Health, Food, and Experience

Status Bar

In Minecraft, your status bar is very different between Survival Mode and Creative Mode. Let’s take a closer look.

Health

In Survival Mode, you will have a health bar that looks like this:

The health bar is made up of 10 hearts to indicate the amount of health you have left in the game. As the hearts turn black, you are losing health and depleting your health bar.

Health is lost by taking damage from mob attacks or physical damage from the world around you. Your health meter will go down by 1/2 heart increments. When your health meter gets to zero, you will die in the game.

Food

In Survival Mode, you will have a food bar that looks like this:

The food bar is made up of 10 drumsticks to indicate the amount of energy you have left in the game. As the drumsticks turn black, you are losing energy and your food bar is being depleted.

Energy is lost by fighting mobs, mining, or moving around in the game. When your food meter gets to zero, you need to replenish your food bar by eating food.

Food Bar Replenishes Health Bar

The food bar is what replenishes your health bar. If you lose health and you have a food bar with 8 or more drumsticks, your health will automatically be replenished.

So make sure that you always have a full food bar when playing the game.

Experience

In Survival Mode, you will have an experience bar that looks like this:

The experience bar shows your current level and how close you are to reaching the next level. In this example, we are at level 8 and still have over half of the experience bar to fill before leveling up to Level 9.

In Minecraft, each level takes a certain amount of experience points to level up to the next level (see our Experience by Level table). You start out at Level 0 and as you get to higher levels in the game, it will take even more experience points to reach the next level. For example, it takes 7 experience points to go from Level 0 to Level 1, but it takes 9 experience points to go from Level 1 to Level 2.

Experience Points

Experience points are represented by small orbs that appear after killing a mob, mining an item, or performing some of the more advanced tasks in the game. These orbs float towards you and count as experience points in your experience bar (1 orb may be worth more than 1 experience point). You do not need to pick these items up as they will automatically be added to your progress bar.

Let’s take a closer look at how you earn experience.

Kill Mobs to Earn Experience

You earn experience points when you kill a mob in Minecraft. When the mob dies, it will disappear leaving behind dropped items and small orbs. These orbs are experience points that will change color and float toward you. The points will automatically be picked up and added to your experience bar.

You will earn different amounts of experience depending on the mob that you kill. As a general rule: the tougher the mob, the more experience you will gain.

Mine Items to Earn Experience

You also earn experience points when you mine items such as coal, redstone dust, diamond, lapis lazuli, and nether quartz, just to name a few. When you mine certain items, you will see the dropped item appear as well as small orbs .

These small orbs are the experience points gained by mining an item and they will increase your experience bar.

Enchant Items by Spending Experience

Later in the game, you will use experience points to enchant items such as armor or weapons. However, this is a very advanced topic and too soon to discuss in this beginner tutorial.