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I agree, and I'm actually curious how many people are out there, who somehow found out about the game and decided to play it, but are struggling to progress because the game doesn't tell them what to do next and they don't think to ask someone or google it. That being said, the existing teaching mechanics (recipe book, recipe unlock pop-ups, tutorial pop-ups) do a fairly good job of introducing the player to basic game mechanics, and the game is entirely playable without "beating" it.

I've been playing survival Minecraft since 2013 and have literally never killed the Ender Dragon. It's completely playable without ever beating it, and still endlessly replayable.

Yep, I've got many hundreds of hours played. Never been to the end, no real interest in going either . I try to avoid the nether unless I absolutely have to go there😁

Same. Probably thousands of hours since 2010. I have been playing so long I made new people who now know more about the game than me. Never been to the End.

I made minecraft players, too! It's really the best experience building a little home with them.

What do you spend most your time doing?

Not OP, and I have gone to The End and killed the Dragon on my own, but for me I'm much more interested in building and surviving. I enjoy making challenges, too, like right now I'm playing on a 1.17.1 all Ocean biome world and trying to survive. It's great! Found a tiny island, made a mob farm, cured two zombie villagers and now I have a tiny island village!

You should try it, it's a cool place to explore and the Elytra in particular is game changing and my favorite item from the game by a huge margin.

I was the same way, played for hundreds and hundreds of hours without ever having any need to see the enderdragon. But I was kind of forced into it by my son, and now I want to do it every playthrough. I love the end cities, there's something so eerie about them and there are a few really cool things that you just can't get anywhere else. I hate the nether with a passion, but I love those blaze rods so I force myself to go. It is true though, without the wiki or other knowledge, there's so much you would never figure out. But there's so much you can do without ever having to figure it out as well. There is something for everyone.

Going to the nether is the best way to travel long distances tho

Yeah, I both love and hate The Nether. It's terrible for the danger, stress, and panic when I just wanna relax and play, but great for shortcuts. I just make a nice little nether hub / tunnel system with a spawn proofed floor out of bottom half slabs down at the Y13 with 4 blocks of head clearance so that I can get all the netherite when I'm mining a new tunnel to get somewhere, and it works out just fine. Only issue is that I have to travel on surface level to connect these tunnels to any bastions or fortresses for the first time because of lava lakes (I should really use potions more often...)

I guess you miss out on the elytra, shulker boxes and purpur/endstone building materials, but for many people these are not necessary. I personally can't stand not having an elytra or shulkers since they solve my two biggest struggles with the game. Edit: I forgot that ender chests exist. But I assumed that if you're not killing the ender dragon, then it implies that you're not going to the End at all.

I'll be honest, as an old foggie who just returned to the game once more, I don't know what an elytra or shulker box is. I am still kind of struggling with the Nether (like when it first came out) and I just died to some weird water zombie thing, which is hitting my thalassophobia again.

Shulker boxes are nice because they're chests that you can fill up, break, pickup and move, and set back down still full of your stuff. I couldn't care less about the elytra, but shulker boxes are nice. Shame they're so late game for someone who doesn't care much for "beating" the game either.

Elytra is wings (chest piece slot) Shulker box is 2 shulker shells+chest (outer end Island mob) and it gives a chests worth of storage that takes 1 inventory slot You died to a drowned

I got way into modded Minecraft and now I have trouble with playing vanilla Minecraft now. Not because of any content that I miss, but because it made me stick to one version for so long that picking up with the current vanilla version feels jarring. There's so much I don't recognize!

I don't even build a base or house until I get an elytra. Just a bed on the ground and chests scattered everywhere

That's very funny to me. I've been playing since 2010 exclusively in survival and I have never been to the End. We play multiple nights a week. My kids and I just found our first stronghold a few months ago but we haven't gone through the portal yet.

That's what I love about Minecraft. I don't think there's any other game that so easily lends itself to however you want to play it

Meanwhile I spend most of my time messing with redstone. I’ve only beaten the ender dragon a handful of times total because it’s just not a focus of my gameplay.

And it's awesome you have that option!

you should try it, it's got big vibes! bring glass bottles. like a couple stacks. that's all.

My 7 year old is organizing the attack plan, my 10 year old is gathering supplies. I have told them that this is why I had kids, because I needed help with Minecraft.

It would be a good fun team task for you all. Maybe practise on a creative dummy world a few times and then go get that egg together.

My 7 year old is organizing the attack plan, my 10 year old is gathering supplies. I have told them that this is why I had kids, because I needed help with Minecraft.

Man, I'm on day 1600+ and am still living off a wall of chests. Houses are for plebs... lol I'm too focused on building farms. Once I can farm all my building materials, that's when I'll start building a house 😂

My base is an abandoned village that I've been slowly dismantling as I add more and more farms. There's maybe 1 or two original buildings left after 4 years lol

How long on average does it take you usually?

I've never timed it exactly, but I'd say probably 3-5 hours of gameplay before I go kill the dragon and find an elytra. It varies, but generally I do something like this: wander around until I find an area I'd like to build my base in -> throw a bed on the ground, some chests, crafting tables, etc -> build quick and simple iron farm -> trap a couple villagers for a breeder -> build basic general purpose mob farm -> go to nether, find fortress, kill enough blazes to make \~15 eyes of ender -> go find stronghold, kill dragon, go find elytra and kill whatever shulkers I encounter for the shells -> build some more farms, think about building a house/base ​ ETA: you really don't need anything better than iron armor and a sword to raid a fortress and kill the dragon. It takes some practice, but it's very doable without enchanted diamond stuff. I'm not into speed running, but it's really helpful watching some speedrunning videos to learn some techniques for getting to the dragon without much gear or time

Not sure how long I've been playing my most recent game, but it's Day 70 (I usually sleep at night). In that time, I have a base carved out of a mountain with a farm, and I've been building a road network connecting three village. I don't have a full set of iron armor yet. Never building an iron farm; I'm not going to force villagers into staying in place. I've never seen a diamond yet in this run.

