Minecraft is most fun when played with friends. Almost every “lan party” I host (or go to) involves Minecraft. In some of these “parties”, we don’t have access to the web. In cases like these, it might be a bit confusing to get Minecraft to work in multiplayer. So the purpose of this post is to show you how to play Minecraft over lan without internet.

The first step is to connect all the computers together through a router. If you only have two computers, then you can connect them through a LAN cable.

Step 1 – Create a server if you don’t already have one

The next step is setting up a server (if this isn’t already done). The easiest way to do this is to start the MC client (you’ll need to select the “play offline” box to be able to play). Next, click the singleplayer button and select/create the world which you want to play.

Once your world is created/opened, you need to make it accessible over LAN. To do so, press enter, then “Open to LAN”. Choose your preferred settings and press “Start LAN World”.

On the Mac you want to host the computer his Esc and then select Open to LAN Then on the Mac you will be joining the game select Multiplayer from the main menu and you will see the game which you can then join. If you've done these steps and are getting an error when trying to join the game please edit that error into your question.

Notice the message that appears “Local game hosted on 0.0.0.0:7762″ you needn’t remember the zeros, but write down the numbers after that. They correspond to the port through which other people can connect to our server.

Note that you might also need to turn off your firewall to allow other people to connect.

Step 2 – Getting the required IP Address

Now, you need to determine the IP address of your computer. Go to the Windows start menu and click on run (if you’re on XP) or type “run” in the search bar if you’re on Windows Vista/7/8.

Once the Run program opens, type “cmd.exe” (without the double quotes) in the text box.

This will pop up a Command Prompt window, which might look intimidating to those of you who are less computer literate. But fear not, what we will do is completely harmless.

In the command prompt windows, type ipconfig, and press ENTER. This will pop up a bunch of different series of numbers. Now, the one you want to give your friend(s) depends on whether you’re using a router or a direct LAN cable.

If you’re using a direct LAN Cable, you need the IP address that is identified as “Autoconfiguration IP Address”

On the other hand, if you’re connected through a router, you need to look for “IP Address”

Step 3 – Connecting to the server

Now, connecting to our server is quite straightforward, you (or your friend(s)) need to open Minecraft and click on Multiplayer. Then, click on “Direct Connect” and, in the text box, enter the IP Address obtained previously followed by a colon and the port number we get in step 1:

That’s it; you should now be able to play Minecraft over LAN without internet!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to comment below!

As always, thanks for reading and have a nice day,
-Icosebyte