Tutorial:Flat survival

This tutorial is applicable only in Bedrock Edition.

This tutorial page is a work in progress.

Please help expand and improve it. The talk page may contain suggestions.
Note: Large page rework with more detailed descriptions

Flat survival beyond mere subsistence is particularly challenging in Bedrock Edition because there are no structures and no materials to start with except for the block layers and mobs of the flat world. Java Edition players have several options for superflat worlds, but can simulate the flat world in Bedrock Edition for a unique extreme challenge.

Equivalent challenge in Java Edition

Because structures are absent in flat worlds in Bedrock Edition, this tutorial is written from that perspective, but most of the information here applies to Java Edition also.

The flat world in Bedrock Edition has no structures, just the layers of blocks generated by the selected flat world preset. The Java Edition "Classic Flat" world has villages by default. For a real challenge in Java Edition, turn off structure generation in the world generation option.

World presets

Because of the differences of available blocks between the presets, each type of flat world requires a different approach.

There are currently 8 different presets you can play on, with each having its advantages and/or disadvantages. The variety in available resources (especially stone), biomes, and elevations changes gameplay dramatically across presets.

Classic Flat

A flat world consisting of one layer of grass blocks and two layers of dirt, followed by bedrock. Classic Flat uses the plains biome, allowing passive and hostile mobs to spawn, which are essential for resources.

Tunneler's Dream

This preset contains a windswept hills biome, significantly higher elevations, and access to stone.

Water World

This preset features an ocean biome, significant amounts of water, and access to stone, deepslate, and gravel. Although there are exclusive aquatic mobs, areas for spawning common hostile mobs must be manually created, and common passive mobs do not spawn at all. A platform above the water for mob spawning and a base can be created using the dirt below the gravel on the ocean floor. Obtaining all the dirt is fairly easy because you can die and respawn at the ocean floor, and create an air pocket below the ground. This is the only preset impossible to beat on Hardcore mode.

Overworld

This preset is similar to the Classic Flat preset, except for the fact that stone is available.

Snowy Kingdom

This preset features a snowy plains biome, snow, and stone. Most of the common mobs (both passive and hostile) do not spawn, replaced by rabbits, polar bears, and strays. Furthermore, water cannot be obtained due to the lack of rain.

Bottomless Pit

This preset is similar to the Classic Flat preset, except for the presence of cobblestone and the lack of bedrock. The cobblestone can be mined for resources or to create access to the void.

Desert

This preset features a desert biome mostly consisting of sand and sandstone. The challenge is harder because no trees can be grown, making wood only available by buying moss blocks from wandering traders. On top of that, common passive mobs do not spawn, replaced by rabbits and camels. The desert biome also spawns husks, which worsen the already significant problem of hunger. Furthermore, water cannot be obtained due to the lack of rain.

Redstone Ready

This preset is similar to the Desert preset, except there is no sand and a lot more sandstone. Mobs still spawn here, but it is a lot harder to obtain mob loot because you can't create a mob grinder.

The Void

This section describes content that is currently in development for Bedrock Edition.

This content has appeared in development versions for Bedrock Edition 1.21.100, but the full update adding it has not been released yet.
Note: The Void preset is already available in Java Edition.

This preset features a 33x33 square stone platform with a single block of cobblestone in the middle, and an empty void filling the rest of the world. Because the biome in which the platform generates is plains, hostile mobs can spawn here, allowing for an extremely hard challenge when starting with no resources. In Java Edition, this preset uses a unique biome without mob spawning, making survival in this preset impossible without cheats.

Cheats

Achievements are disabled in flat survival, so it does not matter if you start out in Survival, or start out in Creative and switch to Survival. Starting out in Creative, you can set yourself up for the desired level of challenge by giving yourself a few items critical to survival.

The other approach is to avoid any cheats and enable Survival in the world creation. You can also enable the bonus chest for some quick resources, but you can also start without any items for a harder challenge.

You can also try to survive on a flat world in Hardcore mode. This automatically disables all cheats and the bonus chest, and it is especially hard during the first part of the game, where you need to kill a lot of mobs with your fist.

