The COMPLETE Lore Of Minecraft

Today we end the horror. Four years, three games, 35 theories, all leading up to this moment. Hold on.

Haven't we done this intro before? Uh, that was for FNAF. This is Minecraft.

It's totally different. Oh. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Hello, internet.

Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's been building Minecraft's lore one block at a time. You know, for as much attention as FNAF gets on the channel, it's easy to overlook what we've done for other game franchises. 46 Mario theories, 31 Pokémon theories, three Hello Neighbor theories, which doesn't seem like a whole lot, but let's be honest with ourselves, it's probably too many.

But of them all, I would say that our Minecraft series is probably the most important. 35 episodes in total, and it's a pretty impressive collection. Can you punch a tree to death?

What's a creeper? Is the overworld a sphere or a cube? But I think our biggest contribution to this franchise has to be figuring out that there was an actual story hidden inside this seemingly storyless game.

For as long as Minecraft had been around and for as many videos existed about the topic, we were able to crack into something that no one had noticed before that the placement of the blocks, the treasures hidden inside of chests, the spawn locations, the item drops, all of them told a story. And so over the next four years, we chipped away at that story bit by bit, mob by mob. The enderman, the drowned, the wither, the warden.

And over the years, a story came into focus. A story of an ancient civilization's rise and their tragic fall. A tale of hubris and excess.

A tale that serves as a warning to us, the player, out here in the real world. Except there is just one problem. 35 theories.

It's a lot to keep track of. And just like we often see with FNAF, I started seeing a number of comments over in the subreddit begging me to set the record straight to make one up-to-date definitive resource compiling all of our theories into one coherent location. So, I put all these theories onto the crafting table and enchanted them with efficiency 5 to turn those 35 theories into this one easy to digest 25 30 minuteish video.

Not exactly sure where it's going to land. Anyway, we'd best gulp down that Potion of Swiftness if we want to get through all of this. Okay, you ready?

Well, not quite because before we get to all that, I just wanted to quickly tell you that the FNAF Theoryear line is officially back for a limited time. So, if you missed out on it last time, don't let this one pass you by. Head on over to theorywear.

com now and grab them before they're really gone forever. Okay, now we're ready to build up on that Minecraft lore. Let's go.

Our story begins with Minecraft Legends, a game that only came out in April of last year, but gave us a lot of lore to chew on. The overworlds in danger. The piglins have come from the Nether and are now invading the overworld.

While the game puts the invasion down to greed, I have a suspicion that it's due to something else. Sure, the piglins are greedy for gold. We see that in vanilla Minecraft, and there is plenty of gold in Minecraft Legends, but the Nether isn't exactly low on that stuff.

They don't use things like diamonds or iron or tools or armor. They just hoard all that in chests. They don't understand their real value.

Instead, I believe they invaded the overworld because the Nether was in trouble. You see, the Nether used to be a cool and icy place. That's the only way for the Bassalt deltas to have formed.

Bassalt requires blue ice, the coldest ice imaginable to form, and for a lava to flow next to it above a layer of soul soil, which means that ice must have been naturally forming in the Nether at one point. However, as we see in legends, the piglins have industrialized. to have golden swords and armor, items that require gold ingots that can't be found naturally.

They have to be smelted from Nether gold ore or crafted using gold nuggets. This process in turn created greenhouse gases, causing the intense heating of the atmosphere down in the Nether. And because the Nether is also two and a half times smaller than the overworld, less heat is needed to make all that ice melt and the water to ultimately run dry.

This leaves the piglins looking for a new world that is in a fiery wasteland to call their own. And so they look out to the overworld. This is where our first builder comes in.

They're busy mining away in a normal Minecraft world, but are interrupted by three godlike beings called hosts, the caretakers of the overworld. They ask this mysterious builder to help save the overworld from the piglin threat, giving you the tools necessary to do the job. Within this case, burn the flames of creation.

The flames will call upon friends to fight by your side. This is the banner of courage. Raise it high and this world will rise to your aid.

With the right melodies from this loot, the LA's will gather your resources. Keep them safe for you and build whatever you need. Thanks to the LA and the hosts, this mysterious builder stops the piglin invasion and peace is restored to the overworld.

