Shipwrecks and ocean ruins can generate with empty buried treasure maps

UPDATE: I finally found a working buried treasure map in seed 250425787207038274, at x1698 z685. I guess there really wasn't buried treasure nearby with all the others I opened, though there was certainly land close enough that could easily have generated it. Maybe it's failing to generate as much as it should? The weird thing is that the successful treasure map I found was already active, as in, it already had an ID and showed me X marks the spot without me having to right click it first.

As of 1.18.2 (pre1), maps that fail to find the structure still get renamed (since the functions were split), making this much more noticeable when it happens

Can confirm. Found one in my 22w16b world

found in my 1.18.2 world two of these in a warm ocean. there was land nearby so its not like it couldnt spawn. all the other maps ive found have been find, just the two in the warm ocean. the world seed is -1740081556436845317 and the coords are 4293 -2001 for one of them. dont know the other coords rn but its nearby.

The nearest buried treasure may have been to far away for the buried treasure map to pair to it

I had this problem with all of the chests that I looked at in a world generated with large biomes. I will probably do some testing to see if that is consistently the case. I can say that when I generated the same seed with default biomes, the first shipwreck I checked had a proper treasure map.

Just saw this on a 1.19pre4 newly created world: seed -867364958902569562, chest pos 837 60 -256

1.19.0 release tested for repeatability on multiple seeds after discovering:

Any loot chest with maps in it takes an extremely long time to load and in place of the buried treasure map is a regular map named 'buried treasure map'. This is true for shipwreck chest and ocean ruins. The iron chest does not have a delay when opening. only chests with maps. 

Edit: After further testing- The further away the buried treasure is the more repeatable the bug is. At a certain point, the map is too far away and it takes too long, eventually giving you the regular map named 'buried treasure map'

Each example below was reproduced twice in the same seed

Seed:-4866554710752936745
Shipwreck with map at -192 ~ -272 had a delay to produce loot table but did produce a buried treasure map. 
Buried treasure was at -839 ~ -1031

Seed: -5273697937629844779
Shipwreck with map at -848 ~-112. No delay to produce map
Buried treasure was at -759 ~ 185

Seed: -538637074911430850
Ocean ruin at 469 38 -1254 - took over 15 seconds to open the chest. Map was named 'buried treasure map' but was actually a blank map. 
Shipwreck at 469 38 -1391 - same result. took about 5 seconds to open the chest and Map was a blank 'buried treasure map'
I used /locate structure to find the closest buried treasure and it took about 2 minutes to find it at 2089 ~ -1383

I did test this in a few other seeds and the results were repeatable. within the first couple hundred blocks of distance the loot table produces as expected. after 500 blocks or so it takes a while. and over 1000 blocks the maps fail to produce and cause a considerable amount of lag in the process. 

i found a chest and my game bugged out when i tried to open it, and when i reloaded the world the chest had an empty map and a treasure map but when i used the treasure map it turned into an normal amp, so then i went into creative and i opened the inventory and searched for map, and the only map that was there was a normal map

Same problem here...

I have been experiencing this on seed 7470478852514497265 in a world I created
in 1.18.

I did a few things to try and get a rough idea of how widespread the issue is on
different seeds, and how badly the issue affects the seed above in particular. (Edit: All testing was done on 1.19.)
I can't say I accomplished my goal but I am sharing the info on the offhand
chance that it's even slightly useful. Sorry in advance for the wall of text.

