Tutorial: Easy Starter Bases for Survival Mode

Tutorial Difficulty: 4/10

There is no shame in a big square dirt house, but why not start your new Minecraft life with a little... pizazz? "Pizazz" is, after all, the Italian word for "cool house that everyone will be very jealous of, while they mourn their lack of creativity in their dirt rectangle". At least, I think it is. I did not do well in my Italian class.

Minecraft tutorial-maker Gorillo presents three "simple" builds to get you started in style: an underwater glass house, a mushroom house, and a jungle treehouse. You may need to find the dark forest and/or jungle biomes to live out these fantasies, but who wants to live in the boring old plains biome? Nobody. You know why? Because plains biomes don't have pandas.

All three of these houses, being "simple" and "starter" houses, are pretty small — or, as we probably should say, cozy. There will be no grand, sweeping staircases, and certainly no room for chandeliers, but that doesn't mean they don't have charm. Each one has space for decoration, little farms, and room for expansion, too.

But before we get carried away with what comes next, let's discuss what each house has to offer! The underwater house means that you'll never have to deal with creepers, zombies, or rogue cows outside your house — in fact, the worst thing is that the dolphins will probably watch you sleep. The views, depending on where you build your underwater house, are quite lovely — you can watch the sun set through the water, and you can appreciate the many types of fish and coral if you build in a Tropical biome. Expansion is tricky, but you can always build underground easily.

The mushroom house is perhaps the easiest of the three builds, because it uses an already-built giant mushroom, which you'll be living inside (if you can stand the smell). However, it's also the smallest of all the builds, because giant mushrooms are only giant height-wise. Still, it's a very cute house and you can almost guarantee that no one else will have one like it on your server. Unless they have the same idea, that is. But mushrooms are easy enough to chop down if that happens.

Finally, there's the treehouse, which is the one I'd like to live in most in real life. Climb up a jungle tree using the handy-dandy vines and start building yourself a platform — voila! A ready- made treehouse, and all you have to do is add the "house" part. Pop in a couple of lanterns or torches to protect yourself from mobs, add a bed (and storage), and... that's about it.

Remember, folks: Minecraft doesn't require you to need a bathroom, so houses can be a lot smaller. Gorillo also recommends using the treetop as a farm to save space, and using the vines to get up and down the tree — this way you can save your precious resources for something else!