25 Easy Minecraft Survival Builds: Cabins, Mountain Houses and Underground Bases
25 easy Minecraft survival builds with step-by-step guides: log cabins, mountain houses, underground bases and a barn. Steps and total blocks for each one.
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These 25 Minecraft survival builds are all real guides on WBuilds. You follow each one a step at a time and place every block by hand, with no mods or schematics, so it works in a plain survival world on Java or Bedrock. Seventeen of the 25 are rated Easy and eight Medium, and most are made of wood, cobblestone and stone.
Under each name you’ll find the steps in the guide, its difficulty and the total blocks to gather. Steps and blocks can be far apart: Desert Starter House and Farmhouse With Garden are both long guides, at 110 and 117 steps, but the farmhouse takes 1,263 blocks and the desert house 428. Furniture such as an anvil or an enchanting table can wait, and small decorations can be swapped for whatever you have.
Four of the guides are free from the first step to the last and are marked Free: Simple Oak Starter House, Survival House, Starter Bamboo Hut and Desert Starter House. The others are part of WBuilds Pro.
To browse the whole category instead, see our Minecraft house ideas.
Quick picks
If you already know what you want, jump to it.
| If you want | Go to |
|---|---|
| A shelter tonight | Mini Starter House (15 blocks), Small Underground House (22 blocks) |
| A first house with a bed | Simple Oak Starter House (18 steps), Survival House (32 steps) |
| A hidden base | Small Underground House (10 steps), Underground Base (47 steps) |
| A cabin | Cabin Starter House (64 steps) |
| A base in a mountain | Starter Mountain House, Mountain Cliff House (66 steps each) |
| Water at the door | Small Riverside House (38 steps), Lake House (79 steps) |
| Something modern | Modern House (33 steps), Starter Wooden Modern House (45 steps) |
| Crops or animals | Cow Barn (59 steps), Farmhouse With Garden (117 steps) |
| A bigger project | Starter Castle (90 steps) |
Easy small Minecraft builds to start a world
Start here if you just spawned. Three of these are almost all wood, and the fourth adds a stone brick base. There are more like them in the starter builds.
1. Simple Oak Starter House
A low house of stacked oak logs, like a woodpile with a door. A strip of glass in the roof works as a skylight. It takes 53 oak logs and 53 oak planks, and the one room has a bed, a crafting table, a furnace and three chests. If you spawn in a forest, start with this one.
Open the Simple Oak Starter House guide →
2. Mini Starter House
The cheapest build on the list: one wooden column with trapdoor walls, a door and a lantern over it. The whole list is 11 trapdoors, a door, a ladder, a crafting table and the lantern. A torch can stand in for the lantern until you find iron. There’s no bed inside, so use it to wait out the first night, then keep it as a spare shelter near a mine.
Open the Mini Starter House guide →
3. Survival House
A small oak house with double doors and a stepped slab roof. Almost everything is oak: 72 slabs, 32 planks and 24 logs. The one open room has a bed, two chests, a crafting table and a furnace. The smoker, blast furnace and anvil in the guide can come later.
Open the Survival House guide →
4. Stone and Oak Starter House
A stone brick base, oak walls and a cobblestone roof, with side stairs up to a railed landing. Get a furnace running first. Stone bricks are crafted from smelted cobblestone, and the guide uses 70 of them plus 39 stone brick stairs. It has the most storage of these four: 17 chests and 9 barrels.
Open the Stone and Oak Starter House guide →
Underground bases
A Minecraft underground base is one of the cheapest homes you can make, because most of the work is digging. Light every corner so nothing spawns inside. If you found a cave, the same rules make a cave base: light it, block the side tunnels and put a door on the entrance. More in the underground builds.
5. Small Underground House
The shortest guide on the list. One room sits under a lid of four trapdoors and five glass blocks, set flush with the grass. Below are a bed, two chests, a furnace and a crafting table. The rest is digging, and from above it’s easy to walk past.
Open the Small Underground House guide →
6. Underground Base
A compact underground base hidden in the grass. At the surface you see a glass roof between wooden platforms and four stone-capped corners. Stairs lead down to a single room with two beds, a crafting table, three furnaces, 16 chests and 5 barrels. The 203 blocks are mostly planks, stairs and logs.
