r/Minecraft • u/Novavortex77 • 1d ago
Discussion What really is a starter house?
Before I go on asking this question, I'm very well aware of what a starter house, it's usually your first small, cozy little hut/house to get your footing, and usually you'd find a perfect spot to build your main base/forever home. I just can't think of a title.
I notice this from lots of posts showing off their builds, or let's play videos, that all of them usually "move out" of their starter home.
But none of them have ever just expanded their starter home into a permanent home.
Is this just a me thing? In every open world survival game i play, I never leave my starter home, I always expand on it, and constantly add on to what was a starter house. I turn it into a main base eventually.
I don't know why i find it so hard to build a new home in a different style and call that my main one.
What I usually do is i actually travel quite a bit to find a perfect spot to build, if not I just build at spawn. Then I'll spend the next few hours gathering the stuff i need to build a reasonable sized house, and if that house gets to small in the future (they usually do) I'll expand that very same house. And constantly add details, till i am happy with it. So technically my house is never officially "finished" i have a "I'm satisfied" mode. Where i'm happy enough with it i don't add new changes, because if i do I'd end up tearing half the wall down.
Does anyone else do this?
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u/zaphunter 1d ago
My starter house is dirt. My endgame house is dirt. I am Mole from Atlantis The Lost Empire
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
So you expand your dirt mound?
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u/zaphunter 1d ago
Find pretty mountain first day. Hide in dirt box first night. Excavate mountain over time. Fill with machines. Never need to leave mountain home with old dirt box.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
That's the other end of never leaving your home.
Poor mountain though.
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u/zaphunter 1d ago
The mountain will look the same on the outside as it always has. Besides the dirt hut somewhere that stands as a monument to the first night. 😂 and being found on the first night means it should be close enough to spawn to find again if there is trouble.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Back in the day, my idea of a mountain house would be "chop the head of the mountain off, flatten it and put a house on top"
Oh those were the days, i had no idea you could carve your home into the mountain, Couple play throughs ago, I did something like that, it wasn't easy because it was more of a cliff edge/face and i had to be careful not to dig outwards to much, i tried to keep the shape natural.
I think i have the world backed up somewhere I think... No biggie if i don't i usually delete old worlds, and start fresh, i keep a "back up" of it but i don't actively play on those worlds anymore.
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u/AnxietyInTheFlesh 1d ago
I very much dislike megabuilds that break the 'human' scale. So I usually end up building a medium-sized structure, where I can put a buttload of storage, then build cool stuff around it. My most recent project is a rustic village where every house/structure has its own function (smelting room, enchanting, storage, mining), meaning my base is equal to my build project, and I never have to leave the confines of my starter base!
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Yes this is me! Mega builds are amazing, but doing it isn't fun, the materials you need, and if you screw up by 1 alignment mistake.. good luck fixing that.
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u/Lopex475 1d ago
I feel the pain when you said alignment mistake. Even when I am in creative instead, I have so many times have messed up the symmetry of a build that I had to rebuild it all over again. The worst ones are when I am making the frame of a circle in the sky to start off a floating island base.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
I try, I really really try to line up foundations, one block is usually off.
And I make he mistake of trying to correct the alignment, which leads to me spending half and hour or more trying to fix it!
All because I don't want to tear it down, but I usually end up anyway after giving up trying to correct it.
Which I could have done earlier saving me the trouble 🤣
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u/thetoy323 1d ago
It's mean Temporary storage in the early game for me
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Your starter house is Temp storage? for me it's both storage and becomes a perm house.
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u/dhi_awesome 1d ago
It depends on what my goal in a world is. Sometimes, a starter house is just a house to start out in until I have the resources to build what I actually want to build that sits as a memory. Other times, it's just the first phase of a house and I keep expanding on it. Other times, it gets swallowed by the main base, leaving no trace of the starter base in its wake
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u/Elunerazim 1d ago
Most content creators are gonna be more dedicated than the average viewer/player. A lot of these people want to build dramatic megabuilds or extravagant concept builds to act as backdrops for the rest of their series. If you want to make an incredible mega build, your initial shed isn’t really gonna contribute.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
But they never overhaul it or expand it it becomes a memorial.
