

12:19 - Aha! Almost fixed the sky-staring thing. De-de-de. Looks more severe now. Blah. Sliders.

12:24 - I wake up in a corner of a cold, dark, cell. My head hurts like it's been kicked in by an entire herd of horses. I don't even remember who I am. Where am I? Why am I here? By Azura ... everything hurts. I can hear something in the distance ...?

12:34 - 'scuse me, playing with the skin color now. I made a goth! And she has a name. Amelie.


12:42 - Now what? There's a Dunmer in the other cell ... gah, I'm so confused. All this talk of destiny ... can that man have really been the Emperor? They left the secret passage open behind them. Since my options are "follow" and "Rot down here forever," I guess I'll choose "follow."

12:47 - There's no way this can end badly.


12:53 - I must have been some kind of badass before getting locked down here. I've got skills I'm pretty sure a simple commoner shouldn't. Lockpicking, swordplay, spellcasting ... I found some heavy iron armor, and it just felt right to put it on.

12:59 - My stomach is growling ... looks like grilled rat is what's for dinner.

1:03 - Regretting using fireball as a torch: vicious, murderous rats everywhere.

1:14 - Why would the goblins be standing at the bottom of a log trap? They're all greenish ... and crushed. Wonder if any of the loot is usable. (Answer: No.)


1:23 - I feel like an invisible hand is guiding me sometimes, sure. But the Nine Divines? I don't know if I believe in your human religion, buddy. Meh. Trying to remember if my birthsign was Thief or Warrior. I'm not feeling especially lucky, but maybe we'll turn that around, yeah?

1:40 - I've got a real torch now. Hooray.


1:41 - IT'S A TRAP.

1:45 - But I liked Captain Renault's sword. I guess I get to run an errand for the Empire. I do feel a bit guilty, letting the Emperor die, if I'm such a badass.

1:58 - Trying to improve graphics. Oblivion has stopped working. Dammit. Fucking crashes.

2:29 - Research online suggests SaveINI from the console. Hooray! Of course, there's no way to open the console with Vista or later as your OS ... Spell of Open The Damn Console, 'kgo.

A God's Log: A New World

So, playing Black and White again.

I've sorted out that the creature can learn to buff itself, it's just stupid - I ended up spending half an hour teaching Kitty how to cast this one, last miracle before we left the island, to a chorus of death, death, death, and when the creature's finally learned the miracle, I set him to rest at the temple - whereupon I lost him again.

Death .... I figured out why all of my villagers were dying, anyway: it's either old age or starvation. The second village we came to is simply not producing enough food to sustain their numbers, apparently.

While waiting for my creature to recover, I discovered that replaying the rock-throwing minigame gives you some more one-shot water miracles. Nevermind that I have a water miracle dispenser. I found some other one-shot miracles due to the fireflies diving under rocks and trees - so far I have three forest miracles, two wood miracles, two fireball miracles, and one lightning miracle.

Time to go.

I have to find my creature again, because apparently he likes to wander - and when I finally do find my creature, he's collapsed from starvation because apparently he hasn't learned how to feed himself yet. Damn carnivore.

Clicking the last gold story scroll causes the Guide creature to tell you all about something called the "Creeds," brings Nemesis to my tiny little island, and is promptly incinerated horribly.

Death ....

So, that brings us to Island 2. What fun.

Oh. And near as I can tell, the Creature has no idea what to do with his newly-learned buff spell.

Fable III: A Ruler Reflects

Game Review! HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!

I finally beat Fable III, and I am not ashamed to admit I cried.

Let me first explain why it took me so long to beat the game: I got spoiler'd about halfway through my first playthrough that I would need 9,000,000 gold in order to get the perfect ending, so shortly before I was going to head to Aurora, I stopped actually playing so much as just sitting in town accumulating money.

And that worked well enough, I guess. I did get the perfect ending.

But some of the plot-events, even if you're a good character and working to save everyone are ... touching, we'll go with touching.

Firstly, since I had somewhere toward eleven million gold, it actually made me giggle to kick Reaver in the balls with my enormous personal wealth, every time he proposed something eeeeeeeeeeeeeviiiil and I rejected it out of hand. Well no, I didn't reject it out of hand, I very pointedly waited until he was done speaking, holding down the "A" button all the while because I wasn't even considering evilness. Trampling Reaver's dreams because I just did not need him made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I also get the impression that the Princess/Queen's forays into the Road to Rule are representative of a psychotic break with reality. I say this mostly because of the last one's appearance on your anniversary, when you've got an incredibly boring day set up for your itinerary, when suddenly, you get whisked away to the end of the world. Maybe the whole game is the fantasy of a bored Princess.

Or maybe not, given the last hour or so of the game.

Aurora was ... depressing. Discovering why Walter is scared of the dark, and then seeing him break down because of how he's been blinded - not to mention being forced to abandon him in the desert - was heartbreaking. And finally, when you have to kill him.

Blessed Gods, when you have to kill Walter.

I beat Fable III, I cried, and I am not ashamed.