Minecraft - Episode 1 - Surviving Your First Night

In Minecraft, the first night is essential. If you are playing on Peaceful Mode, it is less essential, because you do not have to fight monsters. If you are playing on Easy-Hard mode, you need to get a fast set-up.

When you spawn in a new world, you should look around using the mouse. If you see a tree, (Trees look like trees.) go toward it. Once you get close, you can use the left mouse button to punch it. It is important to hold down the mouse button- otherwise you'll never break it. Break all of the brown wood blocks in the tree. Then repeat this process until you have 15-20 blocks of wood. If you do not see a tree at the start, start looking for some.
Once you have a decent amount of wood, open your inventory using E by default. In the top right, there is a 2x2 grid. On that grid, place 5-7 blocks of wood. Then click on the wooden planks until all the wood blocks on the grid disappear. (NOTE: Only place the wood on one tile in the grid.) Then fill up the grid with wooden planks to get a crafting table. You only need one of these. Get it and place it on the ground by using right-click. Right-click on the table to open a larger crafting grid. On it, place 2 wooden planks, one in the tile above the other. This will let you make sticks. Then lay 3 planks across the top of the grid. Place 2 sticks under the middle plank to make a wooden pickaxe. Now you should punch out the crafting table and look for stone. It is gray and a few blocks underground. If you see something that looks like stone except has black spots, your life just got a whole lot easier. That is coal, an essential ingredient for torches. Mine it up and place above a stick in the crafting grid to make torches. Then make a house with dirt (or make a small cave, or whatever) and use a torch to place it and make it safe for the night. If there is no coal, mine up 8 stone and place it around the center square in the crafting table. This should make a furnace.
Place the furnace and open it. In the bottom slot, place 1 wooden plank. In the top, place 9 wood. It should smelt the wood into charcoal. Place the first charcoal in the bottom slot to make the rest of the wood charcoal. This must be done with wood blocks like the ones you get from trees. Now make a shelter and wait out the night!