Minecraft Walkthrough 2026: From spawn to Ender Dragon, complete guide

Even though many people already own Minecraft, there will still be new or returning players in 2026 who want to take on the adventure. Minecraft is a sandbox with endless possibilities, but there is still a clear path you can follow at the start. Your end goal is to defeat the Ender Dragon! Whether you are new or a seasoned veteran, we have summarised all the key steps to overcome this hurdle and reach Minecraft’s true ending. After all, there are still plenty of long-time players who have never slain the dragon. In this walkthrough we also link to further posts with more in-depth information.

Minecraft Overworld: First steps for beginners

1. First tools and shelter in Minecraft

As soon as you spawn in your world, you need to sort out your tools. Look for trees and start breaking logs. From these you can craft wood and sticks, then your first wooden tools. The green recipe book in your inventory shows you all the recipes. Craft a crafting table and a furnace early. Find a shelter for the upcoming night. Either dig into a hill or build a small starter hut. A bed helps you set your spawn point and skip nights.

2. Food in Minecraft: Finding and making food

You will get hungry and need to sort out food so you can heal and avoid dying. Depending on the biome, there are different food sources. You can kill animals and cook meat, plant seeds, fish, or gather berries. Look around and always carry enough food. A crop field or an animal farm are renewable food sources (Building a Minecraft Farm: Simple Guide for Food and Resources) .

3. Caves and ores in Minecraft: Diamonds, iron and more

Once you have a permanent base with a farm, head into a cave. This is important to find certain ores and upgrade your tools. Start with stone, move on to iron, and later to diamond. Later you can upgrade diamond gear to netherite. Where to find each ore is covered in our post (Minecraft Mining Techniques: Efficiently Extract Resources) . Most important, however, is the hunt for diamonds.

Your goal: Mine at least 10 obsidian with a diamond pickaxe to build a Nether portal. You may also find ruined Nether portals as structures and repair them.

Minecraft Nether: Build the portal and enter the dimension

4. Finding a Nether fortress: Tips for orientation in the Nether

With the portal you can now enter a new dimension: the Nether. It’s a kind of hell, where you must watch out for lava and nasty mobs. If you run into trouble, use our guide to survive . Your next task is to look for a Nether fortress. They primarily generate in the Nether Wastes and are hard to miss.

5. Farming blaze rods: Find Blazes and use Looting

In Nether fortresses you will encounter Blazes, yellow mobs that shoot fireballs at you. There are even spawners that are part of the fortress. Blazes are important for the next stage of your progress in Minecraft. They drop blaze rods, which you can craft into blaze powder.

Blaze rods aren’t that easy to obtain, so this is a good time to look into enchantments (Minecraft Enchantments – Your Ultimate Guide) . Gather enough experience levels and craft an enchanting table to upgrade your sword with “Looting”. This increases your chance of blaze rods, from a normal 50% to as high as 91% per kill.

6. Farming ender pearls: Find Endermen in the Overworld and the Nether

The second ingredient you need for your progress is ender pearls. You get them from Endermen, and enchantments will again help improve your odds. Endermen spawn as normal hostile mobs at night in the Overworld, but you can also encounter them in the Nether. There, they spawn in the Warped Forest, and sometimes in the Nether Wastes or Soul Sand Valley.

Your goal: Craft blaze powder from blaze rods and combine it with ender pearls to obtain Eyes of Ender. These are essential to find and open The End. We recommend at least 20 Eyes of Ender.

Minecraft The End: Find a Stronghold and defeat the Ender Dragon

7. Finding a Stronghold: Using Eyes of Ender correctly

Now you need to find your way to The End, and the mechanic isn’t immediately obvious. You must use Eyes of Ender to locate a Stronghold. It’s an abandoned structure that contains another portal. Each world has a set number of Strongholds, generated in rings around the centre of your world.

Throw an Eye of Ender into the air and it will point you towards the nearest Stronghold. Sometimes the eye breaks, and you will need to use another. Once the eye stops moving in a single direction, dig down and search for the Stronghold.

8. Activating the End Portal: Insert eyes and avoid dangers

Strongholds are large structures and can be very maze-like. There is also plenty of loot, including enchanted books and extra ender pearls. Keep searching until you find a portal room. Beware of the silverfish spawner—it’s best to break it.

The portal will likely be inactive and you must insert up to 12 Eyes of Ender to open it. In extremely rare cases all 12 eyes are already present, and the portal is active straight away.

9. Defeating the Ender Dragon: Strategy, gear and tips

You can now enter The End and fight the Ender Dragon. Naturally, we recommend that you prepare properly. Use our guide so you don’t forget anything (Ender Dragon in Minecraft: Ultimate Guide to Victory) . The fight isn’t too hard if you go in with good gear. A bow or crossbow, a water bucket, beds for specialised strategies, and strong armour help enormously.

Once you’ve defeated the dragon, you can collect the many experience points and the Dragon Egg. There is only one egg per world. Then jump through the central portal to read the credits and the End Poem. Congratulations. You’ve beaten Minecraft—now the game really begins. You can travel the End islands and find items like shulker boxes or Elytra.

Conclusion: Beating Minecraft successfully

Minecraft offers endless options, but it’s worth doing a full walkthrough from start to finish at least once. You’ll not only learn all the game’s fundamentals, but also unlock key endgame items. From your first survival attempts to the Ender Dragon, you’ll traverse multiple dimensions and learn how to play Minecraft effectively in Survival mode.

If you rent your own Minecraft server from us, you can experience all of this together with friends. You could even start a challenge and see who defeats the dragon first.