Some cheats

Players attempting a flat survival game often begin by giving themselves some minimal amount of resources at the start of the game, just enough to keep things challenging:

Saplings are needed for wood. Oak and dark oak also provide apples, which can be eaten or saved for the possibility of curing a zombie villager much later.
- In the "Desert", "Redstone Ready", and "The Void" presets, dirt for growing trees is absent, but this can be solved by buying moss blocks from a wandering trader.
A lava bucket allows the player to access stone in presets that do not already have it, assuming the player already has access to water. Additionally, a lava bucket is also your key to entering the Nether once you get pointed dripstone from a wandering trader to create more lava in a cauldron, for making obsidian for a Nether portal.
A water bucket is necessary in presets without rain, including "Snowy Kingdom", "Desert", and "Redstone Ready". One water bucket is enough to make an infinite water source using a cauldron. For a greater challenge, remove the bucket and start with just one block of water in the world.
For a greater challenge, you can start with just a log and two apples. You can then collect enough iron ingots from killing zombies to make a water bucket and a cauldron.
An end portal allows access to the End in late-game to beat the ender dragon and obtain an elytra. For the biggest challenge, make the portal frame without any eyes filled in. You can also create a behavior pack to randomly generate end portals throughout the world. This can be done using a structure_template_feature and an end portal structure file created with a structure block.

These are cheats, but because you can't earn achievements anyway in flat survival, do whatever you think would provide the most fun challenge.

No cheats

Starting the world with no cheats makes the challenge harder, and makes it impossible access the Nether or the End.

Bonus chest

Without buffing up your resources in Creative first, create the world with a bonus chest in Survival mode. Do not switch to Creative mode. Play until you die or reach your goal, such as creating a village or making a base.

Your bonus chest contains some resources, and you have to work from this to survive and gain more resources.

At a minimum, your bonus chest should contain a sapling in Bedrock Edition. Saplings don't appear in Java Edition bonus chests, so you must have the bare minimum of 4 planks or a log and importantly at least 2 apples to make golden apples for getting villagers later.

Saplings in order of preference:

Oak is easily sustainable and expandable into forests, and produces apples, crucial for getting villagers later.
Spruce provides a lot of wood and drops more saplings because it has more leaves than dark oak, but it doesn't drop apples.
Dark oak requires a minimum of four saplings to grow a tree. Dark oak trees also produces apples and a lot of wood, but there is a risk of not dropping enough saplings for another tree, which effectively ends your game.
Acacia is as sustainable as oak, producing about the same amount of wood and saplings, but doesn't produce apples and hard to mine down.
Birch provides the least amount of wood on the average, but it's common to get more than one sapling from a birch tree, so it's easy to create a birch forest. But birch doesn't produces apples.
Jungle has the greatest risk of not dropping enough saplings for another tree, although it does provide a good quantity of wood like spruce.

If you get saplings for trees that don't drop apples, make sure to have at least 2 apples in your bonus chest.

Birch and oak grown near flowers can produce bee nests, which can be harvested once you get a campfire from a fisherman villager.

You can't get a hoe in a bonus chest but you can craft one yourself.

No bonus chest

Without a bonus chest, you need to obtain saplings or moss blocks from wandering traders. This is extremely hard, because it is almost impossible to get items the trader buys. Hay bales and fermented spider eyes are inaccessible before trading, but all other items are available using mob loot. To get mob loot as easily as possible, you need to make a simple mob grinder using dirt.

Emeralds can also be obtained directly from foxes in the Snowy Kingdom preset.

Building

From starting to mid-game, your only building material is dirt. After you grow and harvest some wood, your priorities are:

A wooden hoe for making farmland.
Wooden swords for killing mobs more efficiently
A bed for sleeping during some nights without rain to prevent phantoms from spawning (rain makes farmland hydrated which helps your crops grow.)
Wooden shovels for mining dirt and making dirt paths (which prevent slimes from spawning.)
Fences and a few fence gates for animal farms, but you can use a hole in the ground.
Trapdoors to make mob traps and grinders.

