At this point, we all know not to dig straight down, use gold swords or make hoes out of our diamonds. Those are just simple, basic rules that we all know. However, there are some other, more complex things that can help make you more efficient in your survival world. I am here to present to you five such tips that will help you become a better Minecrafter.

Try not to get the Thorns enchantment

Thorns is a pretty good enchantment for your armor on paper: if an enemy hits you, it has a pretty good chance of damaging them back without you breaking a sweat. However, it comes with the cost of armor durability. This sucks since, in survival mode, the type of armor you will most likely be enchanting is diamond armor. Diamonds are hard to find, and so you want to keep them for as long as you can. Besides, while Thorns is useful, it isn’t amazingly useful, as it doesn’t really take much skill to swing your sword. However, if you really like Thorns and want it on your armor, at least make sure to get Mending on it as well to keep it for as long as possible.

Don’t rely solely on cave mining

Cave mining is, granted, much more exciting and adventurous than strip mining, the other big option. However, cave mining is nowhere near as efficient. It is simply due to the odds of probability: When you go mining in a cave, all you do is look at the walls in hope of running into an ore vein. You are generally limited to the blocks that you can see; you don’t dig around for diamonds and stuff. However, strip mining (if done properly) allows you to see every possible block in a wide area. The more time you spend strip mining, the more diamonds you’ll find. I can promise you that if you spend enough time, you could get many more diamonds than you ever could while cave mining for the same amount of time. I understand that it is more boring, but still try to set up a strip mine under your base; you won’t regret it.

Learn to fight all mobs melee

Bows are very useful, and with some mobs they make things much easier than they would otherwise be. An example is the witch: oh, how I hate them! I once tried to kill one with my sword, and barely escaped with half a heart. With bows, however, things are much easier. You don’t even need amazing aim to snipe from a distance: just stand a little way off, avoid being detected and shoot a few arrows until your target dies. The problem, however, is when you’re in a tight spot and either you run out of arrows, your bow breaks, you’re cornered or some other situation where ranged attacks are not an option, and your sword and shield are your only help. If you rely too much on your bow, then you will most likely die in these situations. That’s why you need to practice melee combat as well, since ranged weapons won’t always be an option. Of course, the opposite is also true.

Build your home close to your original spawn

This one is much more important than you think, as ignoring it could make you lose your stuff if you die or worse, never be able to find your home again. If you’ve been in your world for a while your bed will most likely be somewhere safe and well lit, but staying in the safe zone is always a good idea. Perhaps something might somehow still find a way to obstruct your bed, or it could be destroyed for some reason, or there might be a bug. If any of these things happen, you will get sent right back to your original spawn point. If this happens and you don’t know the way back to your very distant home, you’re basically screwed (or you might get lucky and find it by running in a random direction but I mean come on, what are the odds?). However, even if you do know the way, you might end up taking too long to get back to save your stuff from disappearing. If you’re really unlucky however, you’ll respawn in the dead of night and will have to run back while dodging all the mobs. At this point, I hope you’re convinced how important this is. Of course, if you’re playing on hardcore mode, this doesn’t really matter since you don’t get any respawns anyway, but you get it.

Organize your chests

This one is so underrated, but trust me: the further you get into your survival world, the more you will feel lost because of all the random stuff in random chests all over the place. Organizing your chests early on by sorting specific things in specific places will help save you a lot of time and effort (and frustration). It’s pretty logical: someone who lives in a place with chests all over the house and places stuff in the nearest one will have trouble locating their stuff, while someone who has neatly labeled chests and places their items accordingly will find what they’re looking for effortlessly.