I Fixed Minecraft’s Archaeology!

Look I’ve been excited for archeology and Minecraft since they announced it Minecraft live a few years ago and I’m stoked it’s here but I think we can all agree it’s it’s just not quite right yet I think they’ve pushed a little too hard to emulate real archeology which is a

Cool idea on the surface but an application it just has some truly fatal flaws like one of the biggest is with real archeology a simple Pottery Shard or an arrowhead is a valuable find because it truly comes from a lost time and place but in Minecraft when all we

Have is a nebulous fictitious history true historic value is a really hard thing to sell but what I think is the biggest flaw is that Minecraft is first and foremost a game which means everything comes down to fun gameplay that rewards you appropriately based on the time committed and how much of a

Challenge it presented Minecraft’s archeology as it currently is just lacks that so I’m gonna create an upgrade for archeology that improves on all of this I’m gonna take a more in Indiana Jones approach to archeology where you explore large mysterious lost structures full of valuable treasure traps obstacles and

Even some special relics to find and as a cherry on top it’s all going to be a data pack with a resource pack so you’ll be able to add it to your Java Edition game with absolutely no mods installed so let’s start with the relics I did

Some brainstorming and I came up with three ideas that are pretty valuable but also pretty balanced the first one is a ceremonial dagger this weapon has mediocre damage but a very fast recharge speed so it effectively brings back pre 1.9 combat and since it’s supposed to be

A valuable Relic not just a weapon I also made it give you a small speed Buff when you hold it in your main hand the second one is a new goat horn this horn allows you to cycle the weather every time you blow it personally I find

Weather to be one of the most annoying features in Minecraft I mean it’s it’s always raining when you don’t want it to and yet if you want lightning you could be waiting ages this horn makes it nice and simple and I even added a new horn sound for it And finally the last one is a new totem the totem of recall when you hold in your off hand you can right click with it to set a recall point at your location then the next time you right click with it in your offhand it will teleport you to your recall point and

Consume the totem in the process super useful if you’ve traveled a long way from home or if you’re in a sticky situation and you need a quick exit the trick here is that it’s actually a retextured carrot on a stick and the data pack detects when I right click

With it and saves the location with an invisible marker entity and then when you click it again it just teleports you to it okay so now we have the major rewards established it’s time to move on to where you will actually find them my plan is to add a new structure called

The Lost Temple this structure will be the lower basis of how the evokers of the Woodland Mansion find their riches and get their ancient magic in fact I actually planned on making it so you could get maps to these temples in the Woodland mansions and the buried

Treasures but I I didn’t have time for that so if people like this I will definitely add that in a future update and maybe even some more really cool stuff so be sure to subscribe but yes the Lost Temple this structure will be a Subterranean sprawling procedurally generated structure that should have

Enough variety to feel different just about every time you find it you’ll never find more than one of the relics in it and the path to the room where you’ll find it will always be completely filled with traps so I’m kind of starting from the end and working back

From there The Relic room is where I started the Relic spawns on an altar and I really wanted to make this a special unique encounter so I designed a special trap when you pick up the Relic the door seals itself and the room begins to fill with sand you have four minutes to

Complete a challenging parkour course around the room to get to the top otherwise you’ll drown in the sand I took advantage of the new display entities that Minecraft added in 1.20 to do this the sand is actually just an oversized sand block entity that is slowly growing in height and then

There’s another invisible marker entity that is rising at the same speed eat as the sand and detects whether the player is below it and if they aren’t it applies the effects of being under the sand like most things in Minecraft this is cheeseable but I did take a couple

Steps to make it just a bit harder you’re given mining fatigue so you can’t just break out but you can still skip the Parkour By just building and honestly that’s probably a good thing the parkour is really hard and it’s better that it’s more of just a pride

Thing than an actual requirement to you know make it out alive that said I did add a custom Guardian Spirit which is a modified Vex that has lower damage but higher Health the idea being that it will make it just a little bit harder to

Build up an escape all right so now we have some good rewards and we have some exciting gameplay we just need to package it all up into a full structure without getting too technical the waist structure generation works is actually not too hard to understand basically you

Just create a bunch of chunks of a structure and then you give the game rules about which pieces can connect to each other and you plug that all into a data pack the game then essentially grows the structure by starting from a single chunk and attaching more chunks

