Starting a new survival world in Minecraft is genuinely one of the hardest things in the entire game for many people. You have no resources at your disposal, very little defense, and are incredibly limited in your options until you get your footing. The best way to do this is by building a decent-sized starter house complete with everything you need — a sort of base of operations, if you will.

If you’re like me, however, you struggle to come up with anything more than a basic house with a stepped roof. Houses aren’t exactly fun to look at! Naturally, the best thing to do is look to others for inspiration or use their tutorials to make exactly what they came up with. In this Minecraft starter home ideas guide, we highlight 13 build guides from a number of prominent YouTubers for your survival world ideas.

13 Minecraft Starter Home Ideas

Since everyone has different requirements for their starter homes, we’re going to offer a plethora of options. Some are simple house builds with nothing else attached. Others include dedicated farming areas and spots for you to raise animals.

Sheep’s Waterside Farm

I’ve always felt a bit weird building next to water without incorporating the fact that the location would undoubtedly have some puddles and ponds. Sheep’s waterside farm has a nice ground-level farm with a few useful areas outside, while most of the meaningful parts are upstairs and safely enclosed away from any sharpshooting skeletons. I’m particularly fond of the balcony which overlooks the water.

The good news is everything is mostly made out of wood. Short of a few functional objects like the enchanting table, you can easily build this with whatever wood is plentiful around you. The things that aren’t easy to obtain, like sea pickles, can be skipped without any noticeable impact on the functionality or look.

Main Materials List

For all of these builds, we’ll include a list of the main materials you’ll use, highlighting all of the blocks you’ll need 50 or more of. It’s meant to give you an idea as to how much effort material-gathering will take, rather than being an all-encompassing list of every single thing you need. There will be decoration blocks that may be harder to obtain, but that won’t change whether you are able to physically create the building or not.

233 Oak Logs
151 Birch Planks
121 Oak Planks
96 Oak Stairs
89 Birch Stairs
89 Oak Fences

Croissant Cat’s Cozy Starter House

While this tutorial uses Mizuno’s 16 Craft Resource Pack, it’s not necessary to still achieve the same overall build and feel. This one mostly uses Dark Oak, Granite, and White Terracotta. As a result, it’s not necessarily something you want to build on day one, but it’s a good house to strive for over your first dozen or so hours. Once you’re done, just throw a farm in the backyard and you’re all set!

Main Materials List

262 Dark Oak Stairs
218 Granite
121 White Terracotta
50 Dark Oak Slabs

Mythical Sausage’s Tower Home

This build may look daunting at first glance, but it’s generally an accessible build. You mostly need two types of wood. Mythical Sausage uses oak and spruce, though you can use whichever combination you’d like. The stone is predominantly Deepslate, tuff, cobblestone, and a limited amount of brick. That may seem intimidating if you haven’t played Minecraft in a bit, but Deepslate materials are plentiful underground, and you shouldn’t have trouble getting more than enough.

Main Materials List

Oak
Spruce
Cobbled Deepslate
Deepslate Bricks
Tuff
Cobblestone
Andesite
Granite

Jolee’s Starter Cottage with Greenhouse

How about we move that farm inside? Jolee’s cottage is not only super cozy, but it also puts that farming area inside a nice, glass-enclosed greenhouse so that you never need to step outside until you’re ready to leave. According to Jolee, building this entire thing should be possible within four to six hours of starting a new world, which doesn’t sound awful considering how nice it looks. If you have all the materials, the build time is only an hour or two — most of the work comes from preparation, to be honest.

Main Materials List

353 Stripped Birch Logs
314 Wood Planks
234 Glass Blocks
180 Spruce Stairs
169 Spruce Planks
134 Stripped Spruce Logs
128 Oak Leaves
123 Spruce Trapdoors
114 Spruce Slabs
90 Stone Brick Stairs
85 Campfires
81 Oak Trapdoors
78 Oak Fences
64 Gravel
52 Lanterns
50 Oak Slabs

IrieGenie’s Raised Farm House

If you somehow don’t get tired of animal noises and are content with letting them live right next to your house, IrieGenie has a great build for you. The entire thing is almost entirely made out of different types of wood, making material-gathering a super simple process. This build even comes with a space for sugarcane and pumpkins! Make sure to turn on the subtitles for English captions on the video.