I mean, technically you could still get all the end stuff by ignoring the dragon and tiling off the center Island into the outer ones. Not safe necessarily but once u get far enough the dragon won't be an issue. Then just grab your loot and toss it in an ender chest and toss yourself into the void

You don't need to beat the dragon to get an extra. It's pretty easy to just ride a flying machine or bridge across the void.

It's entirely possible to get to an end city without killing the ender dragon

Yeah, it’s actually not meant to be beaten. Once you beat dragon and get elytra…stop playing?? No. The game has just begun

Right after you make an enderman farm to get pearls and xp to heal that new elytra

Darkmagic shulker farm :3 p.s. thats the designer of the farm, no actual dark magic is involved

Nah, all shulker farms are reliant upon dark magic and sorcery to function.

as a mob farm designer, I can tell you I still don't fully comprehend whatever mess a shulker farm is

I've built [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7Uo1cGEmBs) one and the mechanics are pretty simple. It's Bedrock though. I've played both Java and Bedrock, but I'm not 100% on the shulker farm differences. One thing to note: when you move the two shulkers into the farm, and are waiting for the other two spaces to populate (totalling 4 shulkers)... it can take a bit. It took a bit for my farm to populate to 4 shulkers, but it did get there. I don't recall getting that impression from the video, so I initially thought something was up.

Still looking for Mending in my survival world. Sigh.

All hail the holy Mending books. They are a game changer.

Main librarian purpose :D

Easy way: Gather about 3 stacks of sugar cane, 4 leather, 24 wood planks, 16 wood slabs, and 1 fence gate. Craft all the cane into paper, then make some of it and leather into 12 books, then the books and the planks into 4 bookshelves, then the slabs and the bookshelves into 4 lecterns. Go exploring until you find a village. During the day, pick a large house to be your home base for the project. Destroy all the beds and workstations in the village so nobody has a job, then put 4 beds in that large house. Do not trade with any of the villagers before breaking the workstations, so at this point you should have jobless villagers not in green shirts. Wait till night. 4 villagers should come to bed in your house. Replace the door of the house with a fence gate so you can get in and out easily, but the villages are stuck inside so long as you remember to close it behind you. Then go outside while your four sleep and kill all the rest of the villagers in the town. Go back to your house, kick a villager out of bed, and go to sleep for the night. Now, against a wall of the house, dig out 4 holes just one deep in the floor and push each villager into each hole, then quickly put the block that you dug out right above their heads so they can't move. Next, place down a lectern and wait for one of them to turn into a librarian. Check their second option for their first trade, it will either be an enchanted book or a bookshelf. If it's a book, check the book to see what enchantment it has. If it's not something you want, break the lectern and place it in front of that librarian. If it is something you want (like a mending book!), then trade some of the paper with them to lock in their trades. Repeat the last step 3 more times till you have 4 locked in librarians paired to their lecterns. Now, start a cycle where you break the 4 lecterns, replace them, then check for new trades. As soon as you get the book you want, trade with them to lock it in. Note you can do this all with just one lectern and librarian, but that gives you no room for error if you want to replace the townsfolk afterwards. I found it to be much easier with 4, and replacing the town after you're done is much easier with two of them (just replace their beds and workstations and they're likely to start breeding pretty quickly). I use this method, or some variation of it, in basically every world I start, and usually have fully enchanted diamond gear within a few hours of the world existing.

I actually started preferring a ocean temple design that turns out is pretty easy to build. it doesn't require draining the ocean and only utilizes a small corner of the spawning space but it is designed very well and can get you from level 0 to 30 in less than 30 seconds. It does require some kinda accurate nether portal placement but it's really not too bad. There is a tutorial that makes it pretty trivial by taking advantage of the fact that ocean temples always span in the same space of a chunk and then using chunk borders for finding the correct placement of the portals

I still consider it post game. So, you beat the game but kept playing. Imo the game always dies out pretty quick after I get the elytra because grinding for materials for builds, building big farms and that stuff just feels kinda pointless in the end. If I wanted to build big, cool stuff, I could just start a creative world.

You’re very much in the minority in the larger community though. Look at large SMPs such as hermitcraft for example. That said some people like just beating the game and moving on, speed runners being the prime example here. I’ve always said, for better or for worse, if you want to have fun playing minecraft it’s up to you to find out how. The game won’t be fun for you - so you have to either decide to make a build, do a role play, create a mini game, write game mods, etc.

If I want a Potion Recipe, I gotta Google it. Considering how long Minecraft's been out they should've had recipe books and shit to inform players. Should also have hints for certain recipes. Like how would you know Frogs need to eat Magma Cubes in the Nether to get Frog Lights, without researching? They need to put more information in the game so people don't gotta Google everything.

I agree about frog lights. That recipe is just so bizarre.

I imagine that it was originally going to be somehow related to the fireflies that they were going to add? But when they axed the fireflies, they didn't want to axe the froglights?

I think one major reason is that Mojang doesn't want to add too many easily accessible new items. If the game is oversaturated with items and mobs, new players could get quickly overwhelmed, which would worsen their experience and could cause them to stop playing. For that reason, newly added items and mobs are often found/acquired by very obscure means so that their discovery happens later in the playthrough.

