What do you keep in your hotbar?

I think I answered this before but I've changed it up so I'll say again. Now when I'm digging or hunting I keep lava and a bucket of water. If you stumble into lava you can throw down the water to keep safe or you can run through groups of enemies and drop the lava to kill them and then collect it later. Both are great.

 

I always keep one slot for food (usually steak or bread), one for torches, one for cobblestone, and the rest filled with various tools and weapons.

If I don't keep food on a hotkey I tend to forget to eat until I notice my health slowly chipping away! Torches are always handy and whenever I'm exploring I tend to light my pathway with torches so I'm able to easily find the route back to my boat or the shoreline. If I need to quickly plug a hole or encase myself in a makeshift building I always use cobblestone - it's plentiful and easy to tear down. I tend to keep an axe, pickaxe, and sword on hotkeys at all times and occasionally switch in a bow, shears, or shovel depending upon my activities!

 

1-5: My tools go here (no hoe)
6: Usually torches (For light and air)
7: Food, either melon slices if I'm poor or steak if I'm well off.
8: Water bucket (extremely useful incase you need to fall down without taking damage or you are set on fire/clearing lava.
9: Free slot (anything goes here)

 

I always have my tools at the beginning of the bar, and at the end of the bar I keep torches for quick placement. Anything in between those things will be the items or materials I am currently using, and I will switch them out periodically.

 

My bars are always the same, sword / pick / axe / shovel / hoe / 64 cobble / 64 dirt / 64 bread / 64 torches, and I carry a backup of each tool in the inventory slot above the bar as well as having backup torches, a bucket of water, and some wood logs. I sometimes have other things in my inventory for situational purposes but I always keep the same stock of items regardless of what I'm doing and when I make a new world my first goal is always to build a completely safe compound and become sustainable before I do anything else.

 

Usually the main tools and a sword. The rest are for constuction blocks Something like:
1- Pickaxe
2- Shovel
3-Axe
4-Sword
5-9 - Blocks, suck as cobblestone, dirt or whatever I'm currently using as construction.

I've rebound the 0 key to `, and I place torches on that one. Makes for quick access.

 

Critical stuff on the left and right, rotating stuff in the middle:
- Sword
- Torches
- Bow
- Water when underground, otherwise building materials
- Random building block - usually planks or cobble
- Random - could be seeds, saplings, building material or whatever I picked up last
- Tool (axe, shovel, shears, fortune enchanted axe etc.) Edit: enchanted pickaxe. Not axe.
- Food
- Pickaxe

 

I always keep a sword in 1 when I'm in survival, but when I'm doing admin stuff on my server I like to keep on in place 5, just so I don't accidentally press 1 and do damage to something I keep other blocks everywhere else in creative mode, and in survival, I might have the other tools in the hotbar, and maybe some food somewhere

 

Tools, dirt blocks and ladders (swords are tools).

 

Sword, pickaxe, food, bow, building block (usually stone), map, and whatever situational item(s) I need (bucket, axe, shovel, etc) at any given time.

 

A few stacks of torches, food, a sword, a pick, a shovel, a stack of dirt blocks. Bow and arrows if I have them.

 

From the first slot to the last respectively: pickaxe, sword, shovel, axe, building block, building block, buildiong block, torches, food. The building block sots are filled with the blocks I'm using for the build. If I'm mining, one of those would be a bucket, another cobblestone, etc.