To get a rough idea of how widespread the issue is, I collected data as

follows:

• Create a new Creative world

• Find the nearest shipwreck with `/locate structure minecraft:shipwreck` and teleport to it

• Swim over to the shipwreck and give myself a shipwreck map chest with `/give @s chest{BlockEntityTag:{LootTable:"minecraft:chests/shipwreck_map"}}`

• Place the chest on the shipwreck and check its contents to see if a treasure map generates, noting the outcome as "chest failed" or "chest succeeded"

• Try to find the buried treasure nearest to the shipwreck with `/locate structure minecraft:buried_treasure`, noting the outcome and distance to it

My results are below:

• 4459447262548127169: chest failed, /locate succeeded (1286 blocks away)

• -4398462782586819925: chest succeeded, /locate succeeded (603 blocks away)

• 400735310432212076: chest succeeded, /locate succeeded (464 blocks away)

• -5590230205554096979: chest failed, /locate succeeded (1097 blocks away)

• -8288656735292097953: chest succeeded, /locate succeeded (140 blocks away)

• 6902684717398026248: chest succeeded, /locate succeeded (355 blocks away)

• 2049553237230495389: chest succeeded, /locate succeeded (215 blocks away)

• -6749222809994879243: chest failed, /locate succeeded (951 blocks away)

• 6711456787853967883: chest succeeded, /locate succeeded (956 blocks away)

• -3898928888418570958: chest succeeded, /locate succeeded (485 blocks away)

In cases where the chest failed to find a buried treasure and /locate

succeeded, I placed a second chest to see if the game would be able to
generate a treasure map after /locate found a buried treasure. But it never
did, so it seems that finding a buried treasure with /locate does not "help"
the game to generate treasure maps.

Given the 8th and 9th entries in the data above
(i.e. seeds -6749222809994879243 and 6711456787853967883),
it seems that shipwreck map chests start having difficulty generating treasure
maps at around 60 chunks (960 blocks) away.
It's interesting that a buried treasure 951 blocks away failed to generate
while one 956 blocks away succeeded, however this could be explained by the
fact that I was not careful about positioning. When running the /locate
command, I was always standing 1-4 blocks away from the chest, and when
placing the chest, I placed it in an arbitrary location in the shipwreck and
and arbitrary location in a chunk. I suppose it could also be explained if
/locate searches in a square area rather than a circular one.

Before collecting the data above, there was another 5 worlds I did this in where

I was just testing and didn't record anything.
Similar to the above data, there were several worlds where a chest failed to
generate a treasure map while /locate succeeded to find a buried treasure.
However, there was also one world where BOTH the chest and /locate failed to
find a buried treasure. Unfortunately, I did not keep the world and I do not
have the seed for it.

I wanted to do some testing with such a world, so I checked the world in which
I've been experiencing this issue since 1.18 (the one mentioned at the
beginning of this comment, seed 7470478852514497265). To the east of
spawn off the shore of a village is a shipwreck that fails to find a buried
treasure. I loaded a new creative world with the seed, checked the chest to
verify it failed to find a buried treasure, switched into spectator mode,
ran `/tp @s 119 46 -82` to position myself within the chest, and ran
`/locate structure minecraft:buried_treasure` to find a buried treasure.
Sure enough, the command reported 'Could not find a structure of type
"minecraft:buried_treasure" nearby'.

Before continuing my testing, I checked the save data. The world had grown to
156MB in size, which seems pretty large for a newly generated world.
Looking in the region folder, the /locate command had created a 7x7 grid of
region files from (-3,-4) to (3,2):

$ ls region/*.mca
region/r.0.0.mca region/r.-1.-2.mca region/r.2.1.mca region/r.3.-1.mca
region/r.0.-1.mca region/r.-1.2.mca region/r.-2.-2.mca region/r.3.1.mca
region/r.0.1.mca region/r.1.-2.mca region/r.-2.2.mca region/r.-3.-2.mca
region/r.0.-2.mca region/r.1.2.mca region/r.2.-2.mca region/r.-3.2.mca
region/r.0.2.mca region/r.-1.-3.mca region/r.2.2.mca region/r.3.-2.mca
region/r.0.-3.mca region/r.1.-3.mca region/r.-2.-3.mca region/r.3.2.mca
region/r.0.-4.mca region/r.-1.-4.mca region/r.2.-3.mca region/r.-3.-3.mca
region/r.-1.0.mca region/r.1.-4.mca region/r.-2.-4.mca region/r.3.-3.mca
region/r.1.0.mca region/r.-2.0.mca region/r.2.-4.mca region/r.-3.-4.mca
region/r.-1.-1.mca region/r.2.0.mca region/r.-3.0.mca region/r.3.-4.mca
region/r.-1.1.mca region/r.-2.-1.mca region/r.3.0.mca
region/r.1.-1.mca region/r.-2.1.mca region/r.-3.-1.mca
region/r.1.1.mca region/r.2.-1.mca region/r.-3.1.mca

