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Comment by TheRealPomax | Hacker News Reader

Never having played Minecraft: does this game not come with a manual? (even if it's in PDF form or the like?)

The main way the game teaches you how to play is the "advancements" system. It's a tree of achievements, starting with "walk around" and "chop down a tree", and ending with "defeat the final boss" or "bake a cake", each with a one-line description.

There's also a "recipe book", which tells you how to craft[1] items. More recipes get added as you collect the ingredients needed to make them.

However, these systems were only added in 2017. (For contrast, the game started development in 2009 and reached 1.0 in 2011.) Before that, how to progress was a lot less clear. It was assumed you had someone teaching you how to play, that you watched videos of other people playing, or that you read the wiki.

[1]: The process of combining the items you've collected, by slotting them into a 3×3 grid in a specific pattern (the "recipe"), to make new, more useful items.

no, and there's no tutorial or anything. it's weird to jump right into the game without prior experience. you sort of need a friend to explain it to you.

And for the group I played with this was an essential element of the fun. The chaos of trying to survive the first few nights when you knew nothing about the game. The fear of the unknown as darkness falls, panic induced by sightings and sounds of threats unfamiliar. I’d love to be able to forget all I know and re-experience this version of the game.

There was a tutorial level in early console versions, but that's gone from console versions now: https://minecraft.wiki/w/Legacy_Console_Edition_tutorial

Not at the time. Now there's a guide structured as quests, as well blueprints in the crafting ui

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