All that remains of the conflict are broken nether portals scattered throughout the overworld. But it's still a bittersweet ending. The mobs that helped win the battle now have a taste for fighting.

What's happening? How did they learn to fight? By watching our hero.

This is what turns them into the violent mobs that we know in vanilla Minecraft. Even the villagers weren't immune to this effect. After being given the tools to fight, a group of them would continue to have anger within them once the war is over.

They were dubbed the illers, and their existence proved that what was meant to be a time of peace was actually cursed by the knowledge of violence and war. Thanks to the builder and their companions bringing peace, the hosts decide it's time to leave. There are endless worlds out there waiting to be explored, letting the builders be in charge of the world.

So, they begin to do what they did when the hosts first called them. They mine and they craft. They start a new civilization.

They become the first of the ancient builders. And we see this on some of the pottery shirts from the Trails and Tales update. Pottery Shards in the real world tell us the story of past civilizations.

And so, shds like howl and sheath depict the earliest parts of the ancient builder society where wolves were some of the first animals domesticated and wheat was one of the earliest and easiest crops to grow. However, this rapid growth is the beginning of the ancient builder's biggest problem, overh harvesting and depleting the world of its natural resources. They needed food, and so they hunted the creatures from Minecraft legends like the Regal Tiger, and Big Beak into extinction, completely destroying their habitat so they could build this new society.

The same goes for resources like diamond, copper, and coal. At first, these were just lying around on the surface of the overworld. But by modern day, we're digging deep into the earth before finding just one block of diamond.

This led to valuable resources becoming scarce and splitting the ancient builders into tribes based on their location and the natural resources around them. We see this in the shds which are scattered across different biomes all depicting different resources and technologies. They become hoarders of their own specific resource and thus trade begins between the tribes.

Even the villagers who used to just simply give the builders their resources, they also got in on the trading action and are still doing it to this very day. As time goes on, the ancient builders continue in their worship of the hosts, the god-like beings that brought them there, building structures like the desert and jungle temples, all with unique designs to demonstrate their different resources and culture, much like we see out in the real world. But the ocean tribe decided to take it a step further.

This tribe of fishermen that we learn about from the Angller shirt built the massive ocean monuments styled like a ziggurat, a structure that was used to connect the people to their gods. This was the ancient builders trying to reconnect with the hosts, hoping that they would maybe return and save them from this world that they created. They even built a replica of the well of fate a top the structure.

Made it out of the same prismarine and placed an offering of gold at its core, the spoils of their victory against the piglins, all in the hope that it would bring the hosts back. What they don't realize, though, is that the real monster isn't other tribes, it's themselves. The fishermen continue to destroy the natural environment for resources, crafting and smelting tools and ore, causing pollution and eventually leading to massive flooding.

They try desperately to protect their monuments, these temples that the hosts may one day return to. And so they fill these monuments with sponges, trying to hold back the rising water. But it's too much for them to handle.

The water keeps rising and they can't hold it back from filling the monuments. But they don't give up. Pottery Shards found in cold underwater ruins like Blade, Explorer, and Plenty revealed that this tribe was more than just fishermen.

They were pirates. They would go from village to village trying to gather resources that they had squandered, which led to other tribes like the Desert Tribe fighting back. Mine and prize shirts found in the desert temples depict the tribe creating mine shafts.

Now needing to go deep underground to find the precious materials that were once so easy to find. So with pirates on the loose looting and pillaging, they needed to find a way to protect their resources. And they found that protection with a creature that they once called an ally.

We see their face chiseled into the sandstone walls of their temples. A creature with the ultimate defense system, the creeper. The desert tribe booby trapped their temples with TNT, similar to how real world pyramids use traps to scare away thieves, though not quite as explosive.

If anyone tried to take their valued possessions, the TNT would be their last fail safe. No one was going to mess with this tribe and get away with it. But the pirates were really only after one thing.

Within the shipwrecks you find across the overworld, there are chests containing treasure maps. These maps can lead you to buried chests containing the heart of the sea. The heart of the sea, when crafted with eight nodless shells, can create a conduit, an item capable of giving anyone in the area water breathing night vision and haste.