Wooden tools (or stone tools) are the best you can expect to have for a long time. When you are able to get a toolsmith villager much later in the game, you can trade for better tools.

Creepers and slimes are everywhere during the day and night. You cannot prevent them from spawning, but you can use shovels to turn the area around your home base to dirt path blocks and build a fence around it to prevent them from spawning or entering your area. Until this is done, you are likely to get many craters in the ground from creeper explosions.

Creepers have an annoying tendency to destroy your home base, so don't do anything too fancy until you have a protected area to build in. A simple shelter with a crafting table and a chest are sufficient to start with. Once you have fenced in and spawn-proofed an area of reasonable size, you can make a better shelter and a bed.

Slimes are annoying. If you have a way to identify slime chunks, then you can spend some time and resources converting these to dirt paths to prevent slimes from spawning near your base, as well as positioning your base away from slime chunks. Otherwise, you can fence in your area and convert the surface to dirt paths.

Feeding yourself

Cooking your food is not an option during the earlier stages of the game. To cook food, you need to succeed in the most difficult task: starting a village. Then you can trade with a fisherman villager for a campfire. A furnace isn't possible because stone is unavailable without cheats.

You can farm crops from seeds and roots (carrots or potatoes) found in your bonus chest. Grow enough of these to breed animals as appropriate. Chickens like wheat seeds harvested from wheat, cows and sheep like wheat, and pigs like carrots, potatoes, or beetroots.

Killing skeletons gives you bones, which you can craft into bone meal. Applying bone meal to the grass blocks all around you causes flowers and grass to grow. Breaking the grass can give you seeds which you can use to grow wheat and breed animals.

Zombies drop rotten flesh, which can be eaten in emergencies. They also have a small chance to drop a carrot or potato, which can be used to breed pigs. Pigs are necessary in the long journey to getting a villager.

You need a hoe to convert grass or dirt blocks into farmland. Plant your crops, although growth is slow until the farmland is hydrated, and for that you must wait for rain. Alternatively, you can bone meal the crops to speed up their growth significantly.

Survival goals

There are several points at which you may decide you've had enough of this flat survival.

The first respectable goal is simply get to the point where you can feed yourself indefinitely, defend yourself, and survive. This is a hand-to-mouth existence. Once you accomplish this, you are well prepared for island survival or more challenging desert survival games.

A good second goal is to create an infinite water source, from which you can feed yourself with fish, create larger bodies of water for fishing up enchanted loot, and create drowned farms. This goal itself involves a lot of hard work, including the "mega-project" of making a mob farm without water (see below).

An extremely challenging goal is to create a village. Doing this requires accomplishing a difficult and lengthy chain of dependent tasks described in the following sections, as well as luck.

Waterless mob farm

There are two basic techniques to farm mobs without using water. But remember that zombies need to be killed by player to drop iron ingots.

The simplest is a dig in the ground, 2 blocks deep, generally surrounding your home base. The moat is lined with open trapdoors, which hostile mobs view as solid blocks even when they are open. When they pathfind to you, they fall into the moat, then you can kill them with your sword or fist.

[OLD NEEDS TESTING] A more labor-intensive way, but with greater yield after the initial effort, is to make an aerial farm. Mobs drop down from a spawning platform, taking enough fall damage that they can be killed in one punch. You don't want them to die by falling, because zombies drop iron ingots only if killed by the player.

If you're in Bedrock Edition, make sure your simulation distance is set to 4 (minimum). This causes mobs to despawn when they are more than 44 blocks away from you.
Build a pillar with ladders 21 blocks high. Or build a staircase out of blocks (such as slabs) that mobs cannot spawn on. 21 blocks of falling distance is required to inflict maximum fall damage on mobs without killing them.
At 20 blocks of height, build a platform using dirt and open trapdoors. You can use any pattern of dirt and trapdoors in approximately equal proportions. As long as you avoid creating 3×3 areas in your platform, you prevent spiders from spawning (and by this time you have likely killed enough spiders for all the string you could ever need). It doesn't have to be a large platform; 10×10 or 16×16 or any reasonable size. The bigger the platform, the larger chance it has to spawn mobs.
Fence off the area below the platform into which mobs fall from above. Leave a gap in the corner.
Use a shovel to convert the surrounding land to dirt path blocks. At simulation distance 4, you need to clear at least 44 blocks from all around the fenced-off area, so that mobs can spawn only on the platform. Preferably clear more blocks because the mob spawning radius is centered on you, and you cannot always be at the center of the farm. This forces all mobs to spawn on the platform.

