How a minimap can turn Minecraft into easy mode

When you first enter a Minecraft world, you will notice that, unlike other games, the sandbox will not have any minimap to show you your location. This can be extremely daunting for new players since they have no clue what to look for and where they exactly are without a bird's eye view. Thankfully, there are loads of minimap mods that not only add a minimap but also come with various useful features.

Here is how a minimap in Minecraft can make the game extremely easy.

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Minimaps in Minecraft are extremely useful

What kind of minimaps are available for Minecraft?

JourneyMap and Xaero's minimap are two of the most famous mods for minimaps (Image via CurseForge)

Since Minecraft was created in 2009, many in the community felt the need for a minimap to travel and explore the game's nearly endless world. Hence, some mods were created to add it to the game as a third-party feature.

One of the most popular and oldest mods was called JourneyMap. It was created by techbrew and was added to the CurseForge website in 2011. It has over 200 million downloads on one website alone. This mod not only adds a minimap but also offers a fullscreen, draggable map in which you can see biomes, terrain generation, structures, mobs, other players, and more.

The next most popular minimap mod was made by xaero96, called Xaero's Minimap. As the name clearly suggests, it was a simple minimap mod that offered all the same features. It also shows your last death location and allows you to set waypoints anywhere in a Minecraft world.

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How do minimaps in Minecraft make the game easy?

Finding new biomes and structures

Find biomes and structures with ease (Image via Mojang Studios)

Even though a minimap does not show a lot of information at once, it can help you find new biomes and structures that are nearby. The fog in Minecraft can make it difficult for you to see distant places even with high render distance settings.

A minimap can be helpful in this case since it shows everything without any fog. It is worth mentioning that mods like OptiFine allow you to toggle fog altogether.

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Spot mobs in an instant

Mobs can be easily spotted on the minimap (Image via Mojang Studios)

While traveling through the world, you would also be looking for new mobs in different biomes. While you can squint closer to the screen or use a spyglass to spot distant mobs, you can also use a minimap to instantly know which mobs are present around you.

Some minimap mods not only show which mobs are on the surface, but they also display creatures dwelling in the caves right below you.

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Knowing what's ahead while mining

You can know what is ahead of you while mining with a minimap (Image via Mojang Studios)

Strip mining is a popular method of finding valuable ores like diamonds and ancient debris. However, while mining a long tunnel, you are often lost as to where you are and what is ahead of you. While finding ancient debris in the Nether, you can die from fast-flowing lava pockets that open up while mining.

This is where minimaps can be extremely helpful in showing you what is ahead of you so that you can be prepared and know where your exact location is.