To it following the rules that you laid out for it that is grossly simplified but I did a I did a deep dive video that explains how this works in great detail if you want to know more click the info card on the upper corner if you want to

See that so I built a total of 27 chunks for the game to build this structure with three are entrances that are essentially the core of the structure that the rest grows from and I just made three to offer variety seven are different types of hallways that Branch

Into various directions so we don’t have the super uniform shape from the structure and eight are different types of room some of them are themed decorative rooms like a chapel or a kitchen and some are well let’s just say they’re a little more devious than that and then we have

Six chunks that offer some challenge in the form of traps and obstacles like parkour for instance you’ll always have at least two of these leading up to The Relic room now I wanted this to build on archeology that Mojang has implemented though not just replace it all together

So I made sure to fill it with lots of sand gravel and dirt so you could actually quote unquote excavate it not so much that it’s just like fully buried like the trail ruins but enough that you know you can you can clean it up essentially and I also made a custom

Loot table for the suspicious sand and gravel that makes it so you can find some valuables like bundles golden apples and even occasionally totems of undying to tie in with the lore idea behind this structure and now I’ve wrapped this all up into a nice little package for this video but actually by

This point I had put around 50 hours into this project in just over a week and I was worried that Mojang would release some sort of big update that makes archeology better and would undermine the whole idea behind this so I just excited to call it there there is

Some more things I would love to do for this like fix some bugs here or there add some more modules make the map show up in the Woodland mansions and maybe even add some more structures just to really flesh out the whole of archeology but I am really happy with what I’ve got

And I’m excited to show it off in more detail so let’s see how it all came together oh boy here we go looks like it has generated correctly ah can you imagine if this was actually in the game like this this is sick this little statue here is half buried but it

Kind of marks where you need to dig just go a couple blocks in front straight down and we should oh yep we are definitely inside oh this is looking great oh I can already see The Relic room but we’re actually we’re gonna hold up because I wanna I wanna see what else the

Structure has to offer oh there we go golden apple that’s definitely custom amazing oh we got an intersection okay so we got paths generating on all these different sides ah Arrow trap okay is this working right oh yeah it’s working right Easy Does It don’t want to hit the pressure plates

All right and straight into a parkour section oh boy I’ve never messed this up in testing so if I mess it up now I’m gonna be quite embarrassed yeah nailed it oh my God straight into another trap are you kid and it doesn’t go anywhere love it love it a lot

Imagine if this water hadn’t ruined this I would have had to do the whole row okay but I think two is going to be plenty hard yep plenty hard for my very Wow not even sure what trip that this is dead end it also dead ends Ah worried about it nothing happens I tend to die in my own structure okay a nice pleasant decorative module this is what I like to see give me something good for my trouble huh oh yeah that’s that’s great that’s what I was wanting oh a totem now we’re talking you know

What I built this place I’ve had enough of it I’m going to go for the Relic where okay yes beautiful diamond block ah yes beautiful gold block I will back out now Glad I stayed oh no my Nemesis my Nemesis is the next module I got a cool trick watch this okay okay not dying again I will not oh my God it’s the dagger do I dare do I dare grab it because I know I’m not gonna make

This parkour I haven’t made it once in testing I know it’s possible but I’m bad I had you know what I’m man enough to admit I’ll cheat if I need to oh boy okay let’s start with the vex oh the Sam’s already Rising so quick okay I gotta go the Santa’s Rising very

Fast oh my God one shot one opportunity Okay I messed it up I messed it up real bad huh okay you know we’re building we’re building I’m gonna do it I’m not dying you know what let’s let’s give it one more shot from here okay I’m man enough to know that I’ve lost this fight help

Help it’s all gone bad hey can I make it from here probably not oh my God we’re done we’re done I’ve shut it off screw you sand my child I leave you in peace to suffer oh my God I made a jump congratulate me

I made a structure and I’m at a jump I’m done hope you like it I’ll see you next time bye if you want to try this out for yourself there’s a link to a free download in the description also if you like 1.20 features I have a series where

Me and some friends are trying to collect every smithing template and hardcore but the structures they all spawn in have been enhanced and challenge of hide it is genuinely insane go check it out it’s on the screen right now anyways thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time bye