The Best Minecraft Survival Challenges

Minecraft is one of the most-played video games out there because the sandbox experience gives you complete freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want. There is no end goal in the game. What you want to achieve is completely up to you, but after a while, you might be looking to spruce up your experience.



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There are plenty of challenges you can give yourself in Minecraft that will make the game more fun and completely change the way you play. Here we explore the best Minecraft challenges that can improve the game. Just note that some of these challenges involve downloading popular Minecraft mods.

Updated October 21, 2024 by Jacqueline Zalace: Minecraft has been around for a long time and as such, you may have grown familiar with the mechanics. We’ve updated this list with a few more Minecraft challenge to shake up the game and make things harder for you.


24 Live Exclusively At Sea

  • How To Start: Already in-game, though mods can be added to make the Ocean more intense.


Ever since the 1.13 update, Minecraft’s oceans have been a hive of activity, full of new structures and creatures. There are a bunch of underwater biomes to discover, and the Cliffs And Caves update of 1.17 added deep trenches, leading to endless expanses of massive cave systems.

Whether you take the time to acquire a few necessities on land first, or wing it and hope for buried treasure, living at sea is entirely possible. Go into Spectator mode and fly around until you find a small island or a shipwreck sticking out of the water. From there, plunder Ocean Ruins, create a Kelp farm for fuel, get an awesome Fishing Rod, and craft a Conduit to live exclusively underwater.

23 Play In A Superflat World

A player looking at a Superflat world.


  • How To Start: Already in-game, just choose this option in Java world creation at the beginning.

It may seem like a flat world would make the game much easier, however, you’ll quickly discover how limited things get when the ground is only three blocks deep. Superflat means that you spawn just above Bedrock. At such a low altitude, Slimes spawn very frequently, and quickly become overwhelming.

It’s only possible to seriously play Superflat in Java edition, as Bedrock won’t spawn any villages, Strongholds, or other structures, making resource gathering impossible. The Nether and the End are unaffected by this generation, so getting to other dimensions will make things much easier.

22 Set Up A Base In The End


  • How To Start: Already in-game, you must find the Stronghold to get to the End

Speaking of the End, most players only venture there towards the end-game, destroying the Enderdragon, and pillaging End City after End City in search of Shulker Shells and Elytra. However, if you can cope with the constantly teleporting shadow giants, it’s actually a relatively safe place.

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Once you have a way to fly out of the void when necessary, the floating islands don’t pose such a threat, and the huge swathes of open land are great for big builds. Obviously, you’ll have to bring a lot of blocks with you. Challenge yourself to bring as few as possible, and then multiply them legitimately using farms, factories, and artificial biomes.

21 Play On Hardcore Mode

The death screen in Minecraft Hardcore Mode.


  • How To Start: Already in-game, just turn it on (exclusive to Java edition)

Hardcore mode is the exact same Minecraft experience you know and love, but with a big twist. If you die in the game, you lose everything. You won’t just respawn at your most recently set respawn point. Instead, you’ll only have two options after death: spectate world and delete world, which takes you to the main menu.

The difficulty in Hardcore mode is set to Hard and can’t be changed, so you can’t play the mode on a lower difficulty. It’s important to know everything about hardcore mode before you get into it because it’s not for the faint of heart.

20 Play The Down-Up Mining Challenge

  • How To Start: Find a mine


The Down-Up Mining challenge is pretty simple; it only affects the way that you mine blocks. When playing this challenge, you can only mine blocks directly above you or directly below you. Some people take the challenge outside of caves, while others just pay attention to it if they’re investigating the underground world.

Caves are where it’s really dangerous, since it forces you to put yourself in a lot of danger. You never know what might fall on you from above, or, for that matter, what you might fall into below! Our advice? Carry around some water for the inevitable lava pools.

19 Make A Survival Island

A Survival Island in Minecraft.

  • How To Start: Find and use a seed that spawns you on an island


Survival Island is simple. You start on an island in the middle of nowhere and are not allowed to leave the island at any time. You have to do your best to survive on the island and live off the land. Some of the best seeds in Minecraft start you off on a small survival island.

