First-Night Survival - The Ultimate Player's Guide to Minecraft - page 23

Minecraft has some neat tricks up its blocky sleeve that make it easier to move items
between the slots in your inventory. Here's what you really need to know:
Pick up items —Left-click on a slot, and you'll pick up its full stack of items.
Right-click to pick up just half the items in that slot.
Place items —Left-click to place all the items you are holding into a slot. If that
slot is occupied, the items are swapped so that you end up holding the item or
stack of items that was there initially. Right-click to place just a single item from
the stack you are holding into a slot, or hold down the button and sweep through
the different positions to place one each of a stack of held items in multiple slots.
Move items between the main storage and the quick access grids —Shift-click a
slot to transfer its items to the first available position in the other grid. Items of the
same type are automatically stacked in the target grid until they reach their stack
limit.
Distribute items evenly —While holding a stack of items, press and hold the left
mouse button and drag it across a group of slots to automatically split the stack in-
to equal amounts across those slots. (This is particularly handy when crafting a
stack of similar items at once.) If there is any remainder from the split, it stays se-
lected and you can place it elsewhere.
Discard an item —Drag and drop items from any inventory slot to the outside of
the inventory window to discard them. This can discard an entire stack of items at
once. You can also quickly discard any single item in a quick access slot at any
time by selecting it with your scroll wheel or the 1-9 keys and pressing Q .
Now that you are familiar with the inventory, let's get onto crafting.
Build a Crafting Table
Why, you may be wondering, do you need a crafting table when the inventory already
provides a crafting grid? It's simple really. The inventory provides a 2x2 grid, and this can
build only a limited set of items. The crafting table provides a grid of 3x3 needed for more
complex items such as tools and just about everything else. However you can't build a
crafting table without first using the inventory crafting grid. Follow these steps to knock
together your own:
1. Open your inventory screen by pressing E .
2. Remember those wood blocks you punched out of the tree? You need to turn those
blocks into planks. Left-click on the stack of wood blocks to pick them up and