This farm works only at night unless you spend extra time building a large roof over the platform, overhanging the edge by 7 blocks, and made from blocks that mobs cannot spawn on (such as wooden stairs, slabs, or dirt path blocks). The advantage to night-time-only operation is that you can focus your day on survival activities: feeding yourself, breeding livestock, harvesting wood to make more tools, and so on.

Stand a small distance from the landing area (so that you are 24 blocks from the platform, which is the minimum spawn radius) and wait for mobs to fall, then run into the landing area to kill them with one punch each. If the mob is wearing armor, or if it's a witch, you may need your wooden sword because these mobs still have multiple health points after falling.

Getting unlimited water

Once you have a steady supply of wood and have become adept at killing zombies in your mob farm, you can focus on your next goal: getting water.

As you kill zombies, you slowly collect iron ingots. Your top priority is to create a cauldron, which requires 7 ingots.

As soon as you get 7 ingots, craft a cauldron and put it down somewhere exposed to the sky, so that it can fill up with water the next time it rains.

Get three more ingots to craft a bucket. Once you have a bucket, use it to pick up the water from the cauldron and transfer this water to a hole in the ground to create a water source block. You need more water to make an infinite water source. There are two ways to get more water:

Wait for another rain.
Use a single glass bottle (dropped from a witch) on your source water block in the ground to fill the bottle. Transfer the water to the cauldron. Do this three times to fill the cauldron. The water source block on the ground is unaffected and you end up with a cauldron full of water again.

2×2 water spawner (every corner is renewable)

Once you have a water bucket and a cauldron full of water at the same time, you can make an infinite water source to get unlimited water source blocks. The most convenient configuration is a 2×2 hole in the ground, one block deep. Use the bucket to place water in two diagonally-opposite corners of this hole to create four water source blocks, one in each corner. If two water source blocks flow into an empty space, another source block is created. A 2×2 hole lets you remove water from any corner, which gets replaced immediately. You can also make a 1×3 straight trench or a 2×2 L-shaped trench, but then only the middle block can be removed. If you remove one of the end blocks, you can't get more water.

Once you have your water production hole, take water from it to produce a pond for fishing, using a fishing rod that you craft from sticks and string obtained from spiders you killed.

You can fish from a location above the pond where mobs cannot bother you, or fish from a boat. If you make the pond 2 blocks deep, and your fishing rod's bobber has water 2 blocks deep for horizontal distance 2 blocks around it, you also have a chance to fish up other items, like bowls for making stew if you have beetroots or both red and brown mushrooms, saddles for taming horses and donkeys, and even enchanted fishing rods.

Since Bedrock Edition 1.21.70 you can sell water buckets and water bottles to wandering traders to get emeralds.

Congratulations! You now have an easy, unlimited supply of food and additional resources. This is a significant milestone on the way to a comfortable life. If you plan to get villagers, you can start planning and constructing some village buildings, although getting a villager is a huge next step, even more difficult than what you've just lived through to get to this point.

Creating a village

Once you have unlimited water available, you can work on creating a village, which requires villagers. There is a large cascade of dependencies here:

To get a villager, you need to cure a zombie villager.
To cure a zombie villager, you need a golden apple and a splash potion of Weakness. You cannot obtain the potion; it must be thrown by a witch.
To get a golden apple, you need 8 gold ingots.
To get gold ingots, you need to kill zombified piglins, which sometimes drop ingots.
To get zombified piglins, lightning must strike near pigs.
To get lightning to strike near a bunch of pigs, you need a lightning rod.
A lightning rod requires copper ingots.
Copper ingots require you to kill drowned, which sometimes drop ingots.
Drowned are created from zombies drowning in water you created.