$ ls region/r.{-3..3}.{-4..2}.mca
[same output as above]

Anyway, after entering spectator mode and positioning myself in the chest with
`/tp @s 119 46 -82`, I ran `/tp @s ~500 ~ ~` followed by
`/locate structure minecraft:buried_treasure`, which found buried treasure at
2057, -503 (1498 blocks away).

Then I positioned myself back at the chest (`/tp @s 119 46 -82`) and ran
`/tp @s ~-500 ~ ~` followed by `/locate structure minecraft:buried_treasure`
over and over until, at ~-2500 ~ ~, the /locate command found buried treasure
at -4791, 713 (1618 blocks away). Here is a screenshot with partial command
output: https://i.imgur.com/GbQQFVX.png

Then from that position of ~-2500 ~ ~ relative to the chest, I switched back
to creative, gave myself a shipwreck command chest, knocked out the block at
my head and two blocks above me, placed the chest directly above my head, and
opened it. It failed to find a buried treasure, so I continued teleporting in
increments of 500 blocks (`/tp @s ~-500 ~ ~`) and placing shipwreck map chests
in the same way until one of them successfully generated
a treasure map at ~-3500 ~ ~ .
However, after using the map to track down the location of the buried
treasure, it was a different one than the one that /locate found.

At the very least, it seems that on this map,
there is a line extending 4000 blocks or so in
length from roughly (-3379, -82) to (619, -82) where /locate can't find buried
treasure. And the situation is worse for shipwreck map chests, which have a
harder time finding buried treasure than /locate.

I am out of time to test and can't investigate further at the moment,
but hopefully this gives
at least a vague sense of how sparse buried treasure chests can be. Although
upon further reflection perhaps the info isn't that useful. For one, it could
be that, by teleporting in 500 block increments, I ended up "skipping" some
chests that /locate would have found. And also, much of the time I
was teleporting into solid terrain where a shipwreck probably wouldn't
generate anyway.

At any rate, in the past I have created a datapack that makes shipwrecks generate hearts of the sea instead of treasure maps in order to work around the issue on a checkerboard map that doesn't generate any beaches near oceans. In the future I am planning on making it simply generate a barrel full of buried treasure loot instead. The pack in its current form is here: https://github.com/dmbuce/bucepack#no-treasure-maps

Can confirm this issue in 1.19.0.  Found a shipwreck in an ice spikes biome with no buried treasure nearby. The chest takes 10 seconds to open and then generates an empty map labeled "Buried Treasure Map"

The lag when trying to generate a buried treasure map also caused a map to be deleted in one of my worlds...

can confirm for 1.19

I am having this issue in 1.19, the issue (at least for me) does not seem to be related to lag as chests open immediately and the treasure map still fails.

1.19 (and its successor 1.19.1) are both already on the list of Affected Versions, so there's no need for additional confirmations.

If you want to show that this issue affects you, you can add a vote.

At any rate, in the past I have created a datapack that makes shipwrecks generate hearts of the sea instead of treasure maps in order to work around the issue on a checkerboard map that doesn't generate any beaches near oceans. In the future I am planning on making it simply generate a barrel full of buried treasure loot instead.

I just released a new version of this datapack with the changes noted above as a workaround for this issue: https://github.com/DMBuce/bucepack#no-treasure-maps

I encountered this issue in 1.19.2

I also encountered this issue in 1.19.12 and it lagged, not only opening by the chest, but also by opening the map.

