Before you Start

Before you can begin your blocky adventure there are somethings you have to know and do first, Such as how to install Minecraft and where to get it from.
Which we will go over below in steps starting with:

Obtaining Minecraft

First off your gonna have to create a Minecraft account which can be done by clicking here(already have a account?)
After clicking that link the page that it'll take you to should have a box that says "BUY FOR MINECRAFT: JAVA EDITION" your gonna want to click it
Now you should be at an account creation page you'll have to enter your: Email, Create a password, and Enter your Birthday.
Hit Create Account and Verify your email and then you'll be ready to purchase the game
Bam! You're ready to buy Minecraft now on this screen you'll have to: Pick your IGN(In-game name),
Pick your payment method whether its Credit card, Paypal, or a Pre-paid Minecraft card, and Enter the information accordingly.(Make sure you have the $26.95 to buy the game.)
Afterwards you'll be redirected to a page where you can download Minecraft.(If not click here!)
When it gets done downloading you just run the installer and You're done!

Things that you can do after installing Minecraft

Try a new Look!

Tired of seeing the same character when playing? Give them a personal and unique look by adding a skin!
Which can be done for free in two of the following ways: From the launcher on the skins tab or at Minecraft.net. Now you might be wondering "where do I get skins from" you can get them either online already made from a website such as Planet Minecraft or create your own using this app if you have an iOS device or by using these templates (Steve) and (Alex) along with any graphics or image editor, And if you're thinking those look the same its because they nearly are but "Alex" has 3 pixel wide arms while "Steve" has 4 pixel wide arms giving "Alex" a slimmer look, and make sure when uploading your skin to select the right model type and upload it in .png or .jpg format or it wont load/render properly.

Change how Minecraft Looks!

Are you loving Minecraft but cant stand the 16-bit textures? Are sounds getting repetitive? Is the music getting bland?
You can change every thing from textures to models to even fonts and sounds with Resource Packs all without modifying the code in anyway. Many resource packs can be found on Planet Minecraft and on the Minecraft Forum website.
You'll want to make sure that the resource pack is up to date with the most recent version of Minecraft so that newly added things are changed also.
Most resource packs are installed by just moving the resource pack into the "resourcepacks" folder which is located in your .minecraft folder.
Now you can get to the .minecraft folder two ways:
1.By typing these and searching based on your operating system

OS	Location
Windows	%APPDATA%\.minecraft
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/minecraft
Linux	~/.minecraft

If you're a Linux or Mac user, the "~" in the path refers to your home directory, and Folders starting with "." are hidden by default.

2.Now this second method will be a lot simpler but you'll still need to know how to get to the .minecraft folder for the things we'll go over later on.

To start you'll need to start up Minecraft and go to the title screen ()
Then you'll click on "Options..."
Click on "Resource Packs..."
And once you click on "Open Resource Pack Folder" you can move resource pack into there and you're almost done.

Now after completing one of the following methods you'll want to go back to the resource packs menu(

) and move over the ones that you want to use.
Click "Done" and Voila! you're finished adding a resource pack to spice up your Minecraft experience.

Speed Minecraft up a bit!

Whether Minecraft is taking along time to load or you just wanna have Minecraft run a bit smoother. Allowing Minecraft to use more RAM will help, but before we go into how to give Minecraft more ram you should know that
if you dont have enough ram to spare you'll just end up crashing the game or your computer. With that said 4Gb is more than enough ram to give Minecraft so you should have 6gb or more ram free under normal use, if not only allocate 2gb.
Not sure how much ram you have? Just Right click your toolbar and open task manager and goto the performance tab and you should see your total ram along with how much is currently being used. Like so ( )
Now to go about giving Minecraft more ram:

Open the Minecraft Launcher
Go to Launch Options
Turn on Advanced Settings
Select the profile for which version you use
Switch "JVM arguments" to on
You should see something like "-Xmx1G" change only the "1" to whatever amount of ram you wanna give Minecraft but "4" is recommended
Hit "Save" and the next time you launch using that profile Minecraft will be able to use up to the amount of ram you gave it

Getting lag? or just want to patch some textures?

Optifine is a Minecraft optimization mod that allows Minecraft to run faster and look better with full support for HD textures and many configuration options.
This mod will also have to be installed for the next section. Luckily with Optifine you don't need to go through all the hassle of installing a mod loader you just go here and download Optifine for the version of Minecraft that you want to use it on, also when you donate $10 or more you get an in-game cape where anyone who is using Optifine can see.
After you finish downloading the Optifine .jar file double click on it and you'll be given the option to install it,If nothing shows up make sure you have the most recent version of Java installed on your PC which you can get from Java.com.
Then you just Start up the minecraft launcher and you should see a new profile called "Optifine" click play on that one, and when you get to the title screen, close Minecraft, and Congrats! You've installed the Optifine mod!

Want a more Realistic look?

Before we get started with this section make sure you have Optifine installed and know how to get to your .minecraft folder.
If you've already handled that then you just go here to look and see which shader you like the most and download it from their respective website. If you're getting a shaderpack from a GitHub repository, keep in mind that if you download the repository as a .zip you will need to extract the folder within in order for the shaderpack to be detected.
After you've downloaded your shader pack and/or extracted it you just have to go to your .minecraft folder and look for a folder called "shaderpacks" drag the shaders file into it, and you are ready to go!