The success of some of these steps depends strongly on luck:

Drowned rarely drop copper ingots. You need to kill a few of them (about 27).
Once you get a lightning rod, you may have to wait a long time for a thunderstorm.
Zombified piglins only rarely drop gold ingots. And when you attack one of them, they attack you all at once. If you are fighting a crowd of them, and it takes more than 5 minutes to clear them out, some ingots they drop may despawn. You likely need at least 200 zombified piglins to get the 16 gold ingots required to make two golden apples.
Zombie villagers and witches are uncommon spawns. If they do spawn, you need to trap them in boats near enough to one another that the witch can hit the zombie villager with the splash potion of Weakness.
- This is really tricky, since the mobs will despawn if you get 32 or more blocks away. It helps to find a zombie villager who can pick up items and give it an item.
- Also, witches throw potions of Weakness only rarely and only when the player is nearby. So you will probably get poisoned a lot, and the witch can easily kill you with a potion of Harming.

If, after working through all this and getting lucky enough, you may find yourself with two villagers. You can breed them to get more.

Protect your villagers!

Surround them (or the village you build for them) with a fence to prevent any zombies from attacking them. A hostile mob can come up to the fence but not cross it. Be sure the villagers can never access horizontal surfaces that mobs can spawn on. Dirt path blocks should be everywhere the villagers can be. You can make sleeping huts from dirt and wood, but be sure the roofs and the tops of any roofless walls have no spawnable surfaces; line the tops of walls with wooden stairs, bottom slabs, or dirt path blocks. If you have access to torches or any other light source, you can use those instead.

Getting the most out of your village

Villager professions

Decide what professions your villagers should have. For your first villagers, with the resources you have available, you can craft only five different kinds of job site blocks:

A cauldron (which you already have) is used by a leatherworker.
A composter is used by a farmer.
A barrel is used by a fisherman.
A loom is used by a shepherd.
A smithing table is used by a toolsmith (and requires 2 iron ingots).

Any beds or job site blocks should not be near the villager at first. Put them in your inventory or in a chest (including your cauldron). Your newly-cured villager might be one that wouldn't normally exist because it doesn't match any of those professions (such as an armorer, butcher, cleric, fletcher, stone mason, or weaponsmith). Trade what you can with that villager before giving it a profession.

If you get a nitwit, keep it for breeding.

After you get a few emeralds from trading with villagers, you might be able to obtain sugar cane from a wandering trader. With sugar cane, you can craft paper, from which you can create books and bookshelves, which in turn let you craft two more job site blocks:

A cartography table (not useful in a flat world) is used by a cartographer.
A lectern is used by a librarian.

It is also possible to craft a stonecutter, which is used by a stone mason, by curing a zombie villager who already has the stone mason profession and trading for either polished granite, polished andesite, or polished diorite, any of which can be used to craft a stonecutter. After this, existing stone masons can renew their trades and jobless villagers can become stone masons.

The rest of the job site blocks require stone, but stone isn't available in a flat world without a lava bucket.

Useful trades

Villagers can sell you useful items which are otherwise unobtainable or extremely hard to obtain. They can also have useful trades that let you obtain emeralds easily.