I am experiencing this on 1.19.2, also with lag spikes. I successfully retrieved about five maps, and then when I continued ocean exploration (this time using a second Level 4 map to find my way), I began experiencing this problem.

I had experienced this bug in 1.19.2 but I no longer have it in 22w43a

1.19.2 is already marked as affected. Also take note that we only take in reports that occur under complete vanilla circumstances.

So, while this isn’t entirely vanilla I think it may be of use. In making custom datapacks I’ve messed with custom maps that point to different structures. Like these buried treasure ones, on rare occasions they’re empty. Once I went looking for the structure anyway as I was near the area the map seemed to be showing, just without a marker. I found the structure in the chunk right at the edge of the map. This makes me wonder if maybe there’s a chunk or two right around the edge of the maps’ area that if the structure spawns in it is unable to fit the marker on the map itself, which causes the marker to just not load. Maybe this was a coincidence, but maybe it’s something.

This bug occurred in my already existing world, my hardcore world. It happened less than a week ago and I thought it was kind of strange and that the map just didn’t load properly. It looked exactly the same as the maps on the pictures above. But when I tried creating a new world just to see if the bug would occur in a newer world it didn’t. So I thought it could maybe have something to do with one of my “vanilla” mods that I’ve installed. Personally I use fabric for 1.19.3 and I’ve installed Sodium, Lithium, Phosphor and WI Zoom as well as Fabric API. I use these mode just so I can get a more smooth and nice minecraft experience and also so I can zoom without a spyglass.

i can confirm in 23w04a

The item modifier wiki page provides some valuable information on the topic. Under the exploration_map item modifier section, there is a search_radius parameter that reads:
"search_radius: The size, in chunks, of the area to search for structures. The area checked is square, not circular. Radius 0 causes only the current chunk to be searched, radius 1 causes the current chunk and eight adjacent chunks to be searched, and so on. Defaults to 50."
Using /locate can give the absolute distance to structures on the xz plane, and since the area checked by the map is square and not circular, 2 structures that are the same or similar distances away won't necessarily both be within that square area. This should help clarify what someone else mentioned in an earlier comment where a structure that was closer was not within the search area compared to one that was further away.

With the default search radius being 50 chunks, that's going to be roughly between 800 blocks out (if going out to the edges of the square search area) and 1131 blocks (if going out toward the corners of the square search area).

If no matching structure exists within that square search area (that is, it searches the maximum allotted area and doesn't find anything), it results in this bug. You can also experience a lot of lag if the structure is far enough out, since the process becomes extremely resource intensive at that point, and that's also the reason there is a cutoff point in the first place, which in turn causes this bug.

The explorer map wiki page also has some relevant info:
Name: The name the map is given. In this case, they are localized strings: either {"translate":"filled_map.monument"}, {"translate":"filled_map.mansion"} or {"translate":"filled_map.buried_treasure"}

I seem to recall some situations where the name of the item becomes "filled_map.buried_treasure", and the translation key would be why.

I found the same bug on 1.18.2

I keep finding nothing but blank buried treasure maps. No red X to mark where buried treasure is at. To me it makes exploring the ocean feel pointless in the game.

I have this same issue in 23w05a snapshot as well with the lag spike. 😞

I'm playing on version 1.19.3 java with the same problem. The chest takes a long time to open, and it generates an empty map called "treasure map". I don't know exactly which version I started playing in, but I remember that in the old days that didn't happen, in that same world.

I'm having the same frustrating issue with 23w07a 😞

as follows:

Today I explored an underwater relic while playing Minecraft, but I was disappointed by the treasure map's performance.

      After I opened it, I found that the label said that this was a normal map, and the name also changed to a map, but he is a naturally generated treasure map, this is not an anvil joke, I got 2 treasure maps, both became the above situation.

      The game version is the latest 23w07a snapshot

/loot give @s loot minecraft:chests/shipwreck_map

Happened with a couple of maps in my single player world too. I am playing in Java 1.19.4 vanilla minecraft, and in a forum an user mentioned that this happen if there is no treasure available nearby. Can confirm; moved about ~600 blocks northwest and activated a buried treasure map found near the other one that failed and BAM! Another treasure available and said map working fine.

