How To Use Maps and Cartography Tables In Minecraft – Full Tutorial for Java and Bedrock!

Hey everybody, it’s UnderMyCap, and welcome back to another post! Today I’m going to be teaching you all about maps in Minecraft. I’ll be covering how to craft maps, how to use the cartography table, and a whole bunch of features that come with it — including expanding maps, duplicating maps, locking maps, using banners, working with villages, and so much more. If you’d prefer to watch the full video tutorial, you can check it out here: How To Use Maps and Cartography Tables In Minecraft – Full Tutorial!

How to Craft a Map in Minecraft

First of all, if you don’t know how to craft a map, here is the recipe. You need eight pieces of paper and one compass. A compass is crafted using one piece of redstone and four pieces of iron. Once you have those ingredients, place the compass in the centre of the crafting grid and wrap it around with paper — kind of like wrapping up a Christmas present — and you’ll get yourself a map!

To use a map, all you have to do is right-click on it with your mouse and the map will open up. One really interesting thing about maps is that each pixel represents one block, making it a one-to-one ratio. This is actually why people are able to create all kinds of pixel art using maps, which I find incredibly cool!

Another neat little feature is that you can actually name your map. You can give it any name you like to make it unique, and that name will stay with the map as you use it. It’s a small touch but a really handy one for staying organised in your world!

How to Craft and Use a Cartography Table

Now that you know how to get a basic map, let’s move on to the cartography table, which unlocks a whole bunch of possibilities. A cartography table is crafted using two pieces of paper and four pieces of wood. It gives you a great deal of control over your maps — you can copy and duplicate them, expand and zoom them out, and even lock them to preserve them permanently.

Duplicating a Map

If you have a map and you want to copy and duplicate it to give to another player in your world, this is really simple! All you have to do is craft an empty map and place it in the bottom slot of the cartography table, then place your existing map in the slot above it. The result is two identical maps that you can share with a friend. They even stack, which is a really great bonus!

Expanding a Map

If you want to expand your map and make it cover a much larger area, you can do that right in the cartography table too. Simply place a piece of paper in the bottom slot and your map in the slot above it. The cartography table even gives you a helpful visual preview showing how the map will look once expanded. When you expand a map, it increases the coverage by a power of two, meaning each pixel will then represent two blocks instead of one. This is also what creates the colour blending effect you sometimes see on larger maps, which looks really cool!

Locking a Map

Locking maps is another incredibly useful feature. If you want to preserve the history of a world without any future changes affecting your map, you can lock it using a glass pane. Simply place the glass pane in the bottom slot of the cartography table and your map in the slot above it. A lock icon will appear on the map, indicating it is now permanently locked. This means that even if you make changes to the world — like removing blocks — those changes will not be reflected on the locked map. I honestly wish I had known about this sooner in my own world!

Placing Maps and Creating a Map Wall

Something else that’s really cool is that you can actually place maps on the ground or on walls. If you get a few maps that cover adjacent areas, you can place them together to form one large combined map display. You can also rotate them to fit perfectly. The name you gave your map will even show up when it is placed, which is a lovely little detail!

Using Banners to Mark Locations on a Map

Another fantastic feature is the ability to mark locations on your map using banners. To do this, simply hold your map and right-click on a banner that is placed in the world. A marker will appear on your map at the banner’s location and it will stay there permanently, so you can always see where that point of interest is. You can also remove the marker by right-clicking the banner again with the map in hand. Banners will also naturally show up on maps, which makes them a brilliant tool for navigation and marking important spots in your world!

The Cartographer Villager

The last part of this tutorial is all about the cartographer villager, and they are super cool! As you level up a cartographer villager through trading, you gain access to special maps that lead you to valuable locations. These include Ocean Explorer Maps, Woodland Explorer Maps, and Treasure Maps. You can trade compasses and emeralds with the cartographer to obtain these maps, and they look absolutely amazing — I had personally never seen one quite like that before!

A really great feature unique to these special explorer maps is that you can also duplicate them using the cartography table, just like a regular map. So if you have a friend who wants to find the same location, you can duplicate the map and share it with them. That is incredibly handy!

Wrapping Up

And that is everything you need to know about maps and the cartography table in Minecraft! I hope this has been helpful — I’ve seen quite a few people feeling unsure about all of these features, so I really hope this clears things up. Maps are such a powerful and underrated tool in Minecraft, and now you have everything you need to make the most of them. Thank you so much for reading, and I can’t wait to share more content with you soon!