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

Even though many people already own Minecraft, 2026 will still see new or returning players ready to take on the adventure. Minecraft is a sandbox with endless possibilities, but there’s still a clear path you can follow at the start. Your ultimate goal: defeat the Ender Dragon! Whether you’re new or a seasoned veteran, we’ve collected all the key steps to help you clear this hurdle and reach Minecraft’s true ending. Plenty of long-time players still haven’t slain the dragon. Throughout the walkthrough, we’ll link to other articles with deeper details.

Minecraft Overworld: First steps for beginners

1. First tools and shelter in Minecraft

As soon as you spawn, you need to craft your first tools. Look for trees and start punching logs. Turn them into planks and sticks, then craft your first wooden tools. The green recipe book in your inventory shows you every recipe. Craft a crafting table and a furnace early. For the upcoming night, secure a shelter. Either dig into a hillside or build a small starter hut. A bed lets you set your spawn point and skip nights.

2. Food in Minecraft: Finding and crafting meals

You’ll get hungry, so secure a steady supply of food to heal and avoid dying. Depending on the biome, you’ll find 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 crucial to find key ores and upgrade your tools. Start with stone, move to iron, and later to diamond. After that, upgrade your diamond gear to netherite. Where to find each ore is covered in our guide (Minecraft Mining Techniques: Efficiently Mine Resources) . Your priority, however, is finding diamonds.

Your goal: With a diamond pickaxe, mine at least 10 obsidian to build a Nether portal. You can also find ruined portals as structures and repair them.

Minecraft Nether: Build the portal and enter the dimension

4. Find a Nether Fortress: Tips for navigating the Nether

With your portal, you can enter a new dimension: the Nether. It’s essentially a hellscape, so watch out for lava and tough enemies. If you’re struggling, use our survival guide . Your next task is to find a Nether Fortress. They spawn primarily in the Nether Wastes and are hard to miss.

5. Farm Blaze rods: Find Blazes and use Looting

In Nether Fortresses, you’ll encounter Blazes, yellow mobs that shoot fireballs. There are even spawners that are part of the fortress. Blazes are vital for your next progression step. They drop Blaze Rods, which you craft into Blaze Powder.

Blaze Rods aren’t always easy to get, so this is a great time to look into enchanting (Minecraft Enchantments – Your Ultimate Guide) . Gather enough levels and craft an enchanting table to, for example, add Looting to your sword. This increases your chance of Blaze Rods from a base 50% to up to about 87.5% per kill with Looting III.

6. Farm Ender Pearls: Find Endermen in the Overworld and Nether

The second ingredient you need is Ender Pearls. You get them from Endermen, and enchantments also help here to improve your odds. Endermen spawn as hostile mobs at night in the Overworld, but you can also find them in the Nether. 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 get Eyes of Ender. These are essential to locate and open the End. We recommend carrying at least 20 Eyes of Ender.

Minecraft End: Find the Stronghold and defeat the Ender Dragon

7. Find a Stronghold: Use Eyes of Ender correctly

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

Throw an Eye of Ender into the air and it will point you toward the nearest Stronghold. Sometimes an eye breaks, so you’ll need another. When the eye stops moving in a direction, dig down and search for the Stronghold.

8. Activate the End Portal: Place the eyes and avoid hazards

Strongholds are large and can be quite maze-like. They also contain lots of loot, including enchanted books and extra Ender Pearls. Keep searching until you find the portal room. Watch out for the silverfish spawner—it’s best to break it.

The portal likely isn’t active yet, and you’ll need to place up to 12 Eyes of Ender to open it. In extremely rare cases, all 12 eyes are already in place, and the portal is active right away.

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

You can now enter the End and fight the Ender Dragon. Make sure 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 special speedrun strategies, and strong armor help a lot.

Once you defeat the dragon, collect the massive experience and the dragon egg. There’s only one egg per world. Then jump through the central portal to see the credits and the End Poem. Congratulations. You’ve beaten Minecraft—but now the real game begins. You can travel to the End islands and find items like Shulker Boxes and the Elytra.

Conclusion: Beat Minecraft successfully

Minecraft gives you endless options, but it’s worth doing a full start-to-finish walkthrough at least once. You’ll learn all the fundamentals and unlock important end-game 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 it all together with your friends. Maybe you’ll even start a challenge to see who can beat the dragon first.