Navigation is very important in Minecraft. With an infinite world you can get lost and never see your base again if you don’t memorize your way back or know how to use coordinates.
Though, sometimes you don’t want to rely on coordinates specifically and instead want to use a map and map out your world the best you can.
A cartography table helps a lot with this and in this tutorial we will teach you how to make and use one.
Minecraft Cartography Table Recipe
- 2 paper
- 4 wooden plank blocks
The recipe for a cartography table is pretty simple and you can make it pretty early on in the game. The main thing you will need is to find sugar cane and farm it to make the paper.
You will need just 3 sugar cane to get the paper you need for a single cartography table, which is usually how much you will find in the wild by rivers.
To make the cartography table, arrange the ingredients like in the image below:
You can use any wooden plank blocks, including warped and crimson planks from the Nether. You can mix and match them as well.
How to Use Cartography Table
The cartography table has several uses. Most of them are used on maps; you can zoom in, clone, or lock a map using the cartography table.
If you have used a map in Minecraft, then you know that the map starts off pretty small.
You use the cartography table to zoom the map out and allow it to show you a much larger area. To zoom a map out you just need a used map (not empty map) and a piece of paper on the cartography table.
This can be done multiple times to create a very large map.
To clone a map, you need an already existing map (one you have used to map an area out) and then an empty unused map.
Combining them will clone the map, including any markers that are on it.
You can also use one of the maps to explore an area and the cloned map will update with it. Though, if you zoom either of the maps out, then they’ll no longer be cloned and won’t act as the same map.
Finally, you can also lock a map by combining a map and a glass pane.
Locking a map means that no other alterations can be made on the map. It can’t be zoomed out or have markers added to it. When the terrain changes, the map will remain the same and won’t update.
Cloning this map will create another locked map.
The table can also be used to give villagers the cartographer profession.
These villagers will trade you maps, item frames, colored banners, and banner patterns, and glass panes. All of these things are used to make changes to a map on a cartography table, but they will be pretty costly.
Other than emeralds, this villager can request compasses for trading.
What to do Next
There are a lot more utility blocks in Minecraft. They give you access to new game options and many of them give unemployed villagers their profession.
A very useful utility blocks that is going to save you the cost of materials is the stonecutter.
In our article we explain how to craft a stonecutter and how to use it.
