Best Strategies for Minecraft SkyBlock in Survival

Playing Minecraft SkyBlock might be one of the most entertaining yet easy-going playsets you can use. It’s not dangerous, because you are working on a very small floating island that can’t spawn any mobs right away, but it is challenging.

If you are playing Skyblock on one of the best Minecraft servers, you will also have even more options and goals. But, even in the original Skyblock it’s very difficult to know where to start.

This is why we have made this helpful step-by-step guide. It doesn’t explain exactly what should be done, but rather the general steps before you can start expressing your creativity.

What Makes Minecraft SkyBlock so Fun?

For a complete beginner, Minecraft Skyblock looks completely impossible. How can you even build something without any resources?

But, if you know the mechanics of Minecraft you will quickly realize that all of the necessary options are already provided to you. But, because you can’t simply dig up all of the resources you need in Skyblock, you will need farms, and not just food farms, but farms for all of the resources you will use.

These can be separated into 3 categories of increasing difficulty:

1. Manual farms
2. Mechanics farms
3. Redstone farms

You will need to use your Minecraft expertise and creativity to create your own Overworld and Nether from the little island and simple chest provided to you.

Now let’s get into the steps you will need to take to start off the best Skyblock island of your own!

Step 1: Learn About the Server Advantages

Playing Skyblock on a server is much more fun. Not only would you be able to brag and show off your island, but you would also be able to trade. This will make the whole process much less painful and much more fun.

Server rules vary significantly, so make sure you familiarize yourself with the rules before you start. Some servers are very plain and offer little more than the vanilla experience. Others may even allow for PvP after you had your island for a while.

Finally, being able to buy some blocks such as dirt or sand can help your progress immensely because acquiring those blocks through mechanics is really tedious.

Step 2: Ask for Assistance

Don’t pay it back, pay it forward.

The best MC servers will usually have that title because they have a good community. And, the best way to join that community is to ask for help. Experienced players will usually come and help you out with some resources that you might suffer to collect otherwise.

Additionally, you might be able to trade quite favorably for things that would be tedious for them to mine, such as cobblestone or wood, and get things like redstone and iron in return.

Step 3: Cobblestone Generator

This is the first step actually playing the game. In your chest, you will find two ice blocks and one lava bucket. Make a square in the dirt, place the ice blocks diagonally and break them. Voila! Infinite water blocks.

*note Cut down the tree and collect the saplings. Re-plant the saplings immediately and always save them, you will need them later for fuel and building materials.

Next, dig up a four-block long trench and dig one more down on the 3^rd block, place the water on the 4^th block and lava on the 1^st block in the trench (in that order). You will see cobblestone made from the process.

This is the simplest cobblestone generator and you can use it to create as much building materials as you would need.

Step 4: Pave with Half-Blocks

From that cobblestone, make slabs. Every pathway, every open area, every unlit place on your island will need to be made with slabs so that mobs don’t appear. This way you won’t have a creeper destroy what took hours for you to collect in a single explosion.

Also, it will lower the productivity of your XP farm, which is the real shame in all of this.

Step 5: Plant the Saplings

One tree will drop at least one sapling, which in turn will make one more tree. But, there is a 5% chance for each block of leaves to drop saplings as well, doubling your productions.

For a manual tree farm, have six slabs between two dirt blocks and plant a sapling on each of the dirt blocks. This way you can farm all of your trees periodically and never run out of fuel or building material.

Step 6: Start Making Farms

With wood and cobblestone in hand, you can start making basic mechanics farms. The easiest one is the XP farm that uses water, trap doors, and fall damage to kill mobs, in turn giving you their loot and XP.

This loot will also be your first source or iron.

Optional: Get Obsidian

Once you have exhausted the Overworld mobs and mechanics, it’s time to go to the Nether. But, for that you will need three things. First will be in the few block of gravel you will find inside your island, and that is fling. The second is steel from zombies falling in your XP farm.

Last is obsidian. This one used to be impossible without server assistance, but with 1.20 it became possible in Minecraft Skyblock as well. You will need to make a village and attract a wandering trader to your island to buy pointed dripstone, but with that and a cauldron you can make more lava.

Pour water over the lava and you will have obsidian, mine it with a diamond pickaxe (purchased from the villagers) and you can finally make your obsidian gate.

Step 7: Profit!

If you are playing single-player or vanilla this will be the point where you can collect your resources and start builing your magnum opus, the megaproject you have imagined from the start.

On servers though, this is where you start making bank. With all of the gold you can farm and trade, you can slowly start rebuilding the Overworld one dirt block at the time.

Final Words

Personally, Skyblock is one of my favorite game modes. It requires planning and care, and you can only get jumped by mobs if you are not careful, so it is relatively peaceful.

If you want to discuss more about it, join our Discord and share your experiences, or invite us to your island!

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