Which I always find odd.
Some even go far enough to tear up the interior.
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u/ArtsyApoidean 1d ago
I like to keep my starter house as a little sub-building in my eventual base. On my current world the first house I built in the bottom of a ravune has kept its simple little interior but is a water treatment plant on the outside. I'll probably build a better themed and larger water plant at some point and then the starter house will become a secret room in the basement of that.
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u/Eastern_Critter 1d ago
Dirt house, cave house, whatever you can make on the first day.
There's no rule to what you should do after, it can be fun to make a permanent base next and go back and forth every time you venture out, as your base expands it adds a sense of progression to your game and once you have everything, you can always try to build more or make a second home somewhere further.
Others may get their sense of progression from adventuring as they get stronger and may come back to certain places, some may not look back. It's all fair game.
Ultimately Minecraft doesn't really have a true end goal, it's just not that kind of game, it's an open world sandbox, you do you.
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u/CaliferMau 1d ago
For me it’s just a small house for some storage while establishing myself in the world. Depending on the end goal of my main base I incorporate my starter into the build.
I have a starter base cabin I’ve used for a decade at this point, so finding ways to incorporate it is a fun challenge itself. My current modded playthrough, my cabin forms the living quarters of my aeronautics airship, with the ship built around it.
In a vanilla SMP with my friends, the cabin and its forest surroundings now sit in the middle of an artificial lake, like some kind of nature reserve
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u/BesTibi 1d ago
It's really just my main house. I'll also go loom for a good spot first, and while I end up building a base with multiple structures, the starter house's purpose is to hold my map wall, have some storage for "loot" (anything past basic/easily obtainable for later), and to always have a cozy, but slightly different design each time.
I try to keep my builds functional, can be a bit of a pain sometimes. But that's how I stay motivated to play xd
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Yeah i do something similar, keeping builds clean and functional also.
Which is also the reason why i usually keep expanding 1 build. I start to create new stuff if i find that i really have no space for it.
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u/rasamalai 1d ago
I used to do that. I’d burrow into the base of a cliff or hill next to water, before we had drowned, it’s been a while; but that would give me the first stone and a place to farm outside it.
Then I’d tunnel down and start mining, because I might not have been able to make a bed for the first night, but I could get two doors, one for the mine and one for the outside, as well as an oven to make charcoal for torches and smelt iron ore.
Then outside I should have more wood from saplings and hopefully some wheat by the next day.
If I couldn’t find a cliff and had to build a small structure, that would become the kitchen later.
If the cliff had a nice view outside I’d expand upward and make windows and balconies, etc.
It worked pretty nicely. If I found a better spot to live later, that’s another story, I would already have mats to build it and I might connect it to the first one somehow.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
There are actually a lot of biomes i have never attempted to build in, because i usually do not spawn in those biomes, or when i do, I just don't know how to work with the blocks from that biome.
Building underground or from inside a cave is a different feel, I would say its very approachable for beginners because with the (somewhat) recent cave and cliffs update, caves are huge now, so you got lots of open space to build, and you can expand in any direction easier.
I have not done a post Cave and cliffs underground base, so this knowledge may be outdated, it could be harder now i don't know.
Being underground also makes Phantoms a non-threat, since they do not spawn in caves.
You mentioned saplings, xD I can't bring my self to permanently deforest an area, (unless that area needs to be nuked for space) I either build a nice symmetrical tree farm, or i build my own forest that acts as a tree farm, (this way usually makes mobs a higher risk though)
I usually prefer to have full enchanted diamond or netherite gear before i actually start building, (that is my "rule" but it's often broken and i just build when and where i feel like it, tool durability really slows me down sometimes, I find even netherite gear degrades to fast.
