Minecraft for newbies!

This guide will go through everything you need to know about the basics of Minecraft in a simple way. It will go through basic terminology, Minecraft versions/editions, servers and other general information.

Minecraft Terminology

When talking about Minecraft, it's always useful to know a couple of unique words used by the community, which will be used throughout this guide:

Client: The game itself running on your device.
Server: The computer that your client connects to that allows for multiplayer.
Multiplayer: Multiple players playing at the same time on the same server, for example when two players are building a house together in the same world.
A mod: This is a file (that ends with .jar) that can be installed on a client or server that enables custom features.
Entity: This is a non block object, in other words something that cannot be "permanently" placed such as flying arrows, chickens, zombies, lit TNT blocks, falling sand blocks, item drops, boats and so on.
A mob: This means a monster, animal entity or basically anything that is "alive" with a health bar, such as the famous creeper, chickens, fish, zombies and so on; it does not include other entities like boats and flying arrows as they are not "alive".
Edition: There are two versions of Minecraft, Bedrock and Java, these are the "editions"
Version: Minecraft versions have a notation like 1.19.2, 1.19.3, 1.20.1 that define the update version. This is not the same as edition. It is also important to note that the two editions of Minecraft do not necessarily always have the same version numbers, for example Java might be on 1.20.1 while Bedrock is on 1.20.15.

Minecraft editions

Minecraft has two different editions (basically a version) referred to as "Java edition" and "Bedrock edition". These editions are essentially the same from a game perspective but are written in different programming languages:

Java edition was made in Java
Bedrock edition was made C++

Differences between Java and Bedrock

Speed

As the Bedrock edition is written in C++, a language known to be extremely efficient, it brings along many optimisations to the vanilla (normal Minecraft) experience such as world generation speed, ray tracing support on newer RTX Nvidia graphics cards and lower cpu usage.

Compatibility

Another big difference is that these versions are not cross compatible, meaning that a Bedrock edition player will not be able to play with a Java edition player on a server unless the server has something called a "proxy".

Platform support

Java edition is only available for "desktop computers" while Bedrock edition is available for a wide variety of devices including game consoles and mobile devices as can be seen in this platform compatibility chart:

	Java	Bedrock
Windows	✅	✅
MacOS	✅	❌
Linux	✅	❌
XBox	❌	✅
PlayStation 4/5	❌	✅
Nintendo Switch	❌	✅
Fire OS/TV	❌	✅
Android	❌	✅
iOS	❌	✅
Windows Mobile	❌	✅
Samsung Gear VR	❌	✅

Source: Minecraft article

Mods

Universally it is said that the Java edition is better than the Bedrock edition due to the fact that the Bedrock client cannot be modified through "mods".

What are mods?

Mods are a piece of code that can be added to Minecraft Java Edition made by members of the community that modify how the game works, this can do anything such as:

Adding new weapons
Adding new monsters (often called "mobs")
Creating entirely new dimensions
Optimising some aspects of Minecraft to make it run smoother

"Modpacks" are essentially just multiple mods that are confirmed to work together properly that offer great gameplay using aspects of all its mods.

Why are mods important?

It is often argued that the community is what has kept the game thriving for so long through the custom modifications that allow for new exciting gameplay as official Mojang content updates are only released about twice a year at most.

How are mods installed?

Mods can be installed through special "launchers" that perform the mod installation automatically, but the most common way of installing a mod is through the "Fabric" loader. Once the loader is installed, all a player has to do is drag and drop the .jar mod files into Minecraft's mods/ folder.

Java remains to this day the most popular version of Minecraft not only due to said mods but also because of content creators on YouTube making videos about the Java edition of the game.

Game modes

In Minecraft there are 4 different "game modes" that each have different characteristics:

Survival mode: Players must gather all their building materials to construct, mine, and craft. They also have to manage health and hunger bars, making survival a significant part of the experience.
Creative mode: In this mode, players have unlimited resources, they can fly, leading to a focus on building and creating large projects. The player has no health bar or hunger making them effectively immortal (except for when falling into the void).
Adventure mode: This is essentially survival mode, the only difference is that a player cannot place or mine blocks.
Spectator mode: A player in spectator mode is invisible all non-spectator players, can fly, phase through blocks and teleport to players. Placing blocks, eating, mining or doing anything that would be considered "interacting with the world" is not possible.

In "vanilla" versions of Minecraft, the game mode of a player can be set using the following commands:

/gamemode survival [(optional)Username]
/gamemode creative [(optional)Username]
/gamemode adventure [(optional)Username]
/gamemode spectator [(optional)Username]

The username parameter is optional.

Difficulty

Minecraft can be set to 4 different difficulties:

Peaceful: In this mode, only non hostile mobs can spawn (in other words mobs that cannot naturally attack the player) such as chickens & cows, with few exceptions. Health regeneration is increased and the hunger bar never depletes.
Easy: Hostile mobs can spawn but deal about half the damage they would in normal mode. Hunger does deplete and will start dealing damage once fully depleted. The player can only lose up to 5 hearts from hunger.
Normal: Hostile mobs can spawn and deal normal damage. The player can lose up to 9.5 hearts from a lack of hunger, meaning half a heart can remain.
Hard: Hostile mobs can spawn, deal 1.5x more damage than they would on Normal mode. The player can now die from a lack of hunger.

A player will not be able to run (sprint) when a hunger level of 3 or below is reached.

Some additional details can be found on the difficulty page wiki

The difficulty can be changed using the /difficulty [difficulty] command.

