Ten Tips You Need To Know
1. Need to farm a lot of sand but you don't want to waste your shovel on that? Use torches! Place a torch under the sand and the other sand blocks (on top of it) are destroyed too.
2. Can't seem to take out those zombies? Can't make a decent shelter with the worry of a creeper? Low on health and don't have any food? Set the difficulty to peaceful and there you go! Your health will quickly regenerate, your hunger bar won't hurt you, and all hostile mobs will disappear. This becomes very helpful when building large structures or pixel art; however, most players dislike this, as it takes away much of what they see as the challenge and some of the fun of Minecraft.
3. If you want to get every block on a tree but just can't reach that top one, try leaving the bottom block intact (not cut down) and then jump on it to get the rest. Once done, harvest the bottom. If you still can't reach after using this, you'll have to place a block such as dirt below you to boost yourself up higher.
4. Struggling to remember crafting patterns? Trying to make a bucket but instead you make a minecart (and waste 5 Iron Ingots!) or even a cauldron (and waste 7 ingots)? Take a closer look at a pattern, like the fishing pole pattern. Take notice of how the sticks and string line up to look like a fishing pole. Many patterns follow this trait, such as doors, which use two columns of wooden planks to make the rectangular shape of a door, and swords, which use two wooden planks, cobblestone, iron ingots, gold ingots or diamonds for the blade and a stick as the handle. (Or you could press ESC to stop the game and then visit the Crafting page for help.) Stack some items to avoid excess item dragging which wastes time. Try putting two diamonds in a helmet shape on top of diamond pants etc.
5. If your house is far from your spawn, and you have 3 Wool and 3 Wooden Planks, you can make a Bed. If you sleep in a bed at night, it will set your spawn, and, like in real life, skip the night. Be careful: if you break your bed, you will lose that spawn point! Therefore, it may be smart to make a second bed, and place it and sleep in it before you get rid of the first bed. That way you won't die and spawn at the original spawn point while moving your first bed.
6. Is it nearing nighttime and you haven't finished your shelter yet? In an emergency situation and need some shelter? Dig three blocks down and place a block above you, and now you're safe! Make sure you have a torch though; if not it will be pitch black as there is no light source. You may want to expand the boundaries so you may place a bed. You can get out by Pillar jumping if you have no ladders. This method is not recommended though, as you're completely exposed to mobs as you leave. Pillar jumping instead of digging into the earth is another solution. Simply make a pillar directly under you: 10 or 12 blocks will put you out of reach from a skeleton's arrows, and out of range from monsters in general. Or you can simply set your difficulty to peaceful mode and relax.
7. This is perhaps the safest method of mining, with higher rewards. Make sure you have a lot of pickaxes and at least 64 torches in your inventory. Slowly mine a big stairway to bedrock, lighting your way with the torches as you go. If you plan to have 1x2x2 paths leading off the side of the stairway, bring as many torches as possible. When you get to bedrock go up 11 stairs (best for finding diamonds) then mine a 1x2 infinite corridor.
8. Make a 1x2x2 doorway in the back of your home. After that easy step, make a huge room and have several different ways to mine. Low and high, left and right - you're sure to hollow out a mountain soon, getting hefty supplies of coal and iron, however you will not encounter gold, lapis lazuli ore or diamond ore, and there is still a slight danger of lava.
9. You have made your shelter, already mined some cobblestone and can't find any coal to fuel or light your environment? Just make a furnace, and smelt some wood logs (not already crafted to planks). Use the planks for fuel—2 planks for every three logs you want to cook. This will get you charcoal, which is in all ways equal to coal. (Note that charcoal and coal don't stack together).
10. See some redstone, diamond, or some fancy ore? Don't use low-level pickaxes to mine them! When the ore mines as slowly as breaking stone with bare hands, that's a hint that it won't drop anything! Indeed, if anything but obsidian takes more than two seconds to mine, you are using the wrong pickaxe. The rules are that wood (or gold) pickaxes only mine coal and (cobble)stone, while stone also mines iron and lapis lazuli ore. Iron mines all blocks but obsidian, and diamond pickaxes can even mine obsidian. Be careful - upper-tier ores are deep enough that you are likely to run into lava lakes.