At least you’ll never have to worry about being too far from home with this challenge. Other than that, it’s going to be tough sledding. Hopefully, there’s a cave on the island, so you can still mine and explore underwater caves.

18 Play See It, Kill It

  • How To Start: Already in-game

If you want a violent challenge, we’ve got something that you’ll love. You’re not allowed to back down from a fight in this one. If you come across a mob, either it dies, or you do.


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Some players include passive mobs in this challenge, while others only count the hostile ones. Ultimately, this one forces you to plan your days differently and spend a lot of time learning to defend yourself.

17 Play The SkyBlock Survival Mod

A Skyblock in Minecraft.

SkyBlock is one of the oldest mods in Minecraft and has been around for over a decade. This mod starts you off on a small floating island with one tree and a chest containing just the bare necessities.

Inside the chest, you’ll find: a lava bucket with two ice blocks to make a cobblestone generator, melon and pumpkin seeds, red and brown mushrooms, a bone, one loaf of bread, and a full set of leather armor. Your goal is to build outward to find other Skyblock islands, eventually challenging the Ender dragon. Once the boss is defeated, you’ve completed the challenge.


16 No Crafting Table Challenge

A player looking at a Minecraft crafting table.

  • How To Start: Start a new game of vanilla Minecraft

If you take on this challenge, all you need is vanilla Minecraft. Your goal? Defeat the Ender Dragon without ever using a Crafting Table. The only things you can craft are the things that can be made using the 2-by-2 crafting square in your inventory.

Needless to say, this severely limits your options. We hear you asking: is it even possible? It is, with a lot of time, effort, determination, and just a sprinkle of too much spare time. The creator of the challenge, bluemagic123, has some tips written out in case you ever get stuck.


15 Never Leave The Nether

  • How To Start: Reach the Nether

The Nether is a terribly dangerous place for Minecraft players, newcomers and veterans alike. That’s why it’s the ideal place for a challenge run. Build a nether portal and pass through it, leaving everything behind. Once done, never return to the overworld. The world is constantly full of hostile mobs, and maintaining supplies like food and wood will be remarkably harder.

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You can choose between one of two goals: Defeat the Wither or Reclaim the Pigstep Music Disc. Just spawning the Wither requires three Wither Skeleton skulls acquired from grinding at a Nether Fortress. The Pigstep disc is located somewhere inside a Bastion Remnant. Both tasks will require some heavy preparedness and a lot of patience, but they’re still possible to achieve without ever leaving.


14 Become A Vegetarian

Minecraft wheat, potato, carrot and beetroot.

  • How To Start: Grow some vegetables

Just because you’re looking to make Minecraft a little harder doesn’t mean you want to spend time doing some super specific challenge. One simple way to increase the difficulty a few notches is just to make your character a vegetarian. That means no eating meat of any kind, so you’ll need to get good at farming quickly!

Why stop at vegetarian, anyway? Try going vegan. Alternatively, try the opposite, exclusively eating meat. Maintaining an animal farm might prove challenging as your hunger grows.

13 Hermit One Chunk Challenge

The Hermit Chunk Challenge in Minecraft in a promotional image.


The Hermit Chunk challenge is another interesting take on survival mode. It’s a mod that spawns you on a single 16×16 chunk with nothing else. It may not look like it, but this one 16×16 chunk has everything you need to survive. You’ll find wood, a small cave, rare ores, and lava in this chunk. You’ll even be able to go to the Nether and the End.

If you don’t want to fuss around with modding, then a simplified version of this survival challenge can be done with a simple in-game command. By typing “/worldborder set 16” into the chat while cheats are enabled, you’ll create a world border the same size as a chunk. This will let you still see the world around you but without accessing anything beyond that border.


12 City Construction Challenge

  • How To Start: Find and use a seed that spawns you in a village

The city construction challenge is a popular survival challenge in Minecraft because it doesn’t require any mods. You simply start in a village and have to slowly transform it into a full-blown city. You will have to live in this city the entire playthrough, sleeping there every night and truly role-playing as a villager.

