How to Make and Use Maps (Never Get Lost)
Craft an Empty Map from 8 Paper around a Compass, use it, then zoom, copy and mark the Map. Cartographers sell maps to mansions and monuments.
Use the Empty Map and it becomes a Map of the patch of land you are standing in, with north at the top and a white pointer for you. While you hold it, it records the terrain within about 128 blocks of you, so most of a new level 0 map fills in at once; walk toward any corner that stays blank. Zoomed-out maps fill in as you walk.
Craft an Empty Map
Put the Compass in the centre of a crafting table and fill the other eight slots with Paper.
| Ingredient | Recipe | Needed for one map |
|---|---|---|
| Paper | 3 Sugar Cane in a row makes 3 Paper | 8 (9 Sugar Cane gives 9 Paper, one spare) |
| Compass | 4 Iron Ingots in a plus around 1 Redstone Dust | 1 |
Empty Maps stack to 64, so craft a few at once: every new area needs its own.
If you are short on iron, a Novice Cartographer sells an Empty Map for 7 Emeralds and buys 24 Paper for 1 Emerald. An unemployed villager that claims a Cartography Table becomes a Cartographer. The chest in a village Cartographer's house can also hold Empty Maps. A Cartography Table cannot create a map from nothing in Java Edition.
How a map fills in
Maps do not centre on you. The world is divided into fixed grid squares, and a map shows whichever square you stood in when you first used it. A level 0 map covers 128 × 128 blocks. The squares start at -64, so a level 0 map made at X=0, Z=0 covers -64 to 63 on both axes.
Two things follow from the grid:
- A second Empty Map used in the same square maps it again. Walk past the edge first.
- Maps from neighbouring squares meet edge to edge with no overlap, which is why map walls line up.
The map only draws while it is in your hand. Hold it in your main hand with the off hand empty to see it full size. Shading shows slopes: a block is darker when it sits lower than the block north of it. Walk off the map and your pointer becomes a white dot on the edge. Other players carrying a copy of the map show as white pointers too, unless they wear a Carved Pumpkin.
Zoom out to cover more ground
Each level doubles the width and quadruples the area.
| Level | Scale | Area in blocks | Paper per step (crafting table / Cartography Table) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1:1 | 128 × 128 | none |
| 1 | 1:2 | 256 × 256 | 8 / 1 |
| 2 | 1:4 | 512 × 512 | 8 / 1 |
| 3 | 1:8 | 1,024 × 1,024 | 8 / 1 |
| 4 | 1:16 | 2,048 × 2,048 | 8 / 1 |
A Cartography Table zooms for 1 Paper per level instead of 8, so a full zoom costs 4 Paper, not 32.
Zooming never shifts a map to a new area. The zoomed map covers the larger grid square around the old area, which often sits off-centre. To chart a distant region, make a level 0 map inside it and zoom that one.
Copy and lock a map
- Crafting table: one Map plus up to 8 Empty Maps gives up to 9 identical maps.
- Cartography Table: one Map plus one Empty Map returns two.
Copies share their data: whatever one player explores appears on every copy, so a group can split up and fill one big map.
To freeze a map, put it in a Cartography Table with a Glass Pane. A locked map never changes, even when the land does, and it can no longer be zoomed.
Mark places with banners and item frames
A banner is 6 Wool of one colour over a Stick. Place it and use your map on it: a marker appears in the banner's base colour. Rename the banner in an Anvil first and the name shows under the marker. Patterns never show on the map, so give each kind of landmark its own base colour and name every banner. Use the map on the banner again to remove the marker. If you break the banner, its marker vanishes once you come back near that spot with the map, unless the map is locked.
A map in an Item Frame puts a green marker at the frame on every copy, if the frame is inside the area that map covers. Hang a copy of your base's map at home and the copies you carry point there. Maps of one zoom level framed in a grid make a map wall.
Explorer maps from Cartographers
| Cartographer level | Price | Leads to |
|---|---|---|
| Apprentice | 8 Emeralds + Compass | A village of another biome, a jungle temple or a swamp hut |
| Journeyman | 13 Emeralds + Compass | Ocean monument |
| Journeyman | 12 Emeralds + Compass | Trial chambers |
| Master | 14 Emeralds + Compass | Woodland mansion |
The Apprentice's maps depend on the Cartographer's own biome, and it never sells a map to its own village type. Each level unlocks two trades from its list, so a Journeyman may offer only one of its two maps. The destination is chosen when the trade unlocks, so a second copy from the same villager leads to the same place. See the villager trading guide for levelling a Cartographer. The Master's map is the dependable way to find a woodland mansion.
The free seed map marks where the game tries to place each of these structures in your world. The biome decides whether one generates.
Since 26.3, explorer maps are separate items named after where they lead, such as Woodland Mansion Map, Ocean Monument Map and Buried Trial Chambers Map. Before that they were ordinary Maps with names like Woodland Explorer Map. Either way you can copy one with Empty Maps before a risky trip.
Maps you find in chests
- Shipwrecks and ocean ruins. A shipwreck's map chest, the one that usually holds Paper, always has a Buried Treasure Map, as do about 43% of large and 42% of small ocean ruin chests. The red X marks a buried chest that always contains a Heart of the Sea.
- Abandoned camps (added in 26.3). Both kinds of loot chest in an abandoned camp can hold maps. A common chest's camp map is named for the biome it leads to (for example Cherry Grove Camp Map) and never leads to a camp in the biome where you found it. The rarer secret chest, an Oxidized Copper Chest usually hidden under another block, holds a map to one of seven structures.
Maps in the Nether and the End
In the Nether a map shows a red-and-grey pattern instead of terrain, though banner markers still appear. In the End it works normally. For the Nether, rely on coordinates and a Lodestone Compass, explained in coordinates, compasses and lodestones.
Mistakes that waste maps
- Exploring, then zooming. Pick the level before you set out.
- Leaving the map in your inventory. It only draws while held.
- Locking the map you still want to zoom. Lock a copy.
Every tile of a map wall is a separate map, so a 3 × 3 wall of level 0 maps takes 72 Paper, 36 Iron Ingots and 9 Redstone Dust. A sugar cane farm covers the Paper without replanting.