Just had this exact thing happen to me in 23w12a. Found a chest in some warm ocean ruins and it took a few seconds to open, and it generated a blank "treasure map" that turned into a regular map upon use, even though the item itself was labelled as a treasure map. I was in creative and this was a new world.

Reproduced on v1.19.4 (vanilla). No mods.

Got it on survival, but were able to reproduce on creative with the same seed.

Coordinates XYZ of the chest: 84, 54, 165

Seed: 1069933796564119868

There is also ocean monument very close to this ship wreck, if that is relevant

Can confirm in 1.20 pre-2. The server showed a warning "Can't keep up! Is the server overloaded? Running 10560ms or 211 ticks behind", and then spawned an empty treasure map.

Today, this situation occurred near 10 times in my vanilla server.

This issue also affects treasure maps in oceans ruins.

Confirm in 1.20 release - found a map that is labelled "Burried Treasure Map" in a shipwreck, and two more in ocean ruin chests - they all look like blank maps, and they stack, and when you put them in your hand they look like an item until you right click and then they convert to a regular map - and the item name changes in your inventory to "map" - they no longer say they are burried treasure maps.

This situation is more common than before, since 1.20 snapshots.

Iv gotten 14 of the same instance. The chest will låg to open each time. Vanilla, java, latest release 1.20.1. all have come from ocean (it's a big ocean) but you can see the shore. Ruines will have working suspicious sand. Or ship will be normal stocked. Seed -4503151900160978676

This affects 1.20.1. The game appears to tick freeze (player movement and inventory UI works, but blocks and entities don't update) for ~1 minute afterwards.

What a strange bug. I've never seen this before today. I wonder how it works. Perhaps it has to do with treasure generation? Why does it resolve the lag after a minute, and why does it generate an unclicked but renamed map? Quite strange behavior from this bug.

I've explained why in an earlier comment. Buried treasure maps check over a large area of chunks to find the nearest buried treasure, but it is set to only search out to a certain amount (this is why the freeze stops after awhile, if no buried treasure is found within range). The lag and freezing happens because searching over a massive area of chunks is extremely resource intensive, slowing the process to a crawl. If no treasure is found in range, it results in a normal non-filled map with either the translated name or the translation key. I provided a bunch of other info in my previous comment as well.

Just to clarify something about this: this issue became much, MUCH more prevalent after 1.18. 1.18 made it so biomes can sometimes border oceans without needing a beach biome, which drastically decreased the number of beaches in worlds and thus drastically decreased the number of buried treasure chests. If stony shores could have buried treasure chests this would be much less of an issue, but that doesn't really make thematical sense.

After uninstalling Minecraft, deleting the folders and even deleting the world I had created. Reinstalling the game in 1.20, this error that was happening stopped. I also cleaned all temporary files on the system. I don't know if in this version stopped the error in worlds created before this version, because I don't have my old worlds, but probabilly in new chunks on the map may stop generating this error.

That does, in fact, not fix the issue. The issue is caused by the map being unable to find a buried treasure within a certain distance which have not generated yet. If you just delete everything and then get one of these maps to generate, it's likely to find one as nearby terrain isn't generated.

This issue is much more common on explored worlds than newly started ones.

Not sure if this is the same bug but some buried treasure maps that i had stored in a chest at my base that previously contained map are now blank. others were changed to random maps that i had already created. it almost looks like some of the buried treasure maps were replaced by clones of other maps.

ive been playing this same world since 1.14 and updating it with each new version which is now minecraft java 1.20.1

the last time i checked these maps was in version 1.19 so i could have happened any time

That's a different bug.

NOTE: MY WORLD IS PRE GENERATED!!

I know of a fix for the problem on a papermc server.