An additional difficulty called "Hardcore" exists which has the same traits as Hard mode and is only available in single player, the only added "feature" is that the player only has one life and will therefore not be able to respawn upon death (they instead respawn as a spectator and can no longer interact with the world).

Dimensions & World generation

The game has 3 different dimensions each with their own biomes, mobs and world generation.

A biome dictates the type of structures and world generation that an area uses, such as the "Jungle", "Desert" and "Forest" biomes.

The world itself is divided in "chunks" which means a 16x16 area of blocks:

The three different dimensions in the game are the

Overworld: The default dimension that players spawn in with trees, valleys, oceans, deserts and so on.
Nether: This dimension can be accessed through a "nether portal". It's the "hell" dimension where everything is on fire, water instantly evaporates, rivers are made of lava. This dimension also features different biomes such as the crimson forest & basalt delta and it is recommended to wear some kind of golden armor to prevent Piglins (the most common monster throughout the nether) from attacking you. This dimension does not have a sky and is blocked off by unbreakable bedrock, meaning that the player is "sandwiched" between a bedrock floor and ceiling.
End: This dimension can be accessed through an "end portal" from the Overworld. It contains the final boss of the game, the "End Dragon". This dimension is in the "void", meaning a player can die from falling into it. Once the final boss is defeated, it creates an additional "end gateway" that teleports the player to a different part of the end, the "end islands" where "end cities" can spawn which may contain the most popular item in the game that gives players the ability to glide; the "elytra".

Texture / Resource packs

A "texture" basically means how something looks. If you wanted to have the game look like a cartoon or perhaps look more medieval, that can be achieved through a "texture pack" which can then be downloaded and applied to your game:

A texture pack only applies to your own device, in other words, it does not change the experience of someone else. Bedrock texture packs are not compatible with Java texture packs.

A texture pack is also sometimes referred to as a resource pack. Here is a guide on how to download and install texture/resource packs.

Datapacks

A datapack is similar to a texture pack but does not affect textures; instead, it allows its creators to modify aspects of the game such as world generation without the need of a mod, here are a few examples:

Datapacks can modify world generation with built-in biomes
- Terratonic has massive mountains
- Nullscape modifies the entire end dimension to look and work way better than the original one offered by Mojang
Datapacks can add animations
- Vanilla Refresh has sitting animations and much more
- Spawn Animations adds monster (mob) spawning animations

Datapacks can do much more than those two examples, feel free to browse the datapacks section on Modrinth to see how they can improve your experience.

Servers & Multiplayer

To create a server in practice you can check out this guide

When players want to play together, they need to connect to a "server". A server is a computer somewhere in the world running a special program that was created thanks to Mojang (the company behind Minecraft) partially releasing the code necessary to do so.

Java server software

The original software that Mojang provides is referred to as "Vanilla", it contains no modifications whatsoever and works just like the single player mode. The most popular versions of this software, called "forks" are:

PaperMC: Server software with lots of bug fixes & optimisations for better performance.
PurpurMC: A fork of Tuinity which is a fork of PaperMC that provides additional customisation and performance improvements.
Spigot: PaperMC's predecessor, it still works well but is not generally recommended nowadays over PaperMC.
Fabric & Forge: These two are for players that want to play together with mods as the previously mentioned ones do not support modding. They work basically the same.

Bedrock server software

To host a bedrock server, the server software has to be downloaded directly from Microsoft, as there are no forks of it due to the general lack of interest.

Java edition plugins

In Java edition server software, programs called "plugins" can be used similarly to mods that modify the way the server works. Plugins do not give as much freedom as mods do and are generally used for features like special server messages, server ranks, anti cheat, moderation tools and so on. They have the advantage of not requiring the player to install anything, and will simply "work".

Some popular plugins include:

Essentials - Adds commands and tools for server management
WorldEdit - Allows building of large structures quickly
WorldGuard - Protect areas of your world from being edited
GriefPrevention - Prevent griefing and raiding of buildings

To install plugins, upload the .jar file on your server and restart it. Configure plugins by editing config files. Guide for Installation available here.

Cross compatibility

If Java and Bedrock players want to play together, the "Geyser proxy" is installed on a Java server like PaperMC which will allow Bedrock players to connect to it. A guide on how to do so can be found on our documentation.

Java server customisation & important settings

It is possible to install datapacks on the server itself, which will then automatically apply to all players. Texture packs can also be installed on the server and can be configured to either be optional or "forced" to force players to use it. Some settings are also often configurable through the server settings and have a big impact on performance:

Minecraft Servers run on a "ticks per second" (TPS) system, 20 ticks per second to be exact. Every tick, the server will need to process information such as player movement, chunk generation, entity movement like movement and behaviour, player actions and so on. A server will begin to lag if it is not possible to complete a tick due to too many actions needing to be processed in between ticks, causing tick speeds below 20.

simulation-distance: This determines the chunk radius actively ticking around players, so a simulation distance of 5 would make 5 chunks around the player be processed every single tick.
view-distance: This determines the radius of chunks a player can load & see.
- If a player attempts to load a chunk that has not been generated, that chunk will be created.
- Please note that this value is extremely important and has a huge impact on performance, generating chunks is very heavy on the processor (which is why it is always recommended to "pre-generate" chunks before a server is released), it scales exponentially as it is a circular radius (a 10cm radius circle is not the same as 2x 5cm radius circles):
  - For view-distance=5, a player can load 225 chunks.
  - For view-distance=10 (Vanilla default), a player can load 625 chunks.
  - For view-distance=15, a player can load 1225 chunks.