You decide to go exploring in Minecraft’s never ending world that keeps regenerating beyond the horizon. Within a few minutes, you find yourself not surprisingly completely lost. You might just kill yourself to regenerate back to your bed, but you have lots of gold, diamonds, and iron in your inventory, and you do not want to lose it all. Before you decide to regenerate yourself, there are a number of strategies to get back home alive.
- Build a Map – Building a map in Minecraft requires using the crafting table. Place a compass in the center of the quadrant surrounded by a ring of 8 pieces of paper. You can harvest the paper from sugarcane, which grows on the edge of the water. Just place the sugarcane in any of your Minecraft crafting boxes, and it will turn to paper. A map will show you at the center of the map where the map was created. The map will display your immediate surroundings in the Minecraft world, and fill in as you explore the rest of it. Large cobblestone structures such as castles might be visible on the map as you approach them. If you get lost, refer to the map and return to the center of the map to where you started. Be careful to not leave the map in Minecraft, or else you really could get lost. Refer to the Minecraft Wiki to get specific instructions on how to build a map. If you have not built a compass already click here to get directions on how to build a compass.
- Build a Portal – This strategy is useful if you have built a portal already and want to return to the original portal. Mine diamonds to make a diamond pickaxe, and pour lava buckets into water to make obsidian. A portal consists of a frame of obsidian 3 blocks high and 2 blocks wide, essentially creating an open space in the middle of 6 squares. The corners are not necessary for a portal to function. Once you build the portal and catch the middle on fire with flint and steel to bring it to life, enter to portal to go to the Nether. Once in the Nether, exit the portal and reenter it. You will come back to the first portal you made, which will get you back to where you started. Refer to the Minecraft Wiki to get specific instructions on how to build a portal.
- Build Roads In All Directions – If you do not have the materials to build a map or do not have a portal to transport back to, you can always build a network of roads in all directions. This way, you may eventually hit your Minecraft starting point or see it from a distance. To do this, build a road with cobblestone to replace the dirt. This gives your road visual contrast so you do not get lost. If you find yourself at a ravine, build a one track cobblestone bridge to cross it. As you expand your road network, keep looking in all directions for your castle or wherever you came from originally. If one direction does not work, come back to where you started your road and try a new direction.
- If All Else Fails, Regenerate Yourself – You know the drill, jump off a cliff or fall into a lava pit. This way you can get back to your regeneration point and everything you have built without wasting time. Unfortunately you will lose your entire inventory, which includes all the gold and diamonds that you are carrying right now. If you have all your valuables stashed in a treasure chest somewhere, you will be able to come back to them and recover them, even after you die. Prevent yourself from getting lost in Minecraft in the future by using a map or compass in the first place.
