The user controls the player in the world. When the user starts a game, the player is placed in an environment generated by a random or set seed, with an empty inventory. If the bonus chest option is activated, a chest containing basic things will appear near the player. The player has a health bar with 10 hearts and can be wounded by falls, suffocation, drowning, fire, lava, lightning, cacti, sweet berry bushes, magma blocks, falling into the Void, hitting another entity with thorns armor, splash potions, falling anvils, and being hit by mobs and other players. Armor and Resistance potions can reduce health damage, and certain potions can restore health. When the difficulty is set to Peaceful, health regenerates on its own. Hunger is also a factor if the difficulty is not set to Peaceful, diminishing over time and even faster if sprinting, jumping, or swimming. Food restores the hunger level; however, eating decaying flesh and raw chicken has a risk of giving the player a hungry effect. Depending on the difficulty level, starving depletes a player's health and may possibly kill the player.
A player's skin can be changed on Minecraft.net's profile page, in the Minecraft Launcher in Java Edition, and in the pause or main menus in Bedrock Edition.
Minecraft's environment is a three-dimensional grid of cubes, with each cube occupied by a different sort of block, not all of which are necessarily cubic. Natural blocks such as grass, stone, and ores are generated at random around the planet. There are also blocks that players can create, such as a crafting table and a furnace. Resources can be removed from blocks by hand or with tools. Some of these resources are just bricks in the player's inventory that can be moved around, while others are utilized as material to make additional blocks or tools. Others are completely useless. Some blocks, including as bedrock, end portal frames, command blocks, nether and end portals, barriers, and air, cannot be broken using regular survival methods.
Mining is one of the most important components of Minecraft, as it is used to harvest ore and other commodities from beneath the map's surface. Coal, iron, gold, redstone, diamond, lapis lazuli, copper, and emerald are among the ores. Mining can entail digging a hole from the surface or entering a cave. Because mineshafts and ravines are frequently rich in ores, they produce extra places that may hold minerals.