Compasses were added to Minecraft even before Minecraft was officially released in 2011. In 2022, we witnessed a new addition to compasses, but what happened in between? What can compasses to in Minecraft that isn’t already obvious from the items’ description? Can Minecraft Compasses point to a player?
- Article Breakdown:
- Minecraft compasses can point to a player but not if you’re playing vanilla Minecraft with cheats disabled. You’ll need a command block to make it work, and there are multiple ways to make one such compass.
- The basic command revolves around setting the world spawn wherever the player you want to track is, so the compass always points to the player.
How do you put a Compass on a player?
As mentioned before, you need to have commands turned on to put a compass on a player that will track them. To do this on a server, you’ll likely have to go to the config files and set the commands to true if the controls were turned off. You must also be the server owner or have admin rights to pull it off.
Once you’ve made sure that you’ve enabled cheats on your server and command blocks. It’s time to get yourself a command block. To get it, type in the command /give <yourusername> minecraft:command_block. Now you’ll have a command block in your inventory. Place it down on the ground and enter its interface.
Once you’re in there, you should type in the command /execute at <name of the player you want to track> and run setworldspawn ~ ~ ~. As I said, this makes it so that the player is actually where the world spawn always is. Since compasses in Minecraft always point to world spawn, this command doesn’t seem too hard to execute.
Make sure the command block is set to repeat and always active. Now, you need to set it so that the chunk in which the command block is is always loaded no matter where you go. To do this, press F3 + B to open the chunk borders, make sure you’re standing in the chunk where the command block is located, and type in the command /forceload add ~ ~ ~ ~. After you’ve done that, make sure to set a respawn point using a bed because if you die without it, you’ll spawn right where your friend is.
Place the compass in your hand and follow the red pointer. The red pointer should always point straight ahead. If it stops doing so, adjust your course accordingly. When the compass starts turning around rapidly, you’ve passed the location of where your friend is. Go back and find them.
Compass pointing to the nearest player
Although you can’t make a compass that always points to the nearest player, you can, in case you’re playing Java Edition Minecraft, make it so that the compass always points to the closest player around you. This tactic is excellent for PvP challenges where you want to be the last man standing. Of course, this usually means that other players will also have access to this type of compass.
The reason why it’s a Java Edition exclusive feature is that you’ll need a mod to make it work. One such mod, although there are many others like it, is the Player Tracking Compass mod. This mod works with Forge and can be crafted using four iron nuggets and redstone. Pressing right-click on the compass will point you toward the nearest player.
The compass stops working if players are too close or there’s nobody else online, which will let you know this is the case. The compass also tells you which player it is pointing to, so in case you’re pointing toward your teammates, you can scratch that and continue your manhunt.
How do you make a player tracker map?
Player tracker maps are part of the vanilla Minecraft experience and don’t require any commands to work. What they do require, though, is for the players to be cooperative. The way it works is that you’ll need to obtain a map (using a compass) which will, once you open it, show you the player on the map and your exact location.
Once that’s done, you’ll need to make a copy of the map and give it to another player or players, depending on how many players you want to be able to track via a map. It won’t work if they don’t cooperate and won’t take it. Once they have a copy of the map, you’ll be able to see them on the map as well.
Let’s see how you can copy the map, though. To create a locator map, you must combine a compass with paper on the crafting table. Then, it would be best to take it out of the crafting table and press use. If you want to explore and make the map fill in, you can go ahead and do that. When it’s time to clone the map, you’ll need to get another locator map but make sure that it’s empty and you haven’t used it. Then go into your cartography table and place the empty map in one slot and the map you wish to clone in the other.
This will yield you two precisely the same maps, and you can give one to another player. When this happens, you will start seeing two little pointers on the map; one represents you, and the other represents your friend.
Compasses and what they do?
As I mentioned before, compasses in Minecraft usually point to world spawn. They will lead you there if you use it, but another type of compass has been introduced to Minecraft in the 1.19 update, along with the introduction of the deep dark biome. To get this compass, you’ll need to visit the deep dark and find an ancient city, preferably.
The compass is called a recovery compass, and essentially, it’ll navigate you to the last place of your death so you can quickly recover your items if you ever wandered for too long. It gets crafted using echo shards and a compass. Place the Echo shards around the crafting table and the compass in the center.
Make sure you don’t have one on you at all times, and keep it safe in a chest near your respawn point. You could craft multiple of these and place them in chests where you set respawn points to make better use of them. These points will act as checkpoints then.
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