The first episode of 3rd Life was dedicated to getting started. Everyone was teleported to a random spot on the map, and started their adventure either solo or in pairs.
After a day or two of gathering the supplies necessary for survival in the early days of Minecraft, people slowly started to cluster together. Bdubs and Cleo — who had spawned together — picked up Impulse and Scar on the way, and during the third night, their temporary base at the heart of the map became a meeting place for their quartet, as well as Scott, Jimmy, Joel, Etho and Tango. They hung out outside the small hut, listening to Bdubs's music disc and trading goods and information... until a massive swarm of Phantoms forced them all to flee indoors until dawn.
Tango and Etho staked their claim upon the village at the south-eastern corner of the map, something that did not go over well with Martyn and Big B, who had spawned there. However, after some negotiating back and forth, Martyn and Big B surrendered the village to Tango and Etho, at which point Etho used his small supply of dark oak saplings to grow a dark oak tree in the middle of the village. Cleo, Bdubs, Impulse and Scar tried to break it down to get more saplings, but Etho refused to let them, stating it was a historical monument. Scar, out of spite, burned it to the ground as soon as everyone's backs were turned.
Meanwhile, Ren had gathered enough materials to make an enchantment table, and decided to start a business he dubbed "Rendog's Enchanting Emporium", but later re-dubbed it to "Renchanting" when Martyn joined as his right hand man. Martyn went around to the village, where Tango, Bdubs and Cleo were trying to bribe Grian into giving up the location of the only two villagers he had hidden away when nobody was looking.
During Martyn's pitch, Grian decided to scare the group by luring a nearby creeper into their midst. However, this prank goes wrong when the creeper unexpectedly explodes, taking Scar with it, which marks the first death on the server.
Grian, feeling immensely bad for costing Scar his first life, made him a deal: Grian would act as Scar's right hand man and do whatever Scar told him to, until he lost his own first life. Scar accepted, and took Grian along to the desert on the western side of the map, along with his new pet llama, Pizza.
On the other side of the map, Scott and Jimmy found a small valley in the middle of a flower forest after following Scar's stripmine, and decided to set up shop there, since it was well hidden and easy to defend in case of battle. They started building their respective houses, as well as a wheat farm and a small pen for animals. However, Scott quickly noticed Jimmy's atrocious building skills, and waited for him to leave before completely reworking the front of Jimmy's house and barring him from building anything that was going to be in direct view.
Scar and Grian set up a small base on the top of a mountain in the middle of the desert, and started plotting to create a monopoly on sand. However, Grian pointed out that the entire desert might be too much for two people to defend, and thus it would be a better idea to get a monopoly on a more manageable resource. Thus, Grian and Scar went over to the dark oak forest near the world border and chopped down every single tree, in order to take every single piece of dark oak wood and every dark oak sapling.
At this point, Skizzleman got ambushed by an Enderman, losing his first life.
Life status
| Player IGN | Nickname | Lives remaining |
| BdoubleO | Bdubs | 3 |
| Bigbst4tz | Big B | 3 |
| EthosLab | Etho | 3 |
| GoodTimesWithScar | Scar | 2 |
| Grian | Grian | 3 |
| ImpulseSV | Impulse | 3 |
| InTheLittleWood | Martyn | 3 |
| Rendog | Ren | 3 |
| Scott Smajor | Scott | 3 |
| Skizzleman | Skizz | 2 |
| SmallishBeans | Joel | 3 |
| SolidarityGaming | Jimmy/Timmy | 3 |
| TangoTek | Tango | 3 |
| ZombieCleo | Cleo | 3 |