A farmer can sell you great food sources, like golden carrots, bread, and apples. You can also sell them the crops you grow in exchange for emeralds. Farmers can buy wheat, carrots, potatoes, beetroot, melons, and pumpkins.
A fisherman can sell you campfires.
- A campfire is quite useful to you, because you can cook food to make the food more effective, you can use it in place of lava to kill iron golems in an iron farm. Breaking a campfire gives 4 charcoal from which you can make 16 torches for much-needed light. You can use the 4 charcoal from a campfire to make 4 campfires, allowing you to make as many as you want without using the fisherman, as long as you have logs available.
- You can sell items you get from fishing, like cod, salmon, tropical fish, and pufferfish, which is handy for getting rid of junk items.
- You can also sell string and boats.
- The fisherman can also cook fish for you.
A librarian can sell you lanterns, which are slightly better light sources than torches (emitting light level 15 like campfire). They can also sell glass, and enchanted books, which you can use on tools and weapons after you get an anvil.
A shepherd are a source of emeralds. They sell mostly non-essential things like dyed wool, carpets, banners, and beds in colors that are unobtainable or hard to get. They can also sell you shears.
A toolsmith can sell you diamond pickaxes, hoes, shovels, and axes. They are the only reasonable way to obtain diamond tools. You can also get stone and enchanted iron tools from them, and you can sell iron to them, which is handy if you have an iron farm.

Some notes:

If you are on the Desert preset, glass is easy to get.
Campfires, cooked food, and torches are easy to get on presets where stone generates. So the fisherman is only really useful if you need to sell fish or if you're on the Classic Flat.

Wandering traders

You can now obtain emeralds from wandering traders which can be used to purchase useful items. The most accessible trades for this purpose early on are the hay bale (made with 9 wheat which can be grown) and water bottle (from filling glass bottles obtained from witches) trades. If you have access to a furnace and potatoes, you can also make use of the baked potato trade,

There is no penalty for killing it, and no real advantage either. Killing a wandering trader gives you a couple of leads, which you can also get by crafting the string that you likely already have in abundance.

Wandering traders are valuable resources, because they offer items that are normally impossible to get, such as:

Glowstone for an additional light source beyond the four torches you started with
Sugar cane to make paper, which opens the way to making a librarian job site block and librarian villager, which can sell you lanterns for more light
Different color mushrooms that let you to make mushroom stew, because you most likely got only one color of mushroom in your bonus chest
Crop seeds that you may not have had before
Saplings to grow more types of trees than what you already have
A pumpkin (or the seeds to grow a pumpkin), which lets you increase the illumination of a torch from 14 to 15 if you use shears to create a jack o'lantern
Sand or red sand, which you can use to grow cactus if your bonus chest included cactus (and the wandering trader may also sell cactus), which can be used for defense or in mob grinders

Iron golem farming

You have many options for an iron farm in either Bedrock Edition or Java Edition. If you have trapped a villager in a boat, it's easy in a flat world to drag the boat wherever you want using a lead‌, or row it over land, to put each villager exactly where you want it.

In Bedrock Edition, you can have a working village and an iron farm coexist so that you can obtain iron at a decent rate while continuing to trade with villagers (see Tutorials/Iron golem farming § Survival mode build: Iron golem village), but because you have limited illumination, you must make sure your village and sleeping bunker have no spawnable surfaces anywhere inside the fence.

You can use campfires to kill the iron golems. It is a much slower method than using lava but it is the best available in a flat world where lava is unobtainable. Without campfires, you may need to resort to slower or more dangerous methods, such as using the cactus from your bonus chest, or contriving to have a confined skeleton shoot at the golem.

Getting an enchanted set of diamond armor and tools

An armorer can sell diamond armor, but an armorer is not available unless you cheat to have lava. Then you can make cobblestone from lava, make a furnace from cobblestone, make smooth stone with a furnace, and then make a blast furnace as the armorer's job site. If you get an armorer by giving yourself lava, you can trade with the armorer up to the top tier to get a full set of diamond armor.

Otherwise, it is possible (but very hard) to get maxed out diamond armor and tools (except Soul Speed and Swift Sneak).

If you can obtain unenchanted diamond armor, you can collect enough iron for an anvil, which you can use to enchant the armor using enchanted books obtained via fishing. Getting enough iron for an anvil is a major project on its own, obtained either by killing zombies or creating an iron farm.

