The World of Minecraft: Inventory

The inventory is where the resources the player collects are stored. It consists of 36 main slots, an offhand slot, a 2✖2 crafting grid, and 4 armor slots. When you break a block and collect it, it will automatically store itself in the next empty slot. If your inventory is full, you will not be able to pick up any new items.

If you collect more than one of the same item, they will "stack" in one slot of the inventory. Most items will stack up to 64, but there are some exceptions: some items (such as eggs and snowballs) will only stack to 16, and armor, tools, and weapons will not stack at all.

Nine slots of your inventory (the hotbar) will always be visible. The rest of your inventory (including the remaining 27 slots) will remain hidden until you open them. Selecting an item in your hotbar will put it in your hand. Above your hotbar you will see three different bars. These are the health, hunger, and experience bars.

During the game, performing certain actions will allow you to collect experience (XP). This XP will accumulate in the long, skinny bar called the experience bar. Once you fill the experience bar, you will achieve a new level. The number of levels you have will be displaying above the experience bar.

The bar on the left is your health bar. You will start the game with 10 shanks of health (20 health points). There are several ways to lose health points: Being attacked by hostile mobs, falling from a height, starving, burning, and several others. If your health bar becomes empty, you will die, and all the items in your inventory will be dropped at the sight of your death. If you hurry, you might be able to pick them back up again before they despawn after 5 minutes.

The bar on the right is your hunger bar. You will start the game with 10 shanks of hunger (20 hunger points). If you lose hunger, you should eat to restore it. There are lots of ways to lose hunger points. Sprinting and breaking blocks are some of them. As your hunger bar diminishes, a number of unpleasant things will happen: Once you go below 9 shanks (18 hunger points), you won't be able to regenerate health; once you go below 3 shanks (6 hunger points), you won't be able to sprint; and once you get down to zero, you will start to lose health points to starvation.

Once you are able to craft armor, you can equip it by putting it in its respective armor slot. Armor will reduce the damage you take from all sources (except starvation, the Void, and the warden's sonic attack). Once you equip yourself with armor, an armor bar will become visible above the health bar.

Virtually any item can be put in your offhand slot, but the most useful item is a shield. Holding down Use on Java Edition or sneaking on Bedrock Edition with a shield in your offhand will raise the shield to block an attack. One important fact to remember is that tools and weapons cannot be used from the offhand, as they require the Attack/Destroy action to use. Items that require the Use action (such as shears or bows) can still be used from the offhand, but it is important to note that any usable item in your main hand will take priority whatever is in your offhand. For example, if you are holding two bows, one in your main hand and one in your offhand, the one in your main hand is the one you will actually end up using.