Open the Underground Base guide →
Cabins and spruce houses
A Minecraft cabin is log walls under a big roof, and spruce is the classic wood for it. All three builds here use spruce, which grows all over a taiga.
7. Cabin Starter House
A small Minecraft log cabin: walls of spruce logs, a stepped roof of dark oak and spruce stairs, and cobblestone around the door. Inside is one room with a bed, a crafting table, three furnaces and eight chests. Dark oak grows in dark forests. If you have none, build the whole roof from spruce, since the stairs and slabs are the same shape.
Open the Cabin Starter House guide →
8. Taiga Starter House
A spruce house for a cold biome, with a sloped roof, a raised stone porch and a chimney. Garden beds and berry bushes run along the sides. It uses common spruce and stone blocks and fits a taiga village. For a larger Minecraft winter cabin, look through the winter builds.
Open the Taiga Starter House guide →
9. Spruce Treehouse
A deck wrapped around a tall spruce trunk, under the leaves. One open platform holds a bed, a furnace and a crafting table, and a ladder runs up the trunk. The materials are mostly spruce slabs and trapdoors. They don’t include the tree, so find a tall spruce first. The treehouse builds have more like it.
Open the Spruce Treehouse guide →
Mountain houses and cliff houses
A Minecraft mountain house uses the rock as its back wall. The first two here put the room inside the stone, which is as close as this list gets to a cave house. More in the mountain builds.
10. Starter Mountain House
A wooden front set straight into a stone cliff, with a big window, a lantern-lit door and a carrot patch by the entrance. The room behind it has a bed and more storage than any other build here: 36 chests and 16 barrels. The enchanting table, jukebox and 20 bookshelves in the guide can wait.
Open the Starter Mountain House guide →
11. Mountain Cliff House
A Minecraft cliff house for worlds where flat ground is scarce. A wooden roof and a balcony hang over the drop, floating steps lead up to them, and one lantern-lit room is carved into the rock. It’s mostly spruce planks, slabs and trapdoors.
Open the Mountain Cliff House guide →
12. Hills House
A compact tower for a hill: a stone base with the door at ground level and an open wooden lookout under a peaked roof. The bed is up on the lookout, next to a planter and a lantern. The eight tuff brick walls need Minecraft 1.21 or newer, and cobblestone walls work in their place.
Lake, river and beach houses
Build next to water and you have fish and a boat route from the first day. For more on the coast, see the beach builds.
13. Small Riverside House
A compact cottage with oak walls, a cobblestone roof and a fenced wheat patch beside the water. A lantern marks the door. It’s the cheapest of the three and uses common early-game blocks.
Open the Small Riverside House guide →
14. Small Fisherman House
A beach house built around fishing: a hut on the sand and a wooden pier with fence posts, lanterns and room to moor boats. “Small” describes the hut. With the pier, the build covers 27 by 16 blocks. It’s mostly oak and spruce, plus 30 barrels and 67 campfires. Each campfire takes three logs, three sticks and one coal or charcoal, so stock up first.
Open the Small Fisherman House guide →
15. Lake House
Wood walls, a cobblestone roof and a covered front porch, with a plank dock and lanterns running out over the water. It’s oak, spruce and cobblestone throughout, plus 29 campfires. It works on any shoreline.
Jungle and desert houses
In these two biomes the local block does most of the work: bamboo in a jungle, sand in a desert. More in the desert builds.
16. Starter Bamboo Hut
A Minecraft jungle house made from the jungle: blocks of bamboo and bamboo planks under a flat mosaic roof, with a torch on each side of the door. Bamboo grows in jungles and grows fast, and nine pieces craft one block of bamboo. The bamboo wood blocks arrived in Minecraft 1.20, so you need that version or newer.
Open the Starter Bamboo Hut guide →
17. Desert Starter House
Two floors of sandstone on a polished granite base, with a flat walled roof, outside stairs and a shaded porch. More than half the blocks are sand or sandstone, and sandstone is four sand in a crafting grid. It’s the second-longest guide on the list.
Open the Desert Starter House guide →
Village houses
Each of these works as a Minecraft village house. Build one as your base, put a second next to it, and you have the start of a village.
18. Small Medieval House
Stone brick walls, spruce log beams and a two-level roof over two floors. The materials are all structure, with no bed or chests, so the inside is yours to lay out. Stone bricks mean a furnace first. See the medieval builds for more in this style.
