The Demon Lands are not a pleasant place. You’ll spawn to discover a harsh, barren landscape punctuated by yawning caverns that wind deep below the surface.
Some minecraft survival maps are difficult because of limited space, some are difficult because of limited resoures and some are difficult because the very land itself seems to want to hurt you. Demon Lands is the last of these kinds of maps.
Resources are not too difficult to come by, at least the type of resources you dig out of the ground. Coal, cobblestone and even iron are relatively easily found. So is wood thanks to the vast pine planation – evidently a work of more organized, environmentally minded demons. Grass is at a premium however – probably because it would only take a single block to start the transformation from land of deamons to land of pretty rolling meadows.
The map is large, but in the same way a day seems long when you’re listening to a lecture on the origins of the word ‘drab’. Far from making survival easy, the scale of the map creates a kind of dull tedium which the player must overcome.
Surviving in the deamon lands isn’t just about trying to get a cow to spawn (though I wish you the best of luck with that). It’s about overcoming the deamons in your very mind.