First, here is an explanation of what happens for me (AFAIK)
The issue is the buried treasure map is generated by the server searching to find an unexplored/ungenerated buried treasure. This doesn't work on my server, as all chunks are already pre generated / "explored".
 
To fix this issue, I disabled the check the server does to see if the chest has already been looted (chunk generated). This was successful.
 
I have opened a GitHub issue for papermc to suggest loot tables be set to false

temporarily whilst this issue is fixed here: https://github.com/PaperMC/Paper/issues/10069

This is my paper-world-defaults.yml

https://github.com/PaperMC/Paper/issues/10069#issue-2054705179

Can confirm this bug for 24w05a

Seed: -2856084005069259912

Chests:

• 245 58 -131

• -1035 54 -1411

• ...

This bug is probably related to MC-249136

I noticed this bug while playing 1.20.4. Opening one of those chests in 1.20.4 causes extreme tps lag and the "Buried Treasure Map" is just an empty map.

In 24w05a the game lags a lot less but the map is still empty.

please fix this, this is a huge bug thats been going on for a very long time, if i could upvote i would

Affects 1.20.5 pre-release 2.

Affects 1.20.6

Does anyone keep reproducing this in 1.21?

Confirming this on 1.21. It seems to happen consistently on hardcore worlds.

Affects 1.21.1

This just happened to me in the new 1.21.3

Same here.

Found a treasue map on a shipwreck that has no X on it.

Attachment added to this issue at 2024-11-04.

Minecraft java v1.21.3

Can confirm in 24w45a 

Same here!
Minecraft Java 1.21.3

Can confirm in 1.21.4

having this same problem in 1.21.4, as it seems others have been too. i've collected about 8 of them and they just act as normal maps...

This also seems to happen when you:

1. Create a world on an older version (e.g. 1.14.2)

2. Generate a chunk containing a shipwreck with a treasure map chest on it, without opening the chest.

3. Upgrade the game to 1.21.4

4. Open the shipwreck's treasure map chest

5. Spot the "Buried Treasure Map" with the normal map's texture, when used it will function like a normal map.

Versions tested (so far):

• 1.14.2 → 1.21.4 ✔

• 1.16.5 → 1.21.4 ❌

• 1.20.1 → 1.21.4 ❌

playing version 1.21.4 on pc with Java survival. and still having the same problem today at 5th February 2025. I am now on a new world since start of 2025, but in december 2024 i had the same problem with different world. That world was really messed up thats why i made a new one. mobs kept attacking my house specialy creepers and i was mostly restoring then exploring . but the world i am in now is so nice everything is on a nice distant and even rare blocks are more often. like i already found deepslate emerald. or like cobbelstone diamond. because the world i am in now has full of cracks in the ground that goes very deep in a straight line.  sorry for my long message, but i read that the empty maps are because the treasure is to far away. what if we kept the map and the treasure is more uplcose. could to map turn back to a treasure map or is there no way to make it appear. what i also noticed is that some suncken ships also share same treasure maps. could it be that the treasure was already found and even chest destroyed which make the treasure map turn into normal ???? just my thoughts of it,  but for the main time i dont use them and just store them away untill i see apearing myself. then i would have the answer myself but maybe someone tried those tricks already. 

Confirming the same issue in snapshot 25w09b.

started a world on 2-2-25 world seed 108991737, i am 548 MC days into this world and have raided quite a few ship wrecks and haven't found a single working buried treasure map. I thought maybe it was a mod i am using causing the issue till i read this bug report, please fix this bug asap, thanks i really need the maps to work. Mods i use are all for game optimizations so my potato pc can run the game efficiently.

I confirm. This error has occurred to me several times in version 1.21.4

☝️ I want to mention that this doesn't happen in all cases, that is, it has generally only happened to me in those chests (with a treasure map inside) that are located relatively far from land biomes, and I suspect that the map is blank because it is generally surrounded by deep sea and doesn't detect land area in order to generate the treasure chest, and if that were the case, it doesn't make sense for a treasure map to be blank