If you've never played survival Minecraft on a hand-crafted map, you might want to give it a try now. Because this map is pretty damn impressive.
It's a 6000 by 6000 block map that depicts an archipelago consisting of two islands: one cold and snowy, and one warm and uh, desert-y. The two biggest landmarks, as you can see below, are the two volcanoes—actually gods, according to the lore:
Meiva archipelago consists of two islands - Whedab & Mitne. Whedab is opposite to Mitne - Whedab is cold and dark but Mitne is warm and overgrown with flowers. In the middle of each island lives a god in form of volcano. Volcano in Whedab is hot and called Skaeren, volcano in Mitne is made of ice and is called Winimo. Skaeren controls earth and fire, Winimo is a master of water and air. One cannot exist without another, and only together they are whole. Winimo and Skaeren compete with each other in a game called "dance of the elements". In this game Skaeren controls earth and Winimo controls water. God that creates more complex and beautiful forms using his element while other god is trying to disturb him wins the game and is considered to be a winner for one year. After one year they start the game again, but this time previous winner loses the game.
It even has its own logo.
Neat.
Now, the map does have caves and resources, so you can use it to play survival mode—and it doesn't look half bad ingame, either. I snapped a few screenshots to compare:
In particular, the sputtering Whedab volcano looks interesting up close. The splat is like a floating lava sculpture.
The surrounding area has plenty of netherrack as well, giving the place a bit of a Hell on Earth feel with zombie pigmen and ghasts roaming about.
Ekess Oasis looks very good, too. Those are some majestic sandstone pillars.
Could be a really fun map to play on! If you want to give it a try, even if just to look at all the fancy terrain, you can grab Meiva from its Planet Minecraft page here. Do mind the size though—36 square kilometers translate to a hefty 344MB download.
Meiva - Dance of the Elements [Planet Minecraft]
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