Skyblocks beginner guide (By Ontvlambaar)

Introduction to Vanilla World Skyblocks
After you have issued the /start command you will be teleported to a 5x8x3 island that is all yours. On this island you will find dirt, stone and some ores. In some cases sand will spawn instead of stone. I do not recommend re-starting if this is the case, as the stone can be acquired later on. Sand, however, is not farmable and quite rare. In the picture you see a tree and a chest. The tree is a randomly generated pre-1.7 tree. This means that Acacia and Dark oak are not generated at this moment. The chest contents are random, however the following items are always present: I got a skeleton spawn egg now. Spawn eggs that are possibly generated are: Spawn eggs for horses and rabbits can be bought from the shop. Those are not generated in the lootchests yet.
 * A lava bucket
 * Two blocks of ice (break to get water)
 * Seeds
 * A pickaxe
 * a spawn egg
 * Chicken
 * Cow
 * Mooshroom
 * Ocelot
 * Pig
 * Sheep
 * Squid
 * Wolf
 * Blaze
 * Creeper
 * Magma Cube
 * Skeleton
 * Slime
 * Spider
 * Zombie
 * Zombie Pigman



Acquiring Wood
Skyblocks is not much different from casual survival, however your playground is very limited. The Skyblocks world exists entirely out of islands in the sky. Just like on survival, you're going to want to start with punching down the tree. Get rid of all the wood blocks (birch in the picture) to let the leaves start decaying. Try to punch as few leaves as possible, and let the game do its work. The leaves will decay, and you'll get your saplings eventually. If no saplings drop, there's no point in continuing, and I recommend a new /start.. however this can only be done once per 24 hours.

When you get your sapling, you're good to continue. Time to plant one of the saplings you obtained earlier, so another tree can grow. We meanwhile can start with making a crafting table. Don't do anything after this yet.

Getting your stone and ores
Prior to making some tools, we're digging away the inner rectangle of the island (as seen in the picture).

The reason for this is that we do not want to lose any of our hard-earned cobblestone. Digging away the edges may result into precious blocks falling off the island, into the void. There's no way to get those blocks back if this happens. Before I continue with this tutorial, I'd like to ask you whether I am lucky with the generation of diamond at this early stage.

Most people consider it handy, but it really is not. You cannot mine diamond with wooden nor stone tools. A upgrade to iron is required. If you happen to get diamond, I recommend waiting another day to buy a diamond pickaxe at /spawn (costs 4 emeralds) Luckily I had some help from my main account, which has a diamond pickaxe

Building your cobblestone generator
We have now come to the point where we can start adding a cobblestone generator. Make sure you do this correctly. If your lava turns into obsidian, you are bound to start over or ask someone for a new lava bucket.

Here's a easy tutorial on how to make your cobblestone generator. Make sure you dig down one block for the water, or it will not work.

I only used 12 dirt to make the cobble generator. You can use sand or cobble too for this purpose, but you're probably not going to stick with this generator layout anyways.

Now it's time to make your tools. Harvest enough cobble to make a stone sword, hoe, pickaxe and axe. You're going to need them to progress further.

Starting something of a farm
Once you've got yourself a stone hoe, it's time to build yourself a little farm with the seeds you received. For this you can decide whether you want to use the little dirt around your cobble generator(there's water nearby!), or make a separate patch of dirt for it.