One of the best things about Minecraft is that you can play it anyway you want. Some people just want to build. Others want to explore. Some want to do everything. Some look at tutorials and guides proactively. Others play organically–looking at guides only when problems arise and they want to progress.

Organically is the way I've played Survival Mode, which likely has resulted in some missteps or doing things "out of order", in terms of efficiency, but has also been an exciting experience in discovery and problem-solving. I'm curious how progress unfolded for those of you who also played organically.

For me, this is how Minecraft unfolded naturally as I played it, with progression being stimulated as I realized a need to do something else.

1. Shelter: My initial primary goal was to explore, so as to find the perfect place to build my home. But, as I kept dying from lack of basic supplies like weapons, food, and a bed, I shifted to making a basic shelter first out of wood, and eating by punching animals to death.

2. Mining: Fed up with wooden tools and inspired by the game's name, I created a mine near my shelter and began accumulating cobblestone, coal, and a bit of iron. I began storing them and building better tools.

3. Farming and Husbandry: After realizing I was ravaging the environment around my shelter, I looked up a guide and discovered farming. I created a small farm for wheat, carrots, and potatoes, and then lured some sheep, pigs, cows, and chickens into some small pens where I killed them for resources and bred them to maintain their population. I also realized I could plant saplings to regrow trees.

4. Exploring: With a steady supply of food and essential crafted items like a bed and better tools, I finally returned to my original goal of exploration to find an ideal spot to build my house. Wanting to track my journey led me to a tutorial online where I learned about maps. I added a sugar cane farm to make paper, crafted a map, loaded up on supplies, and began walking in every direction till I filled up the map. It was during this journey that I discovered other biomes and villages, the latter of which I had no idea were in the game and which blew me away when I first saw it on the horizon and even more so when I met the NPCs that populated it.

5. Building: After deciding on a neat location on a hill over a two-sided cave near a river, I began building my dream house, which often had me stopping to gather more wood and cobblestone. This is also when I discovered sand could be smelted into glass. Near the water, I also discovered fishing and boating, and I continued to add additions to my house.

6. Transport: Tired of traversing on foot between my house and original shelter, farm, and mine, I finally built a railroad, connecting my mine to my house, and leading all the way to a desert village I had previously discovered. I put in a Redstone-powered T-junction train station too.

7. The Nether: At this point in the game I encountered two major problems: 1. obtaining resources from plants and animals was too time- and labor-intensive, 2. my resource horde was a disorganized mess. I found the solution for both of these problems online: automation via Redstone. I began looking up guides for automatic farms and automatic item sorters, only to discover that I did not have some of the necessary resources, such as Nether Quartz to build Redstone comparators. It was time to enter The Nether. I built and passed through the portal: I was in awe. The scenery was so different. Ghasts rained fireballs on me. My portal went out. I was unprepared. I died, over and over and over. It was like The First Night all over again. Eventually, I was able to build a shelter around my portal in the Nether. Then I began exploring, joyous at the new resources I was discovering like Netherrack, Glowstone, Nether Quartz, Soul Sand, and Nether Wart. I enjoyed transporting these alien resources back into the Overworld and was more amazed than ever at the sense of wonderment Minecraft provides.

8. Contraptions: Having obtained the resources to make advanced Redstone devices, I sought out guides online to build automatic farms, working for the first time with pistons, sticky pistons, and comparators. I also built other automatic farms that don’t require Redstone (like cactus farms and sapling collectors), wondering why I took so long for me to discover these time-saving contraptions!

9. Next Steps?: My next steps will be to implement automated item transporters, elevators, and sorters. I also know there are a lot of other neat things to do, like slaying the Ender Dragon and The Wither (things I unfortunately learned about online trying to find guides for other things), which I am excited to pursue. There also seem to be a slew of other contraptions (like mob farms) or activities (like decorating my home, temple hunting, village colonizing, potion brewing, enchanting, etc.) that I currently know little to nothing about but which I look forward to checking out in the future.

How did Minecraft unfold for you? Are there any other vital parts of Minecraft I should pursue (I'm aware that mods and servers are a thing and they look awesome, but for now I'm just focusing on vanilla Minecraft)?