Main Materials List

416 Birch Planks
278 Oak Logs
257 Oak Fences
240 Stripped Oak Logs
184 Birch Stairs
172 Spruce Stairs
151 Spruce Slabs
121 Stripped Spruce Logs
96 Spruce Trapdoors
62 Oak Planks

IrieGenie’s Spacious Outdoors Base

If you’d prefer something with a bit more outdoor space, this spacious outdoor base from IrieGenie is arguably even cuter. Being able to do most things outside so that I don’t have to spend my every waking moment closing doors behind me is absolutely welcome. One thing this build has a lot of, however, is future-proof working areas. There’s a full enchanting area, 12 furnaces, five brewing stands, and just about everything you will need for the first 50 hours. Again, make sure to turn on the subtitles for English captions!

Main Materials List

317 Birch Planks
312 Stripped Spruce Logs
298 Oak Fences
209 Stripped Oak Logs
189 Spruce Slabs
164 Oak Stairs
136 Oak Planks
123 Campfires
119 Oak Leaves
106 Spruce Fences
99 Birch Slabs
89 Stone Brick Stairs
68 Spruce Trapdoors
53 Stone Bricks

Sheep’s Large Oak Base

Let me start off by saying I’ve built this in survival mode. It is by no means an easy build and will task you with chopping down an entire forest for the supplies. A lot of the work is done floating on stilts as well, meaning any dimension errors you make aren’t super easy to fix. This one took me a good ten hours to build, but if you want a giant space with room to expand, give it a shot.

Main Materials List

863 Oak Planks
393 Oak Stairs
334 Oak Fences
210 Dirt
190 Oak Logs
101 Oak Leaves
73 Oak Slabs

Kelpie’s Cottagecore Fairy Starter House

Honestly, this house is tiny. There’s not a lot of room inside, which means each and every wall is either highly decorated or taken up by things like chests, furnaces, and other useful items. If you spend more time out and about and just want something super cozy to come home to, this is a good pick.

Main Materials List

214 Spruce Stairs
181 Stone Bricks
164 Cobblestone
59 Oak Planks

Dio Rods’ Taiga Starter House

I feel like I so very rarely see people choose to live in the Taiga biome. Not sure what it is about it, but very few creators opt into it. Dio Rods has done super well with this build. In particular, I think having the logs tied down with rails is a ridiculously cool detail. Particularly useful is how little of each type of material this house needs. While there’s a good variety, at the very least, you don’t need a ton of items to get the job done.

Main Materials List

117 Spruce Slabs
59 Cobblestone
57 Spruce Planks

SheraNom’s Two-Player Survival House

Playing with a friend or family member? SheraNom has put together this build specifically for that purpose. While you won’t be instructed on how to decorate the inside, Shera does an incredible job of teaching you the various ways to decorate the exterior of buildings. That’s something you can easily take forward into your own builds.

Main Materials List

250 Stripped Oak Wood
144 Spruce Stairs
57 Cobbled Deepslate
55 Cobbled Deepslate Stairs

Julios’ Desert Survival Base

That’s probably enough forest cottage bases, eh? What if you’re starting out in the desert? I’m particularly fond of Julios’ build here because it comes together to be more than just a sandstone façade with nice wood accents. I mean, look at that thumbnail! I want to live there.

Main Materials List

320 Sand
320 Spruce Slabs
240 Spruce Planks
144 Sandstone
80 Sandstone Slabs
64 Leaf Blocks

Dio Rods’ Mountainside Starter Home

There’s always a Minecraft player out there who wants to live in the mountains and chisel their way into the mountainside as a base. Dio Rods has another super useful tutorial in which they build a home on the side of the mountain with a few external windows and alcoves. There’s even a small farm right by the entrance!

Main Materials List

79 Spruce Trapdoors
51 Stone Stairs
Various small amounts of Cobblestone and stone materials

Mr Mirror’s Jungle Tree House

One last different build: a treehouse! When in the jungle, why not live among the canopy? This is a slightly harder build simply because of the fact that you’re in the air, so a lot of folks report having issues getting the stairs to behave.

Main Materials List

98 Jungle Stairs
84 Jungle Planks
71 Jungle Slabs
60 Jungle Logs
55 Jungle Trapdoors

And that’s all 13 Minecraft starter home builds! Have recommendations that you loved? Link them in the comments below!

13 Starter House Ideas Your Minecraft Survival World

Put the dirt away.

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