You start with $250 and 1,000 claim blocks.
- Get away from spawn. Land near spawn is taken. Walk or use
/wilduntil the terrain looks unclaimed. - Place a chest. Your first chest automatically claims a 13×13 area around it, free, before you have touched a shovel. That is your beachhead.
- Grow the claim before you build, not after. Resizing later is fine, but anything you build outside a claim is unprotected in the meantime.
- Set a home with
/sethome. You get three. - Sell something with
/bazaarto get moving on money, then pick a path once you know what you enjoy doing.
There is no rush on choosing a path — you can switch later, at a cost. There is a rush on claiming, because land does not come back.