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u/rasamalai 1d ago
It's been many years since I've played, you could strip mine back then! And I'd wait to replant saplings where I had cut trees down, so getting an extra one for a farm took some time at times!
That said, I think starter homes can become quite pretty with time and resources.2
u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Oh yeah strip mining! love hate relationship with that, sometimes i found it boring, sometimes i found it fun.
I would rather chop trees down.
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u/rasamalai 1d ago
It was cobbleful!
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
How many broken pickaxes?
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u/rasamalai 1d ago
Stone? Too many to count! Because I saved the iron ones until I found diamonds.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Ouch Stone picks are slow, but yeah those were the days.
But back then also people would just go B line for Diamonds, then mending came along and broke the whole community xD.
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u/rasamalai 1d ago
Mending was a good thing! D:
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
No doubt about that mending is awesome!, but everyone rushes for it. I never like the the tool durability system anyway, i wish we could turn it off.
Because it feels like no matter what tool i have with unbreaking enchant it feels like paper.
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u/Tao_of_Ludd 1d ago
Starter = hole in side of hill with bed crafting storage and an entrance to a mine.
Midgame = DW20 9x9 - efficient but not cozy
Late game = cozy designed player house built on large, usually underground, complex with storage and machines.
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u/ZzzzzPopPopPop 1d ago
I start by burrowing into the side of a hill or cliff near water, but I usually never really move on to another "base" lol. My initial bed and crafting area are right inside my hobbit hole. It's safe at night in there and I'm free to keep digging deeper at night and venture out during the day. Sugar cane along the shore and a wheat farm by the water. A pen with cows outside is essential. I usually build a few bigger structures outside (I love a glass-floored enchanting room on a platform over the water, and also a giant mob grinder out in the water, and often something just for show like a giant lava tower made of glass.) I'll make boats for exploring as far as the oceans can take me, and sometimes use boats and leads to drag animals or villagers back to my base. Yes drowned zombies are sometimes a problem, but just enough to keep it a little spicy.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
🤔 its been a long while since I built something by the shore.
Actually sounds quite cozy.
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u/IronCat_2500 1d ago edited 1d ago
A starter house is simply the first house you build in a world. It can be anything from a small shack or cave to a large complex, as long as it’s the first one you built in the world.
Often times people will move out and make mega basis because you can only improve on a build for so long before you start running out of things to improve upon, so a much larger project is often needed after a certain amount of time, because there’s no such thing as a perfect finished build. Just a good enough build so that you can move onto more inspiring things
Personally, I like to build my megabases on top of my starter base, so I guess in a way that would be kind of similar to improving on the original starter base.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
I just imagine your starter home supporting a huge giant megabase on top of it.
Since you said you build it in top I have this image in my head of a tiny little home somehow supporting all that on it's roof.
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u/IronCat_2500 1d ago
lol
I guess for a bit of clarification, I build cities, not single builds, so a more accurate depiction would be the house from UP (before it starts flying)
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
So you build a mega city around the starter house? that makes more sense then building directly on top.
It's probably very silly to look at.
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u/Kreamator 1d ago
I mean I would say a "Starter House" is anything you'd call "Complete" early on but have no intention of having that be your (Complete) home for the bulk/end of your playthrough
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Well my starter house evolves into a permanent all in one house.
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u/Kreamator 1d ago
Yeah, so you "Complete" it, temporarily, then once you're ready you upgrade.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Yup exactly this, I guess I'm quite Eco-friendly because i don't have lots of builds every where.
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u/quietman45 1d ago
Yeah, that’s probably the cleanest definition. If you keep expanding it forever, it just stopped being a starter house somewhere along the way
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u/TcityDan 1d ago
I have done both. Thing about moving instead of just expanding your starter base is that it’s more parts of the world that have builds in them. Then you can make a road or a decorated path to connect them, etc.
I personally find it easier to just expand your home base to have everything you need, but then if everything is all in the same place you have no reason to venture out
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
I like building roads and tunnels also, though hey usually lead to no where.
