Getting Started

Your First Minutes

ReInDev (version 2.9_03) is a re-imagining of Minecraft Beta 1.7.3, so the survival loop runs on the old "alpha/beta" rules: you start with 20 health (10 hearts) and there is no hunger bar. Food is eaten to heal damage directly, and natural health regeneration only happens on the Peaceful difficulty setting (and even then slowly, +1 health roughly every 12 seconds). On Easy, Normal, or Hard you must rely on food, so survival is really about avoiding damage and keeping something edible in your hotbar.

The opening sequence is the same one the in-game achievement chain walks you through: Getting Wood → Benchmarking (workbench) → Time to Mine! (pickaxe) → Hot Topic (furnace) → Acquire Hardware (iron).

Punching Trees

Walk up to a tree and hold attack on the trunk. Logs have a hardness of 2 and are normally an AXE block, but bare hands still break them (just slowly) and drop the log. ReInDev has many tree species, each with its own log: Oak, Crimson, Firwood, Cherry, Spruce, Ebony, Azure, and Thistlewood. They all behave identically for early game.

Open your inventory (the Taking Inventory achievement) and use the 2x2 crafting grid built into it. Place a single log to craft 4 Planks, and stack planks to make sticks:

• 1 Log → 4 Planks (1x1 recipe; works in the inventory grid)
• 2 Planks (stacked vertically) → 4 Sticks

Tip: if you craft 9 logs into a Logjam Block, breaking it back down yields 9 Sticks at once — a ReInDev shortcut for bulk stick production.

The Crafting Table

The 2x2 inventory grid can only make basic items. For tools, a furnace, and almost everything else you need the 3x3 grid of a Crafting Table (called a workbench internally). Craft it from 4 Planks in a 2x2 square. Place it down and right-click to open the full grid.

Your First Tools

Tools take the classic shapes: the tool head across the top, two sticks down the middle column. Make a Wooden Pickaxe first (3 planks + 2 sticks), then a Wooden Axe and Wooden Shovel to speed up wood and dirt gathering. A Wooden Sword (2 planks + 1 stick) is your first weapon.

Tool tiers in ReInDev, pulled straight from the game's material values:

Harvest level is the gate that matters: stone, cobblestone, and coal ore are level 0, so a wooden pickaxe mines them. Iron ore is level 1, so you must upgrade to a stone pickaxe before iron will drop. ReInDev also adds higher tiers beyond vanilla — Obsidian tools (a massive 16,384 uses), Molten, and Corundum — but those are long-term goals.

Mine stone (hardness 1.5) to get Cobblestone, then craft a Stone Pickaxe, Axe, and Sword (cobblestone replaces planks in the same patterns). Eight cobblestone in a ring crafts a Furnace (Hot Topic).

Surviving the First Night

When the sun sets, hostile mobs spawn in the dark: Zombies, Skeletons, Creepers, and Spiders. A mob can only spawn where the block light level is low — the spawn check requires light at or below roughly 7. The fix is light. Craft Torches (4 per recipe) from 1 Coal + 1 Stick stacked vertically; ReInDev also lets you use Glowstone Dust in place of coal. A torch emits light level 14, more than enough to suppress spawns nearby.

Zombies and Skeletons catch fire in direct daylight, so simply surviving until morning thins the threat. To get through the night, either wall yourself into a small dirt/cobblestone shelter, dig into a hillside, and light it with torches. No coal yet? Smelting any Log in the furnace produces Coal in ReInDev (there is no separate charcoal item), giving you torches without ever mining.

Once you have Wool (from sheep) you can craft a Bed from 3 Wool + 3 Planks. Sleeping in a bed skips the night entirely — the safest answer once it is available (Ode to Sleep).

Food and Early Healing

Because eating restores health, keep food handy. Easy early sources and their heal values:

Cooking roughly doubles a food's value (raw pork 3 → cooked 8), so a furnace pays for itself in food as well as smelting. Mushroom Stew is the strongest no-furnace option early on. With torches lit, a sword in hand, food in your pocket, and a stone pickaxe ready for iron, you have cleared the ReInDev early game and can dig for iron, coal, and eventually diamonds.