Open the Small Medieval House guide →
19. Brick Cottage
A small brick cottage on an 11 by 10 footprint, with a tuff base, a steep deepslate tile roof, window boxes and hanging vines. It comes fully furnished, down to an armor stand with a set of iron armor, and uses 53 different blocks and items, the most on this list. You’ll mine down a little for the tuff and deepslate. The guide also uses some of the newest blocks, such as tuff bricks, copper trapdoors, bushes and shelves, so you need Java 1.21.9 or newer, or the matching Bedrock update. The cottage builds have more cozy homes.
Open the Brick Cottage guide →
20. Starter Japanese House
A flared dark roof, white walls and wood trim on a stone base, with front steps and lanterns at the door. The white walls are concrete, and the guide takes 147 stone, which you smelt from cobblestone. It also uses 12 warped planks from the Nether, and another wood works until you’ve been there. Like the medieval house, it has no furniture in the guide. More in the Japanese builds.
Open the Starter Japanese House guide →
Modern houses
A modern Minecraft house is a flat roof and wide windows. One of these two is concrete. The other is plain wood and glass, which suits an early world. More in the modern builds.
21. Modern House
White concrete and jungle planks over two floors, with a flat overhang, a wide window strip upstairs and a small pool at the side. It takes 99 white concrete. Concrete powder is four sand, four gravel and one dye for eight blocks, and it hardens when it touches water. The 24 iron trapdoors cost 96 iron ingots, and wooden trapdoors work in their place. Save it for a second house, once your first base is running.
22. Starter Wooden Modern House
The modern shape in plain wood: a flat roof, a wide window upstairs and a frame of stripped oak wood around spruce plank walls. The bedroom is upstairs, and the door, storage and a small crop patch sit under the overhang. It takes 86 stripped oak wood, 63 spruce planks and 28 glass. Wood blocks are crafted four logs to three, so the 86 come to 116 oak logs, stripped with an axe.
Open the Starter Wooden Modern House guide →
Barn, farmhouse and starter castle
Three builds for after the first house: a home for the animals, a farm you can live in and a small castle.
23. Cow Barn
A wooden Minecraft barn with a log roof, indoor stalls and a fenced yard. It’s common wood, logs and fences, plus 25 campfires and 17 hay bales. The hay is 153 wheat, so get a field going first. The guide also lists podzol and rooted dirt, and plain dirt works in their place. You breed the cows and collect from them by hand. More in the barn builds.
24. Farmhouse With Garden
The biggest build on the list, by steps and by blocks. A two-floor wooden house stands on a fenced wraparound deck, with crop rows underneath and lanterns along the rails. It’s mostly oak, and the 561 oak planks alone are 141 logs, so gather the wood before you start. Six chests come with it. The bed and workstations are yours to place.
Open the Farmhouse With Garden guide →
25. Starter Castle
A battlement tower with a red and white flag on top, joined to a small stone-roofed hall. That gives you two spaces to live in and store loot. It’s cobblestone, stone bricks and wood. The guide also lists three infested cobblestone, which you can’t collect in survival, so use plain cobblestone there. The castle category has larger ones.
Open the Starter Castle guide →
Frequently asked questions
What is the easiest build on this list?
By blocks, Mini Starter House (15) and Small Underground House (22). By guide length, Small Underground House (10 steps) and Simple Oak Starter House (18 steps). Small Underground House is on both lists and has a bed, so build that one first. For a free guide, start with Simple Oak Starter House, the shortest of the four at 18 steps.
How do you make an underground base in Minecraft?
Dig a room, light it so nothing spawns inside, and close the entrance with a door or a trapdoor. Put in a bed, a crafting table, a furnace and chests, then dig outward when you need more space. Small Underground House does this in 10 steps, and Underground Base adds stairs down and more storage.
Do these builds work on Bedrock Edition?
Yes. All 25 guides are marked for both Java and Bedrock. On an older version of the game, check the builds that lean on newer blocks: Starter Bamboo Hut (1.20), Hills House (1.21 for its tuff brick walls) and Brick Cottage (Java 1.21.9 or the matching Bedrock update).
What should you build after your first house?
Good next projects are a crop or animal farm, a storage room and a Nether portal. Browse farms, storage builds and portals, or see more things to build in Minecraft survival.