RLCraft Guide – How To Get Started

Just downloaded the RLCraft mod, but scared and bemused that you can’t punch trees? Well, this is the guide for you. In our RLCraft guide, we’re going to give you a few tips to ease you into one of Minecraft’s toughest mods as easily as possible.

RLCraft is one of the most popular modpacks for the smash-hit game Minecraft. It is designed to give a much tougher and less predictable experience than the vanilla game, and the result is a harsh and chaotic world.

If you want to learn more about RLCraft, check out the Curseforge page. Or, if you fancy something new to play, check out our Torchlight Infinite Auto Loot guide, FFXIV Job guide, and Eversoul Zodiac guide.

RLCraft Guide

Here we’re going to try and walk you through the start of your world, and cover things that set it apart from what you’d do in the average game of Minecraft.

Spawn Points

RLCraft has random spawns. The game just drops you somewhere in the world, and unless you’ve set your spawn point to a useable bed of a Waystone, it’ll send you to another random spawn location when you die.

• If an area is too dangerous and you’re just starting out: Die. You’ll be sent somewhere else.
• You may spawn underwater, so be ready to swim for the surface!
• If you’ve found an area you like, make sure to set your spawn point before you go looting, you will almost certainly lose all your items if you die and get sent in a random direction.

Getting Wood

The first thing you’ll need is wood planks, but you can’t punch trees in RLCraft, so the process is a little more complicated.

• First, you need to look for gravel deposits, find these and keep breaking the blocks until they drop flint.
• Hold the pieces of flint and hit them against hard blocks like rock to break them into flint shards.
• Combine a stick and a flint shard vertically in your crafting window to make a flint knife.
• Cut grass with the flint knife to get plant fiber.
• Combine three plant fibers to get string.
• Combine the string with a stick and another flint shard to get a flint axe.
• You can now cut down trees, though to get planks you will need to place the log blocks on the ground and right-click them with the axe.

Getting Stone

Stone in RLCraft is slightly less complicated than getting wood, but is slightly different.

• You can find small stones on the ground, and pick them up with right-click.
• Breaking rock with a pick-axe will also drop small stones.
• Combining four of these stones at a crafting table will make one cobblestone block.

Finding Shelter

Night is deadly in RLCraft, especially when you don’t have much gear. You don’t want to stay in the open after dark. Building is possible, but getting materials takes longer and often it’s easier just to find an existing structure.

• Villages have plenty of beds and resources and are usually well-protected by Aegis spawns.
• Abandoned buildings in different states of disrepair spawn often. You can usually patch one up easily.
• Beware simply sealing yourself into a hole. The Grue kills players who’re in pitch darkness.

Thirst

RLCraft has a thirst meter as well as a hunger meter, and it will decrease much faster, especially if it’s hot or you’re running.

• You can drink by crouching and pressing right-click on a water source.
• Drinking regular water you find is not the best option, as it is contaminated and will give you the ‘thirst’ effect. You may need to do this to live at the beginning.
• You can make Purified Water by heating a bottle or bucket of water in a furnace, or by making a flask with a charcoal filter.

Temperature

Getting too hot or too cold in RLCraft will cause you to eventually start taking damage.

• Different biomes will be hotter or colder depending on the environment. Deserts and snowy biomes are not the best places to set up camp for this reason.
• You can warm up by wearing wooly clothes, standing near fires or lava, or running.
• You can cool down by getting into the shade or jumping into water.
• There are items that can make you immune to temperature, but you probably won’t run into them until later.

RLCraft Guide FAQ

Now we’ll try and answer any questions you have about our RLCraft guide, RLCraft, or its base game.

What Is RLCraft?

RLCraft is one of the most popular modpacks for Minecraft. You can download the pack for free, though you will need a working copy of Minecraft Java Edition to play. The modpack is a collection of mods that are curated to try and make Minecraft a harder and more unpredictable game. It introduces a large number of extra mobs, new structures, huge dungeons, and new survival mechanics. There is even a taming system and terrifying new bosses.

What Is Minecraft?

Minecraft is an incredibly successful sandbox game developed by Mojang. It was first released in 2011. The game features a randomly-generated and completely destructible environment made up of blocks.

While the game is available on many platforms, it’s only the PC-based Java edition that supports most mods.

Meriel Green

Staff Writer

Meriel is a games journalist and sometime game dev, writing content for GameTyrant and TheGamer before her time at Gamezebo. When not tirelessly documenting the mysteries of Roblox, she enjoys indie horror and getting wiped out by chariots in Elden Ring.