Your Minecraft save--whether it's on your hard drive, a Minecraft Realm, or a dedicated server--is your world, and you get to live in it. That means that you can do whatever you want. But freedom can be intimidating. When you can do anything, how do you decide what to do? Sure, you could mine, explore, or build a starter house, but there's so much more out there. You can build anything you can put your mind to, and there are quite literally a million Minecraft tutorials out there to get you there. But where do you start? We're going to offer up a few Minecraft build ideas to think about once you have a bed and a mine to work with.

One thing to keep in mind as you look at some of these ideas is that while Minecraft's Java and Bedrock versions are more similar than ever, there are still some differences. If you're playing on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, or Mobile, you're definitely playing Minecraft on Bedrock. If you're playing on Windows or Linux, though, you'll want to check which version you're using. We have a guide on how to choose which version of Minecraft is best for you.

With that said, let's dive in.

Ease the grind with simple farms

Minecraft is a game of systems on systems on systems. You need to eat to keep your hunger bar full, and you need to keep your hunger bar full to keep your heart bar regenerating. You need food to eat, and you need to find food to have it available. And that's barely the start. You have tools to maintain, storage to sort, and things to build. Everything in Minecraft requires materials, and materials have to be found and acquired.

Or you can make a farm.

For example, iron is one of the most consistently useful materials in Minecraft. If you know that having a certain number of villagers will automatically generate an Iron Golem, and you know that an Iron Golem drops 3-5 iron ingots, you're already on your way to making a farm that generates piles and piles of iron every hour.

Some farms can become incredibly large and complex, while others are compact and can be built in just a few minutes.

Build a lava farm

Coal is a great source of fuel and all, but there's a lot of stuff to cook in Minecraft, and coal is much better suited to making torches and lanterns--especially when an infinite fuel source is within reach. A Lava farm requires little more than some cobblestone, dripstone, and iron, and you can find all of that with basic tools.

The short version is that you build some cauldrons and buckets, mount the cobblestone above the cauldrons and the dripstone in between, and then put the lava above. The lava will drip down into the cauldrons, continuously refilling. There are still yet more efficient fuel sources, but this one is endlessly renewable and easy to make in the game's early hours.

Build a meat farm

A meat farm sounds pretty macabre, but we promised you macabre, and here it is. The farm above is simple to build and, again, uses resources that you can access early in the game. You can use cows, but there are farms for chickens, hoglins, and other Minecraft entities that drop food items. Yeah, it's not exactly like the idyllic farms of our imagination, but it also means that you'll never have to worry about food again.

Record your accomplishments with a map room

The world of Minecraft is nearly endless, and full of beautiful sights and useful resources. If you keep a map in hand as you explore, you'll reveal more and more of your personal world. And sure, you could put those maps into a treasure chest, but with a wall and a handful of picture frames, you can turn all that time you spent exploring into a piece of art and a reminder of what you've done in your Minecraft world.

Flesh out your world with a trading hall

Getting into the specifics of villager breeding in Minecraft is a bit bigger than we have room for in this article, but with the right job blocks you can create an army of villagers ready to trade for diamond armor and incredibly useful enchantment books. You could just stuff them all into a room corralled off with fences, and that'll get the job done. But if you want to make the experience of trading with them feel a bit more like interacting with a merchant and a bit less like checking boxes on a spreadsheet, build a trading hall for your enterprising villagers. Decorate the section with your armor sellers with framed pieces of armor, an anvil, and a grindstone. Put your booksellers among rows and rows of bookshelves.

Build gorgeous, unnecessary things!

Not everything in Minecraft has to be functional. There are hundreds of blocks that you can build from dozens of materials, and a creative eye can turn those materials on their head to make them look fresh.

For example, it's not too hard to build a gorgeous fantasy garden with a few stacks of moss, mushrooms, podzol, and bonemeal. A handful of cherry tree saplings and flowers and a few buckets of water are all that stand between you and a relaxing springtime garden.

But that's just the start. All you need to start a village is two villagers, a bunch of beds, and some bread. Build a whole community of villagers not to trade with but just to make your little corner of the world feel more lively. But fence the whole thing in and light it up like Christmas in Las Vegas so that zombies don't spawn and turn all your villagers into the walking dead.

Or maybe instead of putting your enchantment table in a 10x10 room in your house, build a whole wizard tower--use copper and deepslate to make it look metal, or mossy cobblestone and wood to make it cozy and ancient. Build an airship over your city. Sure, it can't move, but it gives your world a feeling of verticality and movement all the same. A big Man o' War-sized boat off the coast of your town can have the same effect.

Welcome friends with a community center

If you're planning to invite your friends to play on your server, build a community center near the spawn point. It doesn't have to be anything special--a well-lit place with beds, some basic food and wooden tools and weapons. Just enough to get players through that first scary night so that they can venture out on their own as soon as possible.

Or it can be a one-stop shop for all those basic needs, including the farms we mentioned above, an enchantment table, a workshop, and whatever else. Just make sure you're not discouraging your players from finding their own way in the world.