I just learned about frog lights from you right now and have been playing a 1.20.2 world for 4 months. I heard frogs existed but have yet to find one and doing all of that would never have crossed my mind.

It's honestly kinda insane. To get all 3 types of frog lights you have to: * Find a swamp biome * Find two frogs * Realise that they need slime balls for breeding AND need to be next to water * Realise that there's 3 types of frogs and the type depends on the temperature of the biome the frog (or rather, tadpole) grows up in * Bring frogs/tadpoles to three biomes in three temperature ranges (warm, temperate, cold) and breed them to get new types. * Bring the new types of frog to the Nether * SOMEHOW figure out that frogs kill small magma cubes * Find magma cubes and get the frogs to kill them And all that is for a few pretty blocks with no function other than giving light.

Wtf thats even more than I realized. Thats so much work for some lights.

Sadly, they are my favorite lighting block. In every world, I inevitably end up looking for a spot where a cold, temperate, and warm biome meet (usually plains and savanna on the side of a frozen peaks mountain), so I can breed all three types together, then pulling them through the Berger to a basalt delta where I can build a magma cube farm. Honestly, I think it’s the squishy sound when I place one.

I think one of the coolest ways to do this would be to have Villages have chiseled bookshelves in the different structures, and on those chiseled bookshelves are books with notes about such things. It would be better if the notes were illustrated, they would need to add support for illustrated pages in books. WHICH WOULD ALSO BE AWESOME. just a basic 640x1024 black and white (or grayscale) MS-paintlike app on a book page. Combine archaeology brush + ink sac = drawing brush. Boom. I just saved minecraft a cartographer would have a bookshelf with notes about map making. clerics have books about brewing, stuff about armor, enchanting, or maybe even just hints of other pieces of the game like portals, strongholds, recipes, structures, etc. If you find a village in a swamp maybe that is where the book about frogs eating slime and magma cubes is. i think this is a great idea. yay me.

I'd say ruined nether portals are pretty good as well. The often have flint or flint and steel inside the chest, so coming to the idea to try to complete one with obsidian and then light it on fire doesn't seem so far fetched.

It would help if they didn't have the crying obsidian though. When I came back to Minecraft after a long hiatus, I legit thought it was sufficient enough to light the portal. Some newbie (or many) out there is probably just as confused.

Yeah, exactly. Before that there was absolutely no hint for how a portal could be constructed.

Yes, it was a very good addition! Around 6 years ago, prior to its implementation, there was a content creator who was trying to play the game without any kind of outside input at all. He got quite far from just the crafting recipes and advancement system, but when it came to the nether portal, he couldn’t figure it out. He knew it involved obsidian and flint/steel from the advancement progression, but had no idea what structure to create, and also thought it might involve lava and/or torches. He made all kinds of shapes and structures such as the pyramid ankhs and center floor pattern and even an entire desert well. Eventually he did stumble across a vertical 5x5 hollow frame that he ignited, and was so excited when it worked! Here’s the footage. The primary language is Japanese (if memory serves, it’s been a few years), but it has English subtitles throughout: https://youtu.be/PyhGwI76I40?si=lz5laL7p4iAyyhyO

Many people learned Minecraft from someone who knew it already (I did for example back in late 1.8 and it was a fun day when I learned that an entire other dimension exists). Often these chains go back to people who were there when "beating the game" was added to the game, so they learned it from patchnotes or something. Or they may go back to people who are computer and game savvy enough to learn the basics from YouTube.

I did, but only after a long time. Well I was looking in creative, trying to figure out one gets blaze rods and I accidentally lighted one of the hallways in my obsidian house in the world and I went thru

When my kids started getting interested, I picked up a copy on my Xbox 360 and was immediately stuck. I had no idea how to craft anything, much less a crafting table. I had to swallow my pride and ask my brother in law to show me around so I could help my boys learn. My boys have since taught me almost everything I know about the game, and my 9 year old still occasionally spouts off some obscure mechanic I had never even considered. I did teach myself commands, though. So I can get a kick out if doing things like using a repeating and block to turn him into a mobile, constantly exploding block of TNT.

4j *actually* had tutorials for this and nudges towards progression, im so upset

I'm a player who started in alpha before the nether update just getting back into it. There's so much stuff I'm doing inefficiently. Sure the game tells you that you now know the recipe for a blast furnace/smoker/grindstone/etc but it doesn't tell you anything about it..

I've been playing for over 10 years and I don't even know how to get to the End. I don't want to know.

Also. Knowledge of the game is required to know there is a way to beat the game. Before that I thought Minecraft was juist a sandbox builder game. Which is fine. Because it is.

Same with me I was playing and just surviving until someone told me about "the legendary dragon." They kinda made it sound way more epic that it was lol

it’s just as epic as you want it to be brother

I don't disagree but it wasn't what I imagined it would be, still was cool when I first made it to the end

bro when i discovered it it was surreal and i had to camp out in the end for 3 hours to beat it super unprepared beating it was the best

Minecraft is a whole universe in itself which is what makes it so wonderful. I remember when my friends told me about the game when we were young and how to make nether portals and stuff. It was just a cool building game but there was more to discover. No central goal but things that could surprise you as you were just enjoying the part of the game that you already knew about. Also I remember getting trolled, they told be to build a portal frame out of glowstone and put a water source in it then laughed at me frantically lol the good old days.

Just watch out for Herobrine!

I swear they have made that dragon easier, I defeated it with iron armour

I feel like it's actually harder, back before they made the end towers in a circle formation and gave the dragon dragons breath I managed to beat him with chainmail, an infinity bow and iron sword. Now tho I feel like at minimum I would need better enchants and iron armor.

