How to make a map in Minecraft (1.18 Bedrock & Java)

Time needed: 10 minutes.

To make a map in Minecraft, you will first need to gather sugar cane, iron ingots, and redstone. After finding your ingredients. You’ll then use these precursors to create paper and a compass that can then be combined to create a map!

1. Find Sugar Cane

   It shouldn’t be too difficult to find sugar cane. It can be found anywhere there’s water in the Overworld dimension, so you won’t have too much trouble tracking it down. Any Overworld biome where there’s water gives you a chance to find sugar cane, although it has different odds to generate in each different climate zone.

2. Get Iron Ingots

   Iron ingots are a precursor to the compass, which will be a primary ingredient of your map. To get them, you’ll first need to find iron ore, which can be turned into iron ingots using a furnace. Iron ore is a common resource and can be found in many places. The best of these places is reported by many to be in caves. Iron ore is easy to identify by its specks of light brown/pink/peach scattered within certain cave tiles. When you’ve found four pieces of iron ore, take them to a furnace and combine them with fuel (e.g. wood or coal) to create the four iron ingots that are needed to create a map.

3. Get a Pile of Redstone

   You’ll also need one pile of redstone to make a map in Minecraft. Caves are one of the best places to find it since it redstone is only found in layers 0-16, so you may be able to find your iron and pile of redstone in the same cave. You’ll recognize it easily by its distinctive red dust pattern. Once you have your pile of redstone and your other components, you’ll be ready to head to the crafting table to start making a map!

4. Make Paper

   Now that you have sugar cane, you’re going to use it to make paper for your map. To do this, open the crafting table and place three sugar cane in the crafting grid as pictured. This will provide you with three sheets of paper! You’ll need to do this a total of three times for your first map, as an upcoming step will require eight sheets of paper total.

5. Make a Compass

   After you make your paper (or before, if you prefer), you’ll need to craft a compass to combine with your new paper to create a map. Making a compass will require four iron ingots and one pile of redstone. Once you have these items, arrange them with the pile of redstone in the center tile of the crafting grid and the four iron ingots on the top, bottom, left, and right of it to craft a compass.

6. Make a Map

   Paper and a compass are all the components you’ll need to make a map, so you’re ready to go once you have those. To make a map, take these items to the crafting table and arrange them in the way shown. You’re going to need to place the compass in the center with eight pieces of paper filling the remaining squares in the crafting grid. Once you’ve done this, you’ll see that you can create an “empty locator map” that can now be added to your inventory! If you want a plain “empty map” that doesn’t show you and your friends’ locations, then you can just add the eight pieces of paper without the compass.

7. Fill Your Map

   You’ve “made” a map, but it’s blank! You still need to fill it for it to be of any use. In order to fill your map, simply move around with it as your active item. You’ll see it transform from a blank piece of parchment to a finished map as detail is added during your travels. Once you fill up your starter map, then you’ll want to start looking into the options for expanding (or zooming out) your map to give you even more space!

8. Expand Your Map

   Your original map will fill up long before you’ve been able to document the whole world. Fortunately, your maps can be easily expanded (aka zoomed) to allow you even more space to map out your adventures! The process of expanding your map is very similar to creating the original map. You can expand your map up to four times. Each expansion requires an additional eight pieces of paper, but you luckily don’t need to make any more compasses. For each zoom level, you’ll place eight pieces of paper around the edges as before, but now you’ll place your map in the center of the crafting grid instead of placing a compass there. When you do this, you’ll craft a zoomed map that can be added to your inventory and used to chart even more travels!