How to Navigate the Overhauled Ancient City Without Getting Lost

The overhauled ancient city trades vanilla's wide, looping corridors for tight, maze-like streets. If you wander in without a plan, you will circle the same blocks for an hour.

Before You Enter

Bring a stack of torches or glow lichen and place a marker at every junction you pass. Because the walls are taller and slimmer, you cannot simply pillar up to scout the layout — you will hit a ceiling or a wall. Instead, drop a distinctive block (a colored wool, a stripped log, anything non-deepslate) at each fork so you can retrace your route.

Reading the Layout

Roads are narrower now, so treat each street as a single path rather than an open plaza. Follow one direction until it dead-ends, then backtrack to the last marker. The compact houses and smaller structures sit close together, which means side entrances are easy to miss — check the base of walls for doorways rather than looking for grand archways. The removed deepslate cobblestone rings mean you will not find the old circular landmarks, so do not rely on them for orientation. If you hear a sculk sensor or shrieker, stop moving and note the direction before continuing, since sound travels further down these tight corridors.