To craft a map in Minecraft, players need to create a Crafting Table using four Wood Planks and gather nine Sugar Cane. The Sugar Cane is crafted into nine sheets of Paper. To make a Compass, one Redstone Dust is placed in the center of the crafting grid surrounded by four Iron Ingots. The map is then crafted by placing the Compass in the center and surrounding it with the eight sheets of Paper. In Bedrock Edition, an Empty Map can be created using just the nine sheets of Paper. Players can enhance their map with a location marker by combining it with a Compass on a Cartography Table.
Maps can also be found in treasure chests, with varying probabilities based on location: sunken shipwrecks have an eight percent chance, stronghold libraries eleven percent, and cartographer’s chests in villages nearly fifty percent. Players can trade with cartographers for maps for seven or eight emeralds.
To create a Cartography Table, players need to arrange four planks in a 2x2 configuration and add two sheets of Paper. Cartography Tables can also be found in villages. To enlarge a map, players can place it in the center of a Crafting Table surrounded by eight sheets of Paper or use a Cartography Table to combine it with one sheet of Paper, repeating this process up to four times.
Using an empty map reveals surroundings as players explore, with a white marker indicating their position. Players can mark locations on their map by crafting a banner and placing it at the desired spot, then using the map on the banner to create a corresponding dot.