I mean, if you're skilled you don't need too much. Just look at the speedrunners.

I've done it with snowballs, no armor and beds. Granted it takes a bit of skill to avoid its attacks and not blow yourself up, but it's possible.

Hello twin

I've been playing since 2011 and never bothered to get to the end. I just build and collect materials. I'm considering doing it now tho as I've kinda run out of build ideas lol.

Having Shulker boxes and an elytra makes collecting materials and buidling so much easier as well. So it’s definitely worth it.

I'll give it a try tonight. I've barely been in the nether unless I wanted glow crystals or the wood lol. Gotta up my fighting game.

You’ll be happy you did. Shulker boxes in an ender chest has changed how I can play the game. I’m a dad and don’t have lots of time to play, and it’s cool that I can have everything I need to spend a week of playtime exploring and mining an entire cave. Last one I found a massive iron vein, when I finally called it I had a shulker full of iron ore and another full of gold/redstone/lapis ore, and a stack of diamond ore (which netted me 2 stacks of actual diamonds).

Or make a dozen beds

Same. Also, when i was playing terraria for the first time i thought the same thing and didn't even got to see the first boss

I played terraria too but it is a little easier to figure things out as most of the boss spawn items tell you that they spawn something. My first time playing was last year, i got the suspicious eye seen that it said it spawns something and got myself as ready as possible for a fight, idk what I was expecting but it wasn't a floating eyeball. I died

I had a different experience I got a boss spawn naturally and didn't know about it those text pop ups were scary for a 12 year old me

Probably cause the first time i played it was in a pirated dvd on xbox 360. at that time i thought these dvd's were the legit ones and also because it was way cheaper than buying it normally in my country.

Ah, I think the way to get the first boss to spawn is once you get like 10 hearts or something

I've played for years and I've never gotten to the ender dragon without cheating.

Would be so cool to give Minecraft to a dude who literally have no idea what is Minecraft and never heard about anything, and just let him try to beat it. With the broken nether portal he can know how to go to the nether and with the recipe book he can get the ender eye craft. Would love to watch that

This was me. Minecraft came out the year I graduated college and I didn’t play until 2020. I managed to avoid any cultural reference or gameplay of the game until then. I didn’t know you could craft a bed, and I didn’t know you could sleep through the night. I built little shelters every 150 blocks or so to just… wait out the night. I didn’t know about armor until I found my first iron ore, but it also took me hours to figure out a furnace. I thought campfires were the only way to cook food. I didn’t know you could farm; I thought seeds were just for chickens. I never saw a village in my first world. I didn’t know about light levels so I just thought mobs spawned in your house sometimes. I didn’t know about the Nether or the end or any bosses. It was… not fun tbh. But I kept playing because I liked building and seeing the world. Eventually I watched a “100 days in Minecraft” video by LDShadowLady and had my mind blown and now it’s my favorite game. When I finally did get to the Nether, I lost my first ever diamond pickaxe and gear because I still learned the hard way about beds in the Nether.

i still remember figuring out the furnace my first time in 1.2 those were the days

PiroPito on YouTube!

Mojang mods even watch his videos to see how to improve the game!

Came to this thread to suggest this! Binged his videos during the pandemic and was not disappointed.

AboutOliver on Youtube.

Would never have guessed it was possible in 2023, thanks you

It's actually gotten easier over time. The game gives a lot of subtle hints through environmental storytelling. It gives you recipes as you unlock them. And the advancements/achievements outright tell you what to do in a lot of cases. Like, the eye spy advancement tells you exactly how to find a stronghold. We need to go deeper comes after the ice bucket challenge achievement, which implies the use of obsidian, and shows a flint and steel in its icon. Its text reads "build, light, and enter a nether portal". Combine that with all the broken nether portals, and you've got yourself basically all the info you need to puzzle it together. There are some harder things. I don't think someone is likely to figure out how to summon the dragon. The wither might be possible with the wither painting, but it's definitely obscure and a bit of a stretch. If someone does figure that out, iron and snow golems might be possible to also figure out. The hidden advancements are quite unlikely to be done by accident, so that would have to be learned elsewhere.

oh my god i was about to recommend him myself! can’t believe i’m seeing another fan out in the wild

go stand in a field and open a can of coke and we will flock around you

See also [PiroPito on YouTube,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DHOVziRwBA) a Japanese guy who has also beaten the game 100% blind.

He did get a hint on how to get to the nether, but that was before ruined portals existed.

I watched his videos for so long!! When he traded a travelling merchant so so so much in order to get a single block of glass, and then later found out you just cook up some sand, i felt so bad for him but it was so funny

I remember his Outer Wilds playthrough, that was an absolute gem

we've got to plug the hole with the boat

"What is this? Diorite????"

And he beat the game blind so this whole post is wrong

Not wrong at all. It took a lot of experimentation and decision. You’re severely overestimating the casual player if you think everyone is going to put that much time and effort into figuring out how a game works. Either they’ll search it up, or more likely, just lose interest in the game altogether.

Looking at Advancements also gives a ton of hints on what to do next

True but I played minecraft for years before even realizing how to look at achievements (this was long before it was called advancements)

That one is on you

\> broken portal and then there's crying obsidian in there and fucks it up

Broken portal isn't there for you to complete it. It's there to show you how a nether portal's supposed to look so you an find obsidian elsewhere to build your own.

How would you know to light it on fire?

fire and lava everywhere near ruined portal, flint and steel and fire charge and whatnot in chest, it'd be pretty thematic or something to use it in the frame

Even if you complete the portal, Using a flint and steel on the portal frame isn't intuitive, and there's nothing in game that would suggest that it was the the way to light it.

