Minecraft continues to be one of the most played games today, offering players a sprawling creative sandbox to get lost in. You can play in Survival and see how long you can stay alive for in a world teeming with enemies, or you can kick back and let your imagination run wild in Creative. With such a huge community, you can expect to find new things to do to make the gameplay more fun and exciting.
One of the ways to dial up the fun is by engaging in survival challenges. Whether you’re just plain bored or just don’t find the regular survival mode challenging enough, these are for you.
1. Hardcore Mode
Minecraft has a built in Hardcore Mode that makes it all that difficult to play the game. It might not feel like it when you’re playing, but know this: if you die in the game, it’s game over. No respawns, no reloads, nothing. Everything you worked so hard to build from scratch is gone forever.
With this permadeath at the back of your mind, you’ll really need to consider whether to engage that mob, or to just run away and hide in your house. We’re fans of doing the latter.
2. See It, Kill It Challenge
This challenge doesn’t require a mod to be played. The premise is simple: if you see a mob, you kill it or it kills you. There’s no running away. This idea is kinda violent, but it will force you to plan ahead just in case you encounter mobs that are tougher than you.
We’d maybe just advise against exploring the Deep Dark biomes’s Ancient Cities until you’re seriously leveled and geared up. You don’t want to run into a Warden, otherwise you’re pretty much done for!
3. Pacifist Challenge
Quite the opposite of “See It, Kill It” above, the pacifist challenge is self-explanatory: no killing. This means you must never kill any mob, even if they’re hostile or otherwise. You can’t hunt for meat either—you’ve got to farm to avoid killing animals for food.
Our recommendation here? Set up plenty of huts that you can dive into if you do run into a hostile mob. That way you can recover any health you might have lost and then plot your escape in safety.
4. 100-Day Challenge
Perhaps one of the most difficult challenges ever, the 100-Day Challenge requires you to finish the entire game, including the Ender Dragon, in just 100 in-game days. What’s more, you have to do this in Hardcore mode, which means no retries when you die either.
We’d highly recommend picking up things like Elytra as soon as you can, as this can help you speed around the world that little bit faster. If you’re looking to make things slightly easier, you can always group up with some friends to take on this challenge. Strength in numbers, and all that!
5. Survival Island
Another difficult challenge you have to do in Hardcore more, Survival Island puts you on one tiny island that you can’t leave. You have enough resources to start off, but you’ve got to find more if you want to survive and thrive. You can dive underwater, but can’t swim away. Hopefully, there’s a cave you can explore to search for resources.
6. Single Biome Challenge
This challenge puts you in a world where the entire map is just one biome, and you have to survive in it. You can play this challenge by creating a new world, then changing World Type into Single Biome, then selecting the biome you prefer. There are several to choose from, but barren biomes are the most challenging.
The tricky part of this is in the fact that you’re going to be limited to the items and materials that can be found. Not everything spawns in all biomes, so depending on which one you choose, you’ll limit what you can build and use to survive.
7. Skyblock Survival
Skyblock is one of the oldest challenges on this list. It involves a mod that puts you in a small floating island in the sky. There you’ll find one tree and a few bare necessities to help you start. Your goal here is to expand your island, find other Skyblock islands, and eventually defeat the Ender Dragon.
To be more specific, your floating island is comprised of 26 blocks of dirt, an oak tree, one lava bucket, a block of ice and one chest. You’ll need to use these materials alone to expand your island and make survival even easier. While doing so, you’ve also got to follow the rules which include no cheating, playing on at least Easy difficulty, not jumping off the island for health, and not making a bridge to the main biome area.
Let the isolated island Minecraft survival challenge commence!
8. OneBlock Survival
This mod takes Skyblock and makes it even more difficult. OneBlock, as the name suggests, places you on top of just one floating block that respawns every time it is mined. This block will start off giving you basic materials that slowly improve the more and more you mine it. As you progress through phases, the infinite block will slowly upgrade to better blocks, chests, and new mobs.
There’s a gentle difficulty curve here, but you’ll need to be capable of quickly crafting and responding to whatever the game throws at you. You can download the OneBlock Survival challenge map for Minecraft here.
9. Hermit Chunk Challenge
Similar to the Survival Island and Skyblock challenges, this mod puts you in a 16 x 16 chunk and nothing else. Despite the limited size, this chunk lets you access a lot of resources to build and craft, and you can even go to the Nether and the End.
Defeating the Ender Dragon is still the main goal of this challenge, you’ll just have a lot of work to do to make that happen from your humble, blocky beginnings.
10. War Of The Worlds
If you find mobs boring or want to do something other than defeat the Ender Dragon, try out the War of the Worlds mod. This lets you, and some friends if you prefer, craft weapons and build your base to fight against a Martian invasion and an infection that turns your planet red. It’s a lot of fun!
This does require you to download the War of the Worlds mod, but you’ll need to research your favorite blocks and items from the original world of Minecraft, as well as new alien additions to create cool weapons and fight back against the impending invasion.
11. City Construction
This Minecraft City Construction survival challenge puts you in the role of a villager and requires you to build a city out of the village where you live. You are not allowed to build other settlements, but you can trade with NPCs in your area. You must also protect your townsmen from mobs and ensure you have enough food for everyone.
You can get a full breakdown of the City Construction challenge here, including all of the various stages you’ll have to progress through, and the rules you’ll need to follow. It’s a fairly comprehensive challenge, not to mention a popular one within the Minecraft community, so with a bit of luck, you’ll have a ton of fun playing around with this one.
12. Nomad
Quite the opposite of the City Construction challenge, the Nomad challenge has you traveling from place to place, but without any access to chests. You can only store items in your inventory. Moreover, you have to sleep in a place at least ten chunks away every night. You’re a real nomad in this challenge.
There are other challenges that could make your Minecraft experience more challenging, but these are some of the most enjoyable. If you want to bump up the difficulty, you’re free to try any of the challenges above.
For more gaming content, news and guides, check out the rest of our content here at Twinfinite. We have a wide range of topics like All Roblox Mining Simulator Codes and How to Make Smooth Stone & What it’s Used For in Minecraft to name a few.
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