Battling a raid

Fighting a raid in flat is easier than in a normal world, because the raiders are much easier to find. Here are some tips:

Bring two villagers away from spawn and box them in with a bed. That guarantees that you cannot lose the raid. Because you worked so hard to get a breeding pair of villagers in the first place, you need to preserve a breeding pair in case the other villagers are killed.
Fish until you get a bow with Infinity so you can use one arrow for the entire raid. Make sure the bow has good durability. Alternatively, you can use a Mending bow and bring a few stacks of arrows from a mob grinder.
In the area where you want to do the raid, build a tower up about 15 blocks with ladders to climb up and down, then build a small platform. When the raid starts, you can use the high vantage point to your advantage and use a bow to make the raid much easier.
Try to get a full set armor, along with a sword and a bow, all with decent enchantments. Armor should be iron or better, although if you have a farm for zombies, you might find the enchantments on their dropped gold armor to be useful (some pieces may have Protection or Projectile Protection III, which can reduce damage by 12 points over the base armor's damage reduction).

When you are ready to start the raid, you need to find a pillager patrol, which are difficult and tedious to find. Pillager patrols can spawn only in corners 24-48 blocks away from the player in the four directions, and only at low light levels. You need to choose a certain block for AFK waiting, and make a roof on all blocks that are 24-48 blocks away from the AFK spot in both the X and Z axes. Once you get a patrol, kill the raid captain to get Bad Omen and the rest of the pillagers, and then go to the village site to spawn the raid. During the raid, snipe the mobs with a bow from your vantage point, and try not to engage in melee combat. In between waves, try to pick up the items, especially totems, redstone, and glowstone, since you cannot get them any other way. Emeralds, glass bottles, and saddles can also come in handy, however these items are obtainable by other means such as trading or fishing.

Getting to the Nether

Getting to the Nether is not possible without cheating, because there is no way to get lava or obsidian in a flat world. However, you might want to advance further. You can't earn achievements in a flat world, so there isn't as much of a downside to using Creative mode or some other means to give yourself lava bucket. Besides being your ticket to the Nether, a lava bucket opens up a world of new possibilities. If your flat world preset doesn't already have stone, you can create a cobblestone farm, make stone tools, a furnace for cooking and smelting, stone blocks and slabs for creeper-proofing your living areas, and many other items.

Once you get a lava bucket, you can use pointed dripstones and cauldrons to get more lava, until you have at least 10 buckets worth. Once you do, you can make a Nether portal (see Tutorial:Nether portals). Lighting the portal itself is a challenge because there is no way to get gravel or flint; however, you can light it with burning wood ignited by lava.

Nether survival

When you get into the Nether, survival becomes easier. You can get wood and gold, you can get nether wart and ingredients for potion brewing, you can get blaze rods for an ender chest, you can find pure diamonds, you can mine blackstone to unlock making furnaces and several other crafting recipes, and so much more.

The ability to brew potions becomes possible, because brewing stands can be crafted and most of the ingredients required for Regeneration, Health, and Strength potions are found in the Nether. You can also brew your own Weakness potions to cure zombie villagers, resulting in lower prices for villager trades for diamond armor, tools, and enchantments. You can also build farms for blazes, wither skeletons, or zombified piglins, giving you more XP for using an anvil or enchanting table. An enchanting table is also craftable due to the availability of pure diamonds as generated loot in the Nether.

Fighting the wither

One thing more skilled players may want to do is defeat the wither. Wither skeleton skulls can be obtained from a Nether fortress and soul sand naturally generates in the Nether.

Fighting the wither is significantly easier than on normal worlds because the terrain is flat (in the Overworld). Once you are ready to fight the wither, travel a few thousand blocks away from your Overworld spawn point and/or base, so you don't risk destroying your home area. When you spawn the wither, dodge its skull attacks and shoot it with a bow until it gets to half health, and kill it with a sword. Smite is very helpful.

Once the wither is defeated, the nether star can be collected and used to make a beacon. If you have a productive iron farm, you can afford to power the beacon, which gives you buffs.

The End

Accessing the End is not possible in a flat world without cheating. You must give yourself all of the ingredients needed to construct an end portal.

Obtainable blocks and items

This section is a work in progress.

Please help expand and improve it. The talk page may contain suggestions.

