How to Beat Minecraft in Under 30 Mins

Tutorial Difficulty: 9/10

Speedrunning is a fun thing that gamers do when they're bored of playing the game normally. They try to beat the game as quickly as humanly possible, and sometimes that involves using cheats, glitches, bugs, and other things to skip various parts of the game – but sometimes it's purely about how fast you can do things with nothing but skill on your side.

So, how long does it take to speedrun Minecraft, from spawning into a new world to killing the Ender Dragon? The current world record holder for a Minecraft speedrun without using glitches is Brentilda, whose run took nine minutes, 36 seconds, and 933 milliseconds – but I'm not asking you to do that. Obviously. This tutorial, from four-time speedrun world record holder Couriway (who is currently fourth in the world) will teach you how to beat the game in under 30 minutes.

Sure, it took me roughly two months to get the armour and the weapons and the confidence to take on the Ender Dragon the first time, but now it's easy! Once you've beaten that big bad bird one time, you can do it again.

But what about all the other stuff? The crafting, the diamonds, the really difficult bit where you have to throw a bunch of eyes of Ender to find a stronghold? Well, that's all still in the speedrun – it's just faster.

There are a few things you're going to have to practise and get really good at before you attempt a speedrun, of course, like knowing the crafting recipes like the back of your hand, and knowing the tricks to getting certain blocks early. Killing an iron golem, for instance, will guarantee you iron blocks without having to mine around for them, so Couriway recommends resetting the world until you get a spawn point near a village.

After that, it's all about getting obsidian as quickly as possible, popping into the Nether, getting gold, finding a fortress and building a blaze farm. When you have a ton of blaze rods, you'll need to head to a bastion, grab all the gold, and trade with piglins to get more obsidian and Ender pearls. Does all of that sound really, really hard? It is — but practice makes perfect, and every speedrunner practices until they can do it in their sleep.

Finding the Stronghold is relatively easy when you know how the eyes of Ender work, and once you do, it'll only take a handful of them to find it. From there, it's easy – just dash through the stronghold until you find the portal, pop into The End, and blow the dragon up with beds. Simple, right?

Best of luck if you give this a try, and hopefully we'll see you on those speedrunning leader boards some day!