The Cartography Table is a block that is used for cloning, expanding, locking, zooming out, adding pointers,... etc. You can also do many other things at the crafting table, but it generally will cost you more paper.

Generally, the Cartography Table is a helpful tool that can help navigate your world. In this article, we will show you how to obtain and how to use a Cartography Table in Minecraft.

Table of Contents

Cartography Table in Minecraft

1. How to get a Cartography Table in Minecraft

There are two ways to obtain a cartography table in Minecraft, one by looting it in a village, and the other by crafting one on your own.

Find a cartography table in Villages

Cartography tables can be found randomly in cartographer houses in villages. The outside of the cartographer house will have some flowers and has a roof made of stairs. Overall, the cartographer house looks quite similar to other houses so it might be hard to find one, let alone you have to find a nearby village before locating his house.

On the other hand, getting a Cartography Table through crafting is much easier.
You can find Cartography tables in Cartography houses in villages in Minecraft.

Craft a cartography table of your own

Here are the materials needed to craft a Cartography Table:

  • 2 pieces of paper
  • 4 Wooden Plank (doesn't matter what kind)

To make paper, all you have to do is placing 3 Sugar Cane in the middle row of the crafting table. As for wood planks, just put any wood block into the crafting table. You can use any wood from the overworld. It doesn't have to be the same type.

You can easily make 3 pieces of paper with 3 Sugar Cane

To craft the Cartography Table in Minecraft, place 2 pieces of paper next to each other on the top row of the crafting table and 4 planks on the 2x2 space under the pieces of paper.

The material to craft a Cartography table can be found very easily

It is almost always a better idea to create a Cartography Table yourself rather than finding one in the world.

2. How to use a Cartography Table in Minecraft

Right-click the Cartography Table to open its UI. You can see 2 slots on the left, which are the inputs. The top slot is for the map and the bottom slot is for the material. The slot on the right is the output. The middle is the preview of your crafting result.

Now, we will show you how to use a Cartography Table in Minecraft for each purpose.

Rename map

In the Minecraft Bedrock edition, you can change the name of your maps to make the purpose of each maps clearer. In case you haven't got any map, you can refer to our detailed guidelines of how to make a map in Minecraft.

The UI of the Cartography tables in Minecraft

Expand map

Having a zoomed-out will allow you to see more information with just 1 map. So how to use Cartography table to expand map?

To expand a map, place an opened map on the top left slot and some paper on the bottom left slot of the Cartography Table. Click on the right slot to get a zoomed-out map. You can do this up to 4 times.

You can zoom out your map up to 4 times with the Cartography tables and it only costs 4 pieces of paper

Add a locator

If you want to know the location of you and other players, you need to add a locator to your map. To do this, add a map and a compass to the left slots of the cartography table.

Now your map will show your location and your direction. If you are playing on a Multiplayer server, the location of other players will be shown on the map as well. If a player is outside the range of the map, their icon will be shown on the edge of the map.

You can see the location of you and other players by adding a locator to the map.

Lock map

You can also lock a map so it won't update the information of the world. To do this, simply put the map and a Glass panel into the Cartography Table. This is useful when you want to keep the map of a certain area.

Note that if you lock a map, there is no way to unlock it or made any further modifications to it so be careful.

You can lock the map in Minecraft so it won't update the world information.

Copy a map

You can also make a copy of a map with the Cartography Table. How to use a Cartography Table in Minecraft to copy a map?

It's simple ,just put the map and 1 empty map into the Cartography Table and you will have 2 identical copies. If your original map is locked then the copy of it will also be locked.

You can copy a map using 1 empty map using the Cartography Table.

Buy map

A Cartography Table is also the key of how to make a cartographer villager. It is actually a job site block that could turn a villager to become a cartographer if placed near him.

Once getting a cartographer villager, you can buy maps of many key locations in your world such as shipwrecks or the closest woodland mansion. Please note that you will need some Emerald to do cartographer Minecraft trades, including buying maps from them.

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