how do you get animals on this game?

[EmeyWhatson]

i've been playing for the past few hours and i haven't seen a single animal/monster so far. i keep expecting something to jump out of the dark and attack me, yet i see recipes that require wool and other animal related items. i also haven't found any lava or diamonds either. how do you get these things?

[v-rob]

To get animals, try the ContentDB to install a mod. Go under the "Content" tab on the main menu, click "Browse online content", find some animal mod ("Mobs Redo" is probably the most popular, with the add-on mods that go with it), click "Install", go back to the singleplayer page, click "Select Mods", enable those mods, and you have animals. This works for any mod you want on the ContentDB, as well as games and texture packs.

If you don't want any animal mod, you'll have to make wool using cotton from cotton plants (yeah, doesn't make much sense to make wool from cotton, but that's how it goes).

As for diamonds and lava, they are deep down. Lava starts at 256 blocks down, and diamonds start around there too, but diamonds are fairly rare until about 1024 blocks deep. If you have any experience with Minecraft, you'll find that Minetest worlds are very tall in comparison.