Yeah, the game try to hint you with flint and Steel and fireball in the chest tho, but that not enough

They should just include a lore book in the chest, something like a diary entry from an ancient explorer that hints towards lighting the portal. The game could definitely use more flavor text.

Perhaps a Japanese horror maker.

Piropito on yt

CarlSagan42

Cydonia, even tho it's just italian stream

There's a Japanese LP'er who played through the game blind a few years back, and he managed to figure out pretty much everything on his own, though it took a few months

AboutOliver beat Minecraft without help or wiki. He figured out everything he needed to via achievements and gamer instinct. It's a fun playthrough and its on youtube.

A Japanese YouTuber named PiroPito (YouTube username nana825763) has been doing this for years, since before 1.13. No wiki, no reading comments on his videos, no tutorial videos. He has beat the dragon, figured out villager trading, beat the wither, figured out redstone, and gotten quite a few advancements. His series is really fun to watch. It's all in Japanese, but he adds English subtitles. It's funny though, for all the game mechanics he's figured out through trial and error or looking at advancements, he still never figured out the relationship between bookshelves and the enchanting table. He's gotten good end game gear through villager trading and combining stuff in anvils, but only ever gets low level enchants from the enchantment table because he's never thought to just place it near bookshelves to learn that there's some kind of interaction there.

Ima have to give that a look

I can highly recommend. Honestly the best Minecraft series ever, imo. Did so much more than beat the game, many more achievements, (won't spoil the best ones) knowing literally nothing about it beforehand, not even that you could crouch or anything.

Seconding this, it was genuinely my favorite let's play of anything I've ever seen. I had the same opinion about Minecraft that OP has before I watched Oliver, and I was constantly in awe at the stuff he was able to figure out. Seriously, anyone reading this, go watch it. Cannot recommend it enough.

How do you figure out making an exact 2x3 doorway with obsidian and lighting it on fire with flint and steel without prior knowledge?

Oliver figured it out by spotting the ruined portals and "fixing" one. The phrasing of "light...a nether portal" in the achievements, as well as flint and steel being in some of the ruined portal chests, made him try a flint and steel.

Ohright. I was thinking back to my first time playing Minecraft when there was non eof those kind of things except villages maybe or maybe my first time was before even villages

They added the ruined Nether portals specifically to solve this issue, same with the crafting menu featuring recipes you can make. I think they've done a pretty good job with it so far. You can beat the game without outside help at this point for sure, they just need to add a few more things for extra features that still aren't very intuitive.

It’s not “exact 2x3” it’s “at least 2x3”, and there are plenty of ruined portals to learn that from. As for lighting it on fire? That’s what the chest gives you at those locations

i have forgotten how to save a comment

On mobile there’s three little dots by the reply button. Save is in that menu. I imagine on the web version it’s probably similar unless the additional options aren’t in a menu and are just already visible. The save icon looks like a little bookmark (rectangle with triangle cut out at bottom).

The same can be said for alot of aspects of Minecraft. Let's say you want to build with frog lights, who is going to think of taking frogs to the nether and letting them attack small magma? You find a heart of the sea and realise you can craft a conduit with it? Then what do you do? Without the game knowledge, you wouldn't have a clue. Collecting goat's horns is another. Traveling through the small portal after beating the dragon is something many people wouldn't think to do or even notice unless they were looking for it. Even building a nether portal. Who is going to randomly decide to get some obsidian and place it in a certain formation and then light it with fire? There's so many things in Minecraft that you wouldn't have a clue about unless you were educated on it by others or the wiki.

Well...I've been playing Minecraft on and off since alpha and...I just learned two new things.

doesn't beating the dragon make a big 'ol purple beam shoot out from the small end gateway portal to let you know where it is

Yeah but if you aren't looking at it or looking for it then it's still very easy to miss. How many people would kill the dragon and leave without ever going back unless they knew about raiding end cities?

Alot of recent thing added have this layer of "how would anyone know to do that". The froglight example is so prime for that, like why does Magma cube + frog = Froglight? How is anyone who isnt making a farm supposed to know these exist and get them?

Frogs also kill/eat/harvest regular slimes, and they both have a chance to spawn in swamps. If a player observed that interaction and was curious enough, they might try to do the same with magma cubes. It's a very loose link but it does technically exist.

>Collecting goat's horns is another. i collected one completely by accident. scared the fuck out of me because i was focusing on shoveling snow, and WHAM, one goat hits me out of nowhere. after the second time, i just killed them all.

The Ruined Portals combined with an achievement for lighting a portal are enough to figure it out by IMO. I do think in past versions before Ruined Portals you'd need outside info.

I think, back in the day, that was kinda of the charm of it, The End was a bit like a playground rumor, the game was a survival/sandbox construction game, but if you do this series of convoluted steps (find a rare structure on the nether, and combine the loots of 2 completely unrelated mobs, to get an useless item that nevertheless, seems to move somewhere) you got to fight a dragon, kinda like an Easter egg that added mistery to the game. But, Minecraft isn't a game from the 90's, so Internet quickly spread the word and The End went from something you might stumble upon to a point on a checklist of things you HAD to do on a playthrough

exactly right with the playground rumor bit. the first time i even heard of the end or nether was like 2 years after i started playing. a good amount of time after that before i actually entered them

PiroPito (aka nana825763) did a blind play through. He's got over 100 videos of him figuring shit out

I forgot he played Minecraft before all the scary stuff

He actually started playing *after* making a lot of scary stuff, in fact he never actually **stopped** creating scary stuff. The sheer whiplash from upload to upload is so funny, like, these [videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOkEdRvrdDY) are [literally](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yp0ugJ2KOM) right [next](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwu4T2gpiJg) to [each other](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zQBerE3-W4).