It’s going to take a long time to develop good relationships with the villagers and build new structures. In fact, there are many things you may not know about villages, so you’ll want to figure out exactly how they work before you get started.

11 Take On The Nomad Challenge

A Nomad starting at a village in Minecraft.


  • How To Start: Already in-game

The Nomad Challenge is exactly what it sounds like. You have to stay on the move. In this challenge, the use of chests is forbidden, so you have to make use of your four armor slots, 27 storage slots, nine hotbar slots, and one off-hand slot. You can carry a total of 41 items on you, so you’ll want to stay organized.

You can rest in a small hut for the night, but the second you wake up, you must destroy it and keep moving. If you’re a true nomad, you’ll never sleep in the same spot two nights in a row.

10 Just Build

  • How To Start: Already in-game


Another more low-key way to make Minecraft harder? Try to build the types of things that you’d usually make in Creative mode, but in Survival. It might not sound so bad, but if you’re honest with yourself, it will be a true nightmare.

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In Creative mode, we all love having access to all the special blocks without having to create them ourselves, and we tend to make things much bigger than they ever needed to be. Plan something extravagant, then spend 500 hours grinding to get it done. We dare you.

9 Stay Underground

A player in a dark dripstone cave.

  • How To Start: Already in-game

Start a new game with a starter chest. You have until sunrise of the following day to gather whatever materials you can and make your way underground. After that, you can never return to the surface. This presents new challenges, such as maintaining a healthy supply of wood, proper illumination, and access to certain items and mechanics like food and trading. Your end goal is to go to the End and defeat the Enderdragon.


All of the Nether is considered underground for the purposes of this survival challenge.

Using maps can help tweak the difficulty, allowing you to know where certain resources hiding above you might be; this opens the window for things like avoiding oceans or digging under a village to try and promote trading. For a VERY different experience based on the same idea, purely underground modpacks like StoneBlock exist.

8 Animal Hoarder

A player in Minecraft leading animals.

  • How To Start: Start collecting as many animals as you can


Playing as an Animal Hoarder in Minecraft sounds like all fun and games until another sheep wanders into sight and you’re forced to take it home with you. It was created by user kane705 on minecraftforum.net, who was looking for any challenge they hadn’t already completed!

The rules are pretty simple: you must gather every animal you can find and protect them at any cost. In our experience, this is the most fun as a multiplayer challenge. Who will be able to protect the most animals? Who will turn into a stealthy assassin and come to murder your sheep? Will your friendships be able to take the strain?

7 OneBlock Survival

A floating dirtblock in Minecraft.


OneBlock is a mod that completely changes the way Minecraft is played. In OneBlock, you spawn in the air on a floating block. You can mine this one block over and over again, giving you basic materials that slowly improve over time.

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As you go through phases, the block slowly upgrades to better blocks, chests, and even some new mobs. You can essentially build your entire world through the materials this block gives you. If you were ever frustrated with your randomly generated world, now you can create one from scratch.

6 Pacifist Challenge

Two players and a wolf on a cliff in Minecraft.

  • How To Start: Already in-game

The Pacifist Challenge is basically the See It, Kill It challenge but backward. In this challenge, you can’t kill any mobs whatsoever. It doesn’t matter if they’re passive, neutral, or hostile – you can’t attack them.


In terms of food, you have to plant seeds and eat your crops since you can’t kill animals. It’s important to have some torches on you as well because you’ll need to make sure you have light at all times since you can’t attack hostile mobs. It’s all peace and love in this challenge.

5 Single Biome Challenge

The Badlands Plateau biome in Minecraft.

  • How To Start: Enable in world generation settings

The Single Biome Challenge, also known as the Buffet Challenge, is an interesting one. It makes the entire map just one biome, and you have to survive.


To start this challenge, just go to “Create New World” then hit “More World Options…” and change the “World Type” to “Single Biome.” From there, you can customize which biome to generate. If you really want a challenge, pick a barren biome like the desert or the badlands. There’s not much going on in these biomes, making them very difficult to live in.

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