In addition to dirt (the only resource available from the world to start with), these blocks and items are obtainable in a survival flat world without cheating and from the bonus chest. The sections are arranged roughly in order of availability, with the early-game blocks and items listed first.

From the bonus chest

Not all of these may be available. Seeds and vegetation are not available in bonus chests in Java Edition.

Apples
Beetroot Seeds
Bread
Brown Mushrooms
Cactus
Carrots
1 Chest
Cocoa Beans
Melon Seeds
Oak Planks
Saplings (except for mangrove, cherry and pale oak)
Potatoes
Pumpkin Seeds
Raw Salmon
Wheat Seeds
4 Torches
Various logs
Wooden and stone tools

From harvesting plants

Some items are dependent on bonus chest contents or wandering trader offers.

Apples
Beetroots
Cactus (need sand to plant first)
Carrots
Cocoa Beans‌
Melon Slices
Mushrooms
Logs
Poisonous Potatoes
Potatoes
Pumpkins
Saplings
Seeds
Various flowers (except wither roses and tall flowers)
Wheat

From naturally-occurring mobs

Arrows from skeletons
Armor from zombies, zombie villagers and skeletons (typically leather, gold, and chain, rarely iron and diamond)
Bones from skeletons and skeleton horses
Bows from skeletons
Carrots from zombies and zombie villagers
Carved Pumpkin from zombies, zombie villagers and skeletons‌
Eggs from chickens
Ender Pearls from endermen
Feathers from chickens
Glass Bottles from witches
Glow Inc Sacs from glow squids
Glowstone Dust from witches
Gold Nuggets and Gold Ingots from occasional zombified piglins
Grass Block from endermen (drops only if the enderman is holding it when killed)
Gunpowder from creepers and witches
Iron Ingots from zombies and zombie villagers
Iron Shovels from zombies and zombie villagers
Iron Swords from zombies and zombie villagers
Jack o'Lantern from zombies, zombie villagers and skeletons‌
Leads from trader llamas
Leather from cows, horses, donkeys, mules and trader llamas
Meat from chickens, cows, pigs and sheep
Milk Buckets from wandering traders
Music Discs
- Most music discs from creepers (except Pigstep, otherside, 5, Relic, Creator, Creator (Music Box), Precipice, Tears and Lava Chicken)
- Lava Chicken from regular chicken jockeys (the baby zombie drops the disc, and must be killed by the player and while riding the chicken in order for the disc to drop)
Ominous banners from pillager captains
Phantom Membranes from phantoms
Podzol from endermen (drops only if the enderman is holding it when killed)
Potatoes from zombies and zombie villagers
Potions from witches and wandering traders
Redstone Dust from witches
Rotten Flesh from zombies and zombie villagers
Slimeballs from slimes
Spider Eyes from spiders and witches
Sticks from witches
String from spiders
Sugar from witches
Wool from sheep

From early-game crafting

These blocks and items are available to craft from naturally-available resources, prior to obtaining water, zombified piglins, or villagers.

Banners
Barrels
Beds
Beetroot Soup
Bows
Bowls
Bone Blocks
Bone Meal
Bread
Bundles
Carpets
Carrot on a Stick
Chests
Chiseled Bookshelves
Composters
Cookies‌
Crafting Tables
All Dyes (except brown and black)
Firework Stars (None/Burst explosion)(except brown‌ and black)
Fishing Rods
Glow Item Frames
Glowstone
Hay Bales
Item Frames
Ladders
Leads
Leather Armor
Leather Horse Armor
Looms
Melons
Mushroom Stew
Paintings
Slime Blocks
Spectral Arrows‌
Sticks
Suspicious Stew (except wither effect)
Various wood items (boats, boat with chests, buttons, doors, fences, fence gates, planks, pressure plates, signs, slabs, stairs, stripped logs, stripped woods, trapdoors, woods)
Wooden tools and weapons

From events

Mob Heads from mobs that are killed by charged creepers (except wither skeletons, players, piglins, and the ender dragon)
Water from cauldrons in the rain, which you can harvest to get a water bucket and a water bottle