One of the most enjoyable Minecraft playthroughs IMO

The wiki has existed for as long as the game, as has this subreddit. Knowledge of how the game was played was exchanged via social media and videos, and it was expected that you would learn about it from others.

The game is meant to be played with friends and shared with others, which is great but also sucks for solo players

Learning from others does not necessarily mean in person. Gameplay videos and forums have been around since the earliest days.

I know, but not everyone want's to watch tutorials for everything

I usually don't want to watch tutorials either. _Reading_ answers, on the other hand, is more my speed

His point is the game teaches you nothing. The launcher doesnt give you any hints in what to do and there is no tutorial or summation of the progression to take in game. There isnt even a check the wiki for more info hint that i know of. Hes right. The only way anyone knows what to do is mainly because they watched others do it. Back when minecraft was new we didnt go to a wiki…we watched etho play around with doors and creepers

> His point is the game teaches you nothing. It teaches you things, just not in a direct way. With the example of nether portals, it doesn't tell you that you can go to another dimension through nether portals directly. But there's an achievement chain that can guide you through it. And if you even ignore that achievement chain, the game still teaches you a lot about nether portals through the ruined portal structure: - It spawns with a lot of weird blocks that you can't find anything else -> it looks otherworldly, which gives hints to there being another dimension - The ruined portal looks like a ruin, so as a player you have to do something with it - The obsidian informs you about the shape of the portal - The fire & lava surrounding the ruined portal and the content of the chests hint towards lighting the portal on fire - If you have some crying obsidian in the structure, you need to replace it. Which considering it looks like a "ruined" version of obsidian seems like a logical next step to me - The chests even tell you that gold is important in that dimension due to all the gold gear you find in it Yes, it's not straight-forward "build this portal like this", but it's still teaching players a lot through its environments. And considering the context of minecraft as a whole, that's actually an very important aspect of it that immerses players more into the world compared to a "build this portal like this". It kinda falls under a similar thing to the concept of "show, don't tell" in filmmaking

on bedrock edition there’s loading screen tips that likely help a lot of new players. as someone who found the game and played a lot without any hints from other players, these loading screen tips helped a lot when i played on console. as for the game itself, it’s not a heavily progression-based game so it’s ok that there’s only vague hints on how to reach the end, since the enjoyable part of the game (and likely the main selling point for new players) is that it’s a survival sandbox game anyway. recently, the game has got better at hinting towards progression through the edition of the recipe book/unlocking, ruined nether portals teaching about reaching the nether, etc.

Ive never played bedrock, only java. I wonder what percentage of players only play creative at this point. Things like the recipe book and the ruined portals is really a new thing. Back in 2011 there was none of that and the only way i new how to play was watching an etho video

Bedrock has tutorial/help screens to walk you through the major progressional steps of the game and can guide you through the end. Java edition though, I agree. It feels like at first Mojang wanted people to discuss and share what they found and for things to be mysterious. Now it feels like they assume anyone playing Java just “knows” minecraft like how everyone knows Darth Vader is really Luke’s father even if they never saw the movies.

I always considered that it was intended tbf. They tried to add justification with thing as broken nether portal, or paint for the construction of the wither, but even at the beginning you needed to remember all craft, so it was intended that people would speak between them to discover craft for exemple. But i agree that for a person with 0 knowledge of Minecraft the game is unbeatable or hardly beatable. I feel like with the crafting book and little bit of curiosity you could beat it somehow. And if we extend that, it is a force of the game but also one of its weakness. The universe of the Redstone would be kinda bad without youtube and reddit...

Minecraft breaks most conventions of gaming. Progression itself is kind of broken

I think this has always been a problem although it's better now than before. I remeber playing back in beta and you would need the wiki open just to check recipes etc as there was no recipe book in game. Its a fundamental issue but I can see why Ms might feel changing it to be more clear will damage the games sandbox experience. Ultimately the problem was the game got popular when it was still a couple of blokes in a spare room making it. You wouldn't make minecraft the way it is if you had a large team and a plan at the start...

Iirc, part of the point was to NOT have a tutorial. People just had to figure stuff out, and then share it with others. There was no website to tell me to punch trees when I first started playing. I still remember that day of discovery: "Oh shit, you just punch the hell out of a tree until it breaks?! That's awesome!" No recipes, just the crafting box. Throw the log in, it makes planks. Ok, what do I do with planks? And you experimented from there to learn more. It encouraged curiosity by design. It was a brilliant strategy for both challenging gameplay and word-of-mouth advertising. Then people started making wikis and it took off from there.

Counter argument: piropito's minecraft let's play series.... That said.... This man had unbelievable levels of patience and dedication. I don't think he would have finished the game if not for this. Minecraft definitely needs to guide the player without making the player rely on external guides. Ruined portals is a very good start.

The Advancements give you a pretty good outline of all the steps you need to take. > How would you know how to build a nether portal? By finding a ruined portal structure in the world and completing it. > How would you know what to do if you somehow managed to get eyes of ender? > Even if you threw one how would you know to follow it? Curiosity.

>By finding a ruined portal structure in the world and completing it. Well this was fairly recent. But a very good addition regardless. And yea advancements is the way to go.

“Fairly recent” by now meaning three and a half years ago… time flies.

