It’s an island in the sky, but this time the island is made of netherrack and your job is to find chests, build houses and slay a dragon. Those are a lot of hats for one player to wear, and this isn’t TF2, so the hats are a lie. Confused yet? Build a wooden pickaxe and smash your way through netherbricks to chop down a tree, then talk to me about confusion.

Deception is a very neat, compact little survival map. It starts you out with just two blocks of wood, a bucket of lava and a bucket of water and little else. It’s up to you to make your way off the netherrack island and chop down the tree and it is up to you to craft a sky environment capable of not only supporting life, but creating the tools necessary to slay a dragon.

The simplicity of the map is refreshing, and the survival experience is a solid one. Is this anything especially wildly groundbreaking? Perhaps not. But when you’re tumbling into the void with the only iron ore you have and wondering where the heck you’re supposed to find flint the experience is as deep as you’ll need it to be.

Oh yeah, did I mention the custom nether? In this survival map, an island in hell isn’t a bad place to call home.

Download Deception, Minecraft Survival Map

It’s a long way down when you spawn in the void of the sky, Skyring is a Skyblock inspired map with several differences that make it quite an entertaining minecraft survival challenge. One spawns at the very top of the concentric sky rings, with one block of water which serves as a four pronged elevator through the various biomes available on the skyring ,a bed and trees growing up from below on four sides.

Each ring of the skyring map represents a mini version of a biome. There is a desert ring, a jungle ring, a forest ring, a snow ring, you get the general idea. There is even a farm ring, where the very small space has been engineered to hold an ark number of important animals.

One must be careful when taking advantage of the apparent convenience that is the water elevator, for drowning is the least of your worries. Once you sink too far, a cold death in the void is the only hope for you.

In addition to the rings, there is a dungeon type structure known only as ‘Nether Tower’ floating off the coast, as it were, of the Skyring. This provides a strong survival goal, a reason for navigating all those rings. But be sure not to approach the Nether Tower before you have crafted yourself sufficient protections – for the mobs that lurk in that fire proof structure will singe you to an inch of your digital life.

Download Skyring Minecraft Survival Map

A survival CTM map, Giant Creeper Survival involves a really, really giant creeper. A creeper many hundred times your size. Your mission? To dissect the creeper, find all the colored wool blocks and complete the monument.

The first challenge this map throws at the player is actually getting to the creeper. Bridge building is therefore a very important skill.

As the sun sets on your first day on the small island in the sky, the fire in the creeper’s eyes seems to grow higher, inviting you into its dangerous belly. If you’re playing on anything other than peaceful, you’ll behold the touching, yet entirely creepy vision of baby creepers being spawned in the mouth of the mother creeper.

Exploration is quickly rewarded in this survival map, so don’t be shy to tear down every structure you see. The innards of the creeper are a dangerous place to be sure, but there are rewards for those who valiantly persist in their mission despite the many dangers.

Click here to download Giant Creeper Survival Minecraft Map!

Minecraft survival maps have become increasingly abstract since their inception. Where islands once flourished now mere blocks are considered sufficient basis for a survival map. Seth Bling’s SkyGrid survival map takes the theme to its possibly illogical conclusion by placing random environmental blocks in a grid.

There are no rules in this map because you’ll be hard pressed to even play the thing. The appeal of SkyGrid comes in making sense out of chaos, of turning a jumbled mass of elements into something coherent. In more than one way, playing SkyGrid is akin to handling the universe in the moments after the Big Bang.

It’s hard to say whether this is technically a ‘fun’ map. There’s the thrill of repeatedly plunging through the grid before being able to catch yourself again, there’s the wild disorientation that comes from being surrounded by the pure expression of the concept of randomness and there’s the drive of the desire to build a nice house and hide yourself away from the madness that is the outdoors. Whether your enjoy it or not, SkyGrid has already claimed its place among minecraft survival map classics.

Download SkyGrid Minecraft Survival Map!