There are many different theories of how you end up in the world of Minecraft. You could have crashed in a plane in a strange land and you're the only survivor, it could be a crazy dream when you're in a coma, maybe there was nuclear war leaving unnatural creatures and you're the only human left. All we know though is you’re in a world where the physics are a little off and there are lots of things you have never seen before. Well what would you do first, you'll need to find food and shelter. Well there are animals almost everywhere so you can get food from them. So for the first day you just explore this seemingly endless world, but as the sun starts to set you realize a very tall black humanoid with bright purple eyes is standing close to you. You look at it and it stares back standing completely still, you move your head a little to get a better look at it and it starts vibrating and dashes away faster than you can even see, almost as if it teleported. You try to find where it went and you see a horrifying site, there are skeletons with bows and arrows, zombies, giant spiders, and worst of all you see large green and white creature with no arms and 4 small stumps for legs coming towards you but you’re too scared to move, it starts hissing and gets right next to you. The next thing you know you're blown back in front of a large crater and you're badly hurt. You see more monsters coming for you and you know you need to hide. You quickly dig a small hole in the ground and get in it covering the top of the hole with more dirt and wait until morning when you feel safe to come out.
Or at least that’s one story line that you could follow because in survival mode there an infinite amount of possibilities for you to explore. In real life you may think that knowing how to survive in a fake world is pointless, but here we will prove to you that you can learn important skills like time management, resource management, simple math skills, prioritizing what's important, learning to adapt to changing surroundings, and how to quickly memorize how to do tasks that you will have to repeat.
In the world of Minecraft there are two main things that you always have to have, food and shelter. You need these things or else your health bar will go down and if your health bar goes all the way down then you will die and you will lose all the stuff you have with you and be teleported to your spawn point (where you first started in the world.) Luckily if you find where you died within a couple of minutes you can find all of your stuff and get it back. The only way to bring your health back up is to have your hunger bar at about 90% and then your health will start to regenerate. Your hunger bar will always decrease but depending on what you're doing it will lower slower or faster. If you're just mining or building your hunger bar could last you all day, but if you're running around a lot, exploring the world, and being attacked/attacking mobs you could be starving in a matter of minutes. If your hunger bar goes down to nothing then your health bar will start to drop and within about a minute it will be almost empty. If you are dying of hunger you will never completely run out of health but it will leave you with such a low amount that almost anything can kill you though. It is quite simple to replenish your hunger bar, you just have to eat some food. There are obviously more ways to die than just starvation. Jumping off something 4 blocks or higher damages you, if you stay underwater for too long then you will start to drown, lava obviously isn’t a good place to be in, you can also to be killed by the only two blocks that obey gravity, sand and gravel, they will suffocate you if they fall on you. Hostile mobs are also always out to get you which is why it is always a good idea to have shelter for the night. It is also very dark outside at night so it is hard to actually accomplish anything useful. Having a bed is very useful because they let you sleep through the night within a matter of seconds, that way you can spend less time hiding in your house and more time outside working. Your bed needs to be in an enclosed area though because being blown up by a monster in the middle of the night is never fun.
Obviously in real life there isn't any monsters threatening to kill you and there isn't a constant fear of falling into lava so how can these skills help you in real life? They can help you learn how to prioritize what is more important. In Minecraft it’s things like, do you really want to try to get those diamonds that you don't really need and risk falling into lava and losing everything you have? In real life though it would be things like, do I really need to buy this brand new iPhone or should I spend the money on rent and just get a more basic phone? or should I order pizza every night because its easier? or should I make healthy food that is better for my body? These skills are essential for you in life and you can learn a little bit about it from playing some video games like Minecraft.
Crafting is one of the most important parts of Minecraft. Crafting is how you take all of the raw materials that you have collected in the world and turn them into tool and materials that are more useful to you. There are hundreds of things that you are able to craft in Minecraft and you have to memorize how to craft all of them. Why could it be useful to have memorized all of these things that you won't use in the real world? It’s not what you memorized, it's how you memorized it. If you were to watch someone play Minecraft you wouldn't see them studying all of this information after they're done playing, after they did it once they would remember how to do it. Being able to memorize things quickly is very important in the real world. In almost any field of work there are going to be simple tasks that are important that you will have to know and the faster you can remember how to do them the better.
Mobs are all the animals and monsters that live in the world of Minecraft with with you. Some of the are nice and you can live peacefully with them, while for others their only goal is to make your life more difficult.
Passive Mobs:
There are 4 main animals in Minecraft; the chicken, cow, sheep, and pig. When killed they each drop different items that help with different aspects of surviving. The chicken, cow, and pig drop food which can be cooked and eaten. The cow can also drop cowhide that can be crafted into armor, and sheep drop wool blocks which can be dyed and use as decoration or to make a bed.