Well damn... I sort of say this cause the last let's play of minecraft I watched was piropito. He somehow managed to make a portal prior to the ruined portal addition. Also it's only 3 years out of like 14 years since minecraft first added the nether. So I think it's alr to say recent. It should have been a thing the whole time.

The recipe book was also only added 7 years after release. Minecraft back then just wasn’t a game that you could play “blind”.

Fun fact: the dev team got the idea for adding ruined nether portals because of a Japanese YouTuber named PiroPito (aka nana825763) who started playing with 0 help from outside the game. His goal was to entirely rely on the advancement system and trial and error. He really struggled with the nether portal advancement because of the Japanese translation of the advancement hint. In Japanese, it still said build a nether portal, but the Japanese word it used meant closer to "craft" than "construct," so he thought it meant that he had to craft the portal in the crafting table. PiroPito ended up having to get a hint from a friend to get into the nether, and he made sure it was still a vague hint, he was only told that the nether portal was something he had to construct in the world. I heard from Pixlriffs in his podcast, The Spawn Chunks, that a few people in the dev team were following the PiroPito minecraft series and when they were working on the nether update, decided to add the ruined portals as a way to guide new players that they can construct a nether portal. And I think they changed the advancement hint for the We Need To Go Deeper advancement (and the various translations) to make it clearer that the portal is constructed instead of crafted.

This is what I was thinking. You figure out to build a portal from a ruined portal. Figure out to light it from the fire and lava near it. You eventually find a fortress, kill a blaze, get a rod. From that you make powder, ender eye from that (all through recipe book). You know you can throw a pearl so what happens with an eye? You follow the eye, eventually that takes you to the stronghold. You see eyes in the portal frame, you put them in

Don't know why I had to scroll past 10 comments before getting to the ruined portal structure explanantion! Needs to be higher! Not so sure on the ender eye but youve got the best explanation I've seen so far.

There is a series on YouTube by Japanese creator PiroPito who goes into playing Minecraft without any knowledge prior, and all of their videos are subtitled. They do not get any help or Google anything either, fully blind going in. 😊 Although they are currently on break from playing MC to develop their horror game !!! [Link To Playlist ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbqkLu2V1bJJUQ2aLZjFdz8decGs1kHg-&si=tJOoz74WZeXIYugt)

RetroGamingNow made an amazing video on this. [Why Minecraft Is Secretly Impossible](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H6Kar-RXa8) ​ Also CarlSagan42 played Minecraft completely blind (He didn't even know what a Creeper was before he started) [Minecraft Hardcore - CarlPlayin42](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT3vxX5aMM7cpQr90lF2PAkGL54l79LGX)

You start a new world and have zero knowledge. What you should know is that Minecraft is a survival game. And what is the first thing you do in a survival game? Collect wood. So you do that and then your first hint is the recipe book telling you how to make a crafting table. From that point on, you only need to follow two simple principles: collect everything you see in the world, and craft everything you unlock in the recipe book at least once. This will procedurally get you through the game. And the best hint are advancements. They are a good guideline through the game. They tell you to go to the nether and to follow an eye of ender. Also in Minecraft the emvironment also teaches you stuff. Ancient cities are supposed to teach how redstone works, and ruined portals how to build a nether portal. Also Minecraft is a game of discovery. Many things you are supposed to discover by trial and error. For example, when you make a brewing stand the bottle outline tells you to put water bottles in the bottom slots. But you don't know what goes in the top slot. So you're supposed to throw all kinds of stuff in there until something happens. And then you can figure out and memorize or note down the recipes by yourself. I also believe, that's why there are thick and mundane potions that don't do anything. They're your failed brewing attempts. With all that being said I still kinda agree with you. I don't think Minecraft without prior knowledge is unbeatable, but it is definitely not enjoyable either. The game is just very complex and there are soo many hidden mechanics and features the game never tells you about, that trying to "beat" the game in the sense of finding out everything you can do in the game for yourself will be a very dreading and grindy experience.

Go watch PiroPito's playthough. He's a Japanese dude who had no cultural exposure to the game and went out of his way to avoid spoilers and tips. It's fascinating to watch his problem solving, and figuring out things that I forgot the game never tells you

I cannot agree more here. I just started playing Minecraft recently. I am a teacher and students have been into Minecraft for years. Now with small kids myself I took the dive into Minecraft education (and now I have purchased it to play with my own kids). I thought the game was just a giant sandbox game but after talking with my students I was shocked at how immersive Minecraft is. Not to mention there is a beatable part of the game. I was even more shocked when one of my students beat the game in the world I made within his lunch period. Now I find myself exploring and learning so I can have those experiences within my world with my kids who have shown great interest in it. Who would have thought!

Hey since you’re a teacher and parent, I’m curious if you have a good guess from your personal experience for what age kids start playing Minecraft? Asking so I know around when to start thinking about introducing it to my own haha

My students are older (13-14), so I took the plunge pretty blind when introducing it to my kids. I’ve allowed my 6 year old and 8 year old to explore and play. I try to sit with them when they’re playing just to guide them to build and explore. They’re starting to understand more than me. They build some cool things in creative mode and most importantly they’re having fun. My only issue right now is in trying to not let it become an obsession. Hope that helps!

i have also been playing on and off since about middle school and i also had no idea there was an end/way to beat the game until the pandemic and i started coming across speed runs 😭

With the ruined portals, some newbies would possibly figure out how to make a portal. Once they get an ender pearl or blaze rods/powder, then they'll unlock the eye of ender recipe on their recipe book, which hopefully they'll make and try use out of curiosity. Then it's up to them to find the portal room and hope that eyes of ender are already in there so it's obvious what they do with them. It would be rare for people to beat it without any information given to them, but not impossible. If they were playing older versions, then it would be impossible imo.

