Tutorial:Desert survival

The desert biome in Minecraft can be quite a challenge to deal with, being one of the most difficult to survive and prosper in. If you create a world, and spawn in a desert biome, you have to decide: leave or stay.

This guide will consider the scenario where you want to stay on a very large desert biome (sometimes Minecraft's biomes are too short, and would defeat the point of this trial), as your world spawn location, before going outside to other biomes. If you are beginning to play Minecraft, you shouldn't try this, unless you want to test yourself.

First things to consider

A desert biome in the Minecraft game. — A desert biome.

The first thing you will notice is the excessive amounts of sand across the land, with some cactus, dead bushes, and dry grass scattered around. Try to not lose health by getting too close to cactus, as your lack of food won't allow you to regenerate easily.

Deserts have fewer animals compared to most biomes, with those being rabbits and camels. Your main food source the first and second days will be rabbits, as they are common and will most likely be the first food you obtain.

In addition to most regular hostile mobs, deserts are home to some biome-exclusive monsters. These mobs may pose additional threats to the unprepared.

Deserts do not have any typical trees, so you'll be out of wood sources unless you manage to find a structure that houses it. Technically, you could find an azalea tree, which would benefit you in the early game, but they are a rare find. Consider these additional challenges before continuing.

First steps

If you spawn on a desert, the first thing is avoiding to sprint. You don't have enough food, so the best thing you can do is to just walk. You could start your world with a bonus chest, which would skip many of the challenges for the first day, but the contents below assume you didn't.

Mine some sand blocks, around two stacks of 64 blocks. Sand is a block affected by gravity (falls instead of floating), but it can be useful to reach places you wouldn't be able to otherwise, and having around 128 blocks gives you space to fill gaps easier to allow yourself to go through the terrain.

To refill your hunger points, you need to manage your hunger carefully, feeding yourself with the rabbit fauna. While you'll be unable to cook it for the meantime, feeding yourself with it will allow you sprint only in emergency situations, letting you regenerate a part of your hunger.

Hunting rabbits also provide rabbit hide; do not drop it. Rabbit hide will later be your main source of leather, which you can use to create basic leather armor, or bundles to store stuff you may use later.

Nights on deserts

While nights by themselves aren't too hard to deal with, deserts add extra threats to the mix. Parched and husks will be your main threats, as the first will shoot you arrows of Weakness, while the second give you the Hunger effect when dealing damage, both being dangerous for the early game.

The main threat, though, are camel husk jockeys. They are a fast, tanky jockey that should not be fought at close distance without a high tier or armor, being ridden by a parched and a husk with an iron spear. Your best bet will be fleeing from that fight, specially the first night as it would become an insta-kill situation.

Unless you create a pillar high enough to prevent shot arrows from hitting you, your best bet will be going inside a cave, and covering yourself with sand to prevent monsters finding you. You should wait for some minutes until the sun rises. This may be tricky to calculate at first, but the day cycle in Minecraft is 10 minutes of day, and 10 minutes of night, so if you keep track on time for this, you shouldn't have too much issues.

Setting up a base

Your base should be closed from top to bottom and on the sides. Could be inside a cave, could be on the surface, the ideal is to have a closed area so most monsters can't reach you. If you come across a village, use it as your base, as it will give you the safest place to reside.

Either on villages or just across the desert (but rarely), you may encounter a camel. On villages a camel always appears, so try to keep it around your base, as it will help a lot to travel, and if you somehow got an iron ingot (either from monsters or from an structure), you should craft a saddle and use it to ride the camel.

The next days

Assuming you now have got some sticks and wooden tools, you are now able to explore more parts of a desert, specially the underground, if you haven't done so already to search planks.

With some luck, you'll come across a wandering trader, a villager-like mob that trades basic items for emeralds. You can rely on emeralds found in chests of pyramids and villages, as well as hay bales from villages to trade more emeralds. This trader has a probability of selling you a sapling for 5 emeralds, 8 times in total, so keeping those emeralds in your inventory will increase your chances of getting stable sources of wood earlier.

After a night

If you haven't found structures, you could rely on mob loot, stuff that monsters drop when killed. Sometimes they spawn with tools, and with a lot of luck they could drop a pickaxe or a shovel, two important tools to progress. Mobs also drop stuff like bones or rotten flesh when burning because of sunlight, which gives you an alternative to rabbit meat.

Keep in mind that husks, parched and camel husk jockeys do not burn on sunlight, so you'll need to flee if you encounter a camel husk early in your game. However, without the aid of skeletons and creepers, they become slightly more bearable, though it's still heavily recommended to flee.

Managing resources

Keep planks well managed, as they won't be easy to recover, specially when trees take time to regrow. So, your best deal to avoid wasting planks is to rely on dead bushes to get sticks, which will be your way to create tools and weapons, as well as using those as fuel for furnaces.

Locating structures

Structures will be your main way of getting advanced resources. If you come across a desert pyramid, loot it carefully, as the loot there will give useful materials.

Sometimes, a pillager outpost can generate in deserts, which are arguably the hardest to deal with on the early game. This structure gives a lot of wood and some food, but pillagers are though enemies without the proper armor, so it's up to you to loot it or flee.

Your best scenario would be finding a village, and have enough luck to have it generate with a weaponsmith house, as this will be one of your only two chances of getting an oak sapling, the best scenario for getting wood as it is renewable.

With some luck, you could get a village house with a crafting table inside, as well as crops (carrots, wheat, potatoes, or beetroot) around, which will provide you a safer base and some food to let you sprint properly.

Going underground

Mining cobblestone and getting copper or iron ingots will help you to increase your tools' capabilities.

Locating a mineshaft is the best scenario for an underground expedition, as it gives you some food and the right amount of planks and ingots to make yourself some extra equipment, like a shield.

Even if you don't find one, you could just mine ores on the cave. As long as you can make armor to replace your leather armor pieces, you'll be fine.

Do make sure you bring torches, to prevent monsters from spawning around you, and a bucket as well, to grab water or lava.