By having these mobs that you depend on, you have to learn to live with them. If there is a group of one type of mob they will respawn, but if you kill them all, it will take a very long time for them to come back to that area and without these mobs you won’t have any food. Of course you could always have a farm but those take time to set up so in the beginning of the game they're essential which teaches you to conserve your resources. Also because these passive mobs each drop different things you have to think about which ones you need and what you will do with what they drop. This can help you refine your decision making process because you have to think about things like if you want to spend the time to cook the meat so that it will fill you up more, or just eat it raw and risk getting poisoned. Also what will you do with the wool/cowhide and do you really need it?
Hostile Mobs:
Hostile mobs work the same as passive mobs but with one major difference, if they see you they will either try to eat you, shoot arrows at you or explode right beside you. Also they only appear at night and will burn when the sun comes up. Like most other mobs if you kill them they will each drop something different, it is much harder to kill hostile mobs though because they are attacking you back and if there is more than one attacking you and you don't have good armor and a sword it is almost impossible to survive.
In a situation like this you have to make a decision, should you just play it safe and stay in your house until morning, or should you go outside in the dark and attack them to get the things that they drop but risk getting killed and losing everything? As we have said before this can teach you to prioritize what's important, and that is an extremely important skill in real life.
There is one goal in Minecraft, to kill the Ender Dragon. You don’t need to do this and can have fun playing and learning without completing this task, but it is always something to work toward. When you kill the hostile mob called an endermen they can drop something called an ender pearl. You can throw these ender pearls very far and wherever it lands you will be instantly teleported there, you do get hurt a small amount though. This can be very useful for getting to areas you can't reach like the the bottom of a canyon or the top of a mountain. Something better can be done with these ender pearls though, you can craft them into an ender eye. When you throw an ender eye instead of teleporting to where it lands the eye flys in a certain direction for small amount of time then it quickly rises straight up into the air before disappearing. If you have enough ender eyes and follow where they're leading you, eventually they will stop flying and start going into the ground. If you mine into the ground you will fall into an underground maze that is filled with small creatures called silver fish that are constantly attacking you. If you fight your way through the maze you can find a room with a hole in the floor that's filled with lava, Floating above will be a large square made of blocks each with a hole in them that will hold an ender eye. If you fill all the holes the center of the square will start to look like what can only be described as a black hole. Jumping into the darkness will teleport you to a large floating island known as “The End” made of a strange beige block with large obsidian pillars all over it, there is also lots of endermen everywhere. If you have gotten this far you have almost won, now all you have to do is kill the giant flying dragon that is constantly being healed by beacons on top of the obsidian pillars and swooping down to attack you or try to push you off the island. The first thing you should do is destroy the beacons so the dragon can't be healed, to do that you will need to build yourself something that can get you onto the top of the pillars which are easily 20 times your height. The worst part is that when you try to destroy the beacon it will explode pushing you off the pillar to fall to your death. If you do manage to survive the fall don't forget about all the endermen that are constantly trying to kill you, not to mention the dragon that it is constantly flying down and attacking you. After you have destroyed all the beacons you then have you wait until the dragon swoops down to a level where you can attack it and keep hitting it until it eventually dies. If you do manage against all odds to follow all these steps and kill the dragon you will be taken out of the world and shown dialog of two people talking to each other and some of the things they say have been said to be life changing. Once the dialog is over then you will be taken back to your spawn point and you can continue doing whatever you like with your world.
Can beating Minecraft teach you anything though? To beat the dragon you're going to have to do lots of planning before hand, you have to get good enough armor so you don’t get killed right away and a weapon to fend off monsters and kill the dragon. Food is very important so that you don't die of hunger and you can heal your self. You'll have to of been saving up ender pearls for a while because there quite rare, and then you'll have to craft them into ender eyes. You will also have to bring a pickax so you can mine down to the portal. To kill the dragon you have to destroy the beacons that heal it so you will need to bring material to build a path way up to the pillars that there on. Being able to plan out what you need and get it ready is a very important skill in the real world and it is always helpful to get as much practice as possible, even if it is only in a video game.
You may be asking yourself “Why would I want to spend all this time planning out and killing the ender dragon." What do I get out if it?” Well the truth is not much. So why would anyone do it then? It would be because of intrinsic motivation. Opposed to being extrinsically motivated which means that there is something you get after you do the work, for example trying really hard on a test in school so you get a good mark, being intrinsically motivated means that you want to do something because you think it will be good for you. You don't get some amazing sword or the ability to fly from killing the ender dragon, just the satisfaction that you achieved something. Being intrinsically motivated will be essential in life because you will not get a reward for doing somethings. For example cleaning your house, you don't get a prize for doing it but it is still good to have it clean.
This video is in creative mode which means you can fly and nothing attacks you, if you where in survival mode though the dragon and endermen would be attacking me.
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