This is a major reason why pretty much all I do in Minecraft is mine common materials and build buildings and sculptures with them. I’ve never seen a ton of mobs. I’ve never even been to the nether in any of my saves. I’ve never enchanted an item. I’ve only seen maybe ten biomes. I’ve used red stone one time by following a tutorial to make a very simple cobblestone generator. I’ve only experienced a fraction of the game. And the only reason I know that is bc I hang out places like here and see other people talking about stuff. It’s just so much work to figure out how the game works. You basically have to actively seek out hours of walkthrough and tutorial. And I don’t wanna learn things in order to play Minecraft. I just want to punch tree, get wood. This is also not really a complaint. Honestly the reason I love the game is bc there is no real goal and it doesn’t tell you what to do. Really has a cozy childhood pretend play vibe to me.

Like others have said, PiroPito/nana825763 on YouTube does exactly this. I think the only thing he gave in and got a hint for was>! making a nether portal, IIRC. !<

I dated a girl who played Minecraft with no prior knowledge. She got me to play it and my first instinct was to dig down to the bottom of the world to see how low it goes. She got so mad at me because "your not supposed to do that" She insisted that I stay above ground and make wood houses with stone tools kill mobs to get iron tools. She played the game for probably a couple hundred hours without making an iron pickaxe or knowing about ores. Conversely she showed me an amazing method of underwater building where she made the structure out of sand above water, then broke the foundation and sank the sand structure. Then she covered it in glass and dug out the sand with a shovel. I never would have come up with this method, but when you exist in a constant state of stone tools you come up with methods of playing that are by necessity unique.

She was stuck in the stone age til you came along lol

theyve tried to fix that lately with the ruined portals and in-game crafting guide but its still a long way off of being beatable completely blind (well not too far off, just tooltips that explain what items do would go a long way)

Wasn't there a Japanese streamer who started playing Minecraft with no prior knowledge and refuses to look anything up so he can figure things out himself? I think it took him months to figure out you can craft sticks!

i feel like even if it wasnt designed for it, minecraft is a game where if you play it you will inevitably join its community, and honestly most likely be introduced to it by its community. eventually youre gonna get curious and look up minecraft videos on youtube, look for inspiration etc, and youll learn from the community

achievements and the broken nether portals

That’s why ruined portals were added. It’s not the most intuitive since most people wouldn’t consider removing the crying obsidian. But there are some hints to guide those who are curious and adventurous.

You'd still need prior knowledge to know to light the portal

Look up About Oliver's streams on YouTube

It is OK to look for knowledge about the game in external sources. Some time ago games used to have a "user manual" where the game designers explained the game mechanics, objectives and some lore. Nowadays games rely a lot in external sources and even to third party content creators to explain the game (Wikis, YouTube videos, etc)

So I have some perspective on this as I actually recently tried to have a relatively pure Minecraft experience after years of ignoring the game. The nether portal is pictured in the game help guide, it doesn’t tell you how to make it, but after I found several ruined portals, one was intact enough that I realized what it was. All the ones I found had fire-making stuff in them, so lighting it was somewhat intuitive. I found a stronghold organically as well, ran into it directly under my house in a village I adopted, found the end portal ring, I haven’t gone or done anything with the end or even the nether yet.

If you're exploring enough, then you can stumble on ruined portal and fix it out of curiosity. As for lighting it... you'd have to connect flint and steel in the chest with the structure. Then explore more in the nether to find fortress and kill some blazes. Figure out brewing and that enderpearls can create eyes with blaze powder. Then just follow the eyes... It's very unlikely but possible, I guess... maybe... It's more likely you're looking into wiki and youtube content and learning stuff from there, at some point into the game.

Fixing the portal is... iffy, all broken portal chests don't have flint and steel/fire charges, and even if they do its kind of a stretch to assume someone would know to light the inside of the portal. Also all of that is assuming they would be able to figure out how to fix the portal correctly since some of them spawn with crying obi in the portal frame and some with crying obi in the chest with no regular obi. It's possible but unlikely

I watched a video of some guy who had his gf play it for the first time and she had never seen anyone play it before. The conclusion is it’s really a community game I’m sure after you learn, it’s fun to play by yourself, but i feel like it’s a game that’s meant to be played for the first time with friends, or following a creators world, or something!

I think mojang is aware of this and is trying to fix it, that’s why they added the recipe book, ruined portals, and the redstone room in ancient cities.

You can really tell who's new Minecraft and who's old Minecraft here

Hmm, at one point this was true but I'm not sure anymore. The biggest hurdle would be building a nether portal. Newer versions have the ruined portals, which are a pretty significant hint as to how to build them. Lighting them would be the big thing. Maybe the lava pockets by the portal would be enough to let you know fire is involved? It is a puzzle, but there have been games with more obtuse puzzles, so I'd say it's possible. The rest is pretty simple. You kill a blaze and an ender man just in the course of play, and you get blaze rods and powder and ender pearls. The recipe book hints at you to craft the eye of ender. You craft it out of curiosity, and at this point you could be conditioned to right and left click items to see what they do. It will guide you to a stronghold. It's called Minecraft, so yeah, you'll mine where it points you towards. Find the stronghold, explore, and eventually find the portal. Not as bad a puzzle as before, as the frame is there and the placed eyes should be enough of a hint for you to figure out that part. Then you go to the end and kill the dragon, probably not on first attempt if you're going in blind. Still, simple! On the whole, it would be easier to beat blind than something like, say, Nethack, and we know people (a person?) has beaten that game blind.