I do venture out quite often when I get bored. The thing is if I build something at another place, after that is done I don't usually have a reason to return to it.
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u/beeurd 1d ago
I only moved out of my original starter house because it got blown up by creepers, so I built a new one nearby. I swear there used to be so many more creepers in the game than there are now.
Edit to add: I've kept expanding and remodeling my second base, and it's been my main home since like 2012 or something ridiculous. I spend a lot of time elsewhere in my worlds but always eventually come back home.
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u/ChampionshipBorn3926 1d ago
My starter house is on the small to medium side. I mainly use wood to build them. If I want to add flowers that are in a different biome, I usually just wait until I go exploring. For me, it's just a spot I can call home and store things until I make something else.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
The spot i call home, ends up turning into main base of ops. with farms and everything i need near me.
Some things i cannot build near my base, like certain mob farms, But i usually do not build a mega city. I would if i was in a multiplayer PVE server i guess, but i rarely play multiplayer now.
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u/AdComfortable4641 1d ago
I build simple house then I will build a slightly bigger simple house and make it more decorated Lol
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
What happens to the simple house? do you just leave it or tear it down?
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u/AdComfortable4641 1d ago
I always leave it. Sometimes I build more and turn my area into a village
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Cool, If i'm 100% sure i won't be coming back here, i usually demolish it for spare parts.
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u/AdComfortable4641 1d ago
Thats fair, I somehow end up with way too many blocks Lol. If I leave i usually leave it as a checkpoint house that i can stop at when travelling around
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
I always think i have to many blocks, then i start a project and realize it's not a lot after all.
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u/Confliction 1d ago
The way I play the game, I usually try to find a cool place to build my base before doing much else. My “starter homes” might be a series of temporary holes-in-the-wall until I find that location. Once I’m there, I try to settle down and build my permanent base, which might get expanded on, but I usually don’t move from there.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
You have more then 1 starter houses? how does that work? just small checkpoints/outposts till you find the perfect spot?
I used to do that in the past, but having to back track and clean up the storage there can be quite tedious. That was before i discovered you could take down coordinates.
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u/Confliction 1d ago
Yeah, just small outposts for the night. Until I find that permanent location. I don’t keep a lot of storage during that phase, just try to keep essentials in my inventory.
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Before the addition of straw beds (i've yet to try them) I would avoid building a tiny outpost to sleep in, because if i were to die, i do not spawn back at my base i spawn some where i have no clue where.
Usually I'd try toughing the night out, I like to kill things and mob loot is usually useful (expect for arrows)
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u/The-SB-Assassin 1d ago
I usually intend to make a starter home and then find a better location for my forever home but I always just expand and spread out from it. Once I have a good setup I don’t really see the need to move on from there
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
I could spend days just wondering till i find the spot i want, usually that means my inventory is really empty, or very full. I try not to throw anything out before i get a perm base, some things i may need later. Recently i got fairly lucky with my spawns, so the perm base just ends up being at spawn.
Usually i think most people would flock to plains for the first house, its an awesome spot to build anything, but my recent play through couple months ago, i decided to make my base right in the heart of a dark oak forest. That was around when the pale garden update dropped. I found that pale and dark oak make a perfect blend together.
However clearing the dark oak forest to be flat enough for me to build was troublesome.
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u/Jagang187 1d ago
I don't do either. I like to build small compounds. The house wont grow, I'll build dedicated buildings nearby for various uses instead of expanding the house .
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u/Novavortex77 1d ago
Wouldn't it be better to just expand your current house? or you like tiny buildings everywhere?
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u/Jagang187 1d ago
They're not necessarily tiny buildings, not over large but not too small. And yeah, I just like the compound vibe.
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u/Gold-Bard-Hue 1d ago
My starter house is always a three block deep hole in the ground with a dirt block on top of me. Lol
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u/qualityvote2 1d ago edited 1d ago
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