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Mechanics

When held and right-clicked, the player will be displayed as a white arrow on the map, with a small circle of the land surrounding it. The remaining part of the map is blank, meaning that it has been unexplored since the creation of the map. As the player walks around the world, the map will be slowly filled in; however, it must be held while walking around.

When the map has been fully filled in, a map can be expanded by simply placing it in the crafting table and surrounding it with paper. A map can be expanded up to four times. Once this has occurred, a new map must be crafted in order to continue "mapping" unexplored areas. A map can also be duplicated. This is done by placing a blank map beside the actual map in a Crafting Table .

Buildings created by the player will show up on the map (only if it is 16 by 16 square minimum), but if changes are made to the map, they will not be displayed on the map until the player revisits that location. The player can also walk around with the map in their hands, so when you look down, the map is brought up to full screen, and when you look up, the map is brought down so you can look at it and explore at the same time.

In the PC version of Minecraft , a map cannot possibly display the entire world, as a Minecraft World is potentially infinite. However, in the Xbox 360 and PS3 editions, a single map can cover the entire world. In all versions- with the exclusion of Minecraft: Pocket Edition and Minecraft Pi edition, the map will display any and all players in the world. This feature was first introduced in Minecraft XBLA and was later added into Minecraft 1.5.

Uses

Maps allow players to be able to find their way back to a location they had previously found. Maps currently only support seeing surface locations, there is no support for underground locations.

In multiplayer, players can use the map to locate other players who happen to be within the area which the map covers, as they will also appear as icons on the map.

Maps can be mounted within an item frame , and hung on a wall. The map will expand to fill the side of the block upon which it is mounted. In this way, smaller-scale maps can be arranged in order to create larger mosaic maps. Clicking a map which is mounted on the wall, will rotate it by 90 degrees.

Trivia

• Maps work in The Nether , although the map must be crafted in The Nether. Maps crafted in The Nether do not work in the regular world, and vice versa. Maps made in the Nether will not display any terrain because the roof of the world is covered in bedrock (making them quite useless). Similarly, this also happens with maps made in The End .
• In Minecraft Console Edition , players are automatically spawned with a map in their inventory.
• As of 1.4 when maps are crafted they are labeled empty maps and will show the current chunk the player is in when right-clicked. This can be very useful in finding Jungle Temples and Desert Temples , as they will appear on the map as well.
• The "Map Room" achievement in Minecraft: Pocket Edition requires players to complete and properly arrange 9 separate maps in a grid pattern.