Minecraft experts dedicate 3 years to building Breath of the Wild's entire open-world map out of blocks: "I put everything else aside"

YouTuber and Minecraft architect Grazzy recently finished building Breath of the Wild's entire, surreal open-world map in the sandbox game after three years of toiling. 

"I'd put this idea off for so long because of one simple reason: it's impossible," Grazzy says in a recent video explaining how he brought Nintendo's wistful cel-shaded world to the land of cubes. "Replicating every patch of ruins, every settlement, every Guardian – that would be hard enough on its own, but how would I even replicate the terrain of Hyrule itself?"

With help, it turns out. Grazzy used the open source Minecraft map editor WorldPainter, which allows users to sculpt and draw detailed landscapes, to convert a map of Hyrule to stacks of Minecraft blocks. 

From there, Grazzy and a tiny group of Minecraft friends dedicated over 2,000 hours to shading, terraforming, and birthing many trees.

"One of the most tedious tasks at the [beginning of the project] was placing in all of the trees," Grazzy says in his YouTube video. "I was literally placing every tree one at a time." 

By 2024, Grazzy's map was appropriately full of forests and flying dragons, and he became more determined to complete it. 

"Being so close to the end," he says, "I was more motivated than I ever had been. My schedule was cleared, and I put everything else aside to solely focus on finishing this project."

The result of all this brain-melting work is what turned out to be a spectacular Breath of the Wild replica. You can now download the miraculous map for free, and Grazzy notes on Twitter that it can be played in Survival mode.

Want something more custom? Here's our full Minecraft grade to building the best world possible.