This was the ocean trib's final hope of surviving the constantly rising water. And while the pirates looked for this treasure, the fishermen that stayed back home created the Guardians, machine bodyguards for their sacred temples as a last resort of protecting it. Given the state that we find the ocean monuments in in vanilla Minecraft, we know that they weren't successful.

The pirates didn't find the treasure in time, and so the fishermen left behind in the monuments become trapped in water and transformed into the drowned. Still carrying Nautilus shells as well as trident, ancient tools for fishing, they continue to stay by their monuments, never having their call for help answered by the hosts. All they have left are the guardians, who still recognize their creators and don't attack.

Sadly, the fishermen weren't the only tribe to be facing hardship. After seeing the devastation that the ocean tribe had caused to themselves in spite of their constant prayers, the desert tribe gave up on the hosts ever returning and took matters into their own hands. The desert temples depict the ankh, a symbol of life.

This is what the desert tribe dedicated their time and effort towards. Rather than waiting for the hosts to return, they wanted a way to preserve their lives and resurrect those who had already died. But how could they do that?

Well, the builders were reminded of the spawners given to them by the hosts. These spawners could create mobs from nothing but stone and wood, but they required an energy source to fuel the flames of creation. And that fuel was lapis lazuli.

And the only way they knew how to get it was from war, killing piglins. That's when the desert tribe realized something that ancient cultures in our own world used to believe that lapis contains the souls of gods and monsters. This is what the ancient builders needed.

And to get it, they needed to go to the home of the piglins to collect more of this magical stone. They needed to go to the Nether. Once the builders arrive in Houble Hockey Sticks, they set up a camp, knowing that this is going to be a long journey.

There they build the Nether fortresses to store the resources that they brought with them, like saddles, horse armor, diamonds, and iron. What was already a wasteland gets harvested by the builders. They destroy the piglin bastion.

They kill the piglins within to use their souls in the lapis to create life of their own. But the plan doesn't quite work. The dead piglin souls don't turn into lapis as they did before.

Why? Well, it's because the souls work differently in the Nether. Rather than forming into magical stones, they transfer into the ground, into the sand.

As their comrades fall, their souls are sucked from their bodies into the ground to create soul sand. It's then that a new mob's created, the wither skeleton. Suddenly, the ancient builders are left fighting against the bodies of their own fallen warriors without souls, but still clinging on to their purpose, defending what they had once built themselves.

The ancient builders had not only sucked the land dry of its natural resources, but they also accidentally created mobs that made the already deadly landscape even more dangerous. They do eventually return to the overworld and they come bearing riches. Blaze rods, nether wart, ghast tears, all containing magical properties.

And so the builders begin to brew potions depicting the achievement in the brewer. The ancient builders were now able to surpass their physical abilities. They could be faster.

They could resist lava. They could even regenerate themselves. The only thing they hadn't conquered yet was death itself.

And so, equipped with soul sand and a bunch of wither skulls, they press on with their experiments. They combined the life-giving soul sand with the wither skeleton heads of their fallen comrades, carving its face into the red sandstone walls and depicting their worship to it on shurds. They could take care of themselves.

And now, armed with the knowledge to create life itself, they thought that they had finally done what the gods could not all those years ago, protect the overworld. As they placed the final head, there was a flash of light and a roar. The Wither was born.

But despite their success, their hubris would ultimately be their downfall. The Wither was uncontrollable. It destroyed the cities that they'd created, leaving nothing in its wake.

Not even the other tribes were safe. The destruction was like nothing ancient builders had ever seen before. And so, they did the only thing that they could do.

They ran. They ran deep underground where the wither's blasts would meet more resistance from the stone and deep slate. But their persistence never wavered.

They would have to find a way to fix this. they would be able to return to the overworld. They had to make this right, no matter the cost.

Once again, the ancient builders were forced to start over, rebuilding a civilization that we now know as the ancient city. A wide underground space that contains fragments of the builder's past adventures. Items like soul lanterns and soul torches are used to light the city, powered by the souls from their time in the Nether.

Enchanted items and potions of regeneration from their successful experiments at brewing can be found in the chests. Despite the circumstances, the builders found happiness. They would dance in the streets with music from disc 5 playing in the background.

At least they would until fate once again came banging on their door. A builder would go off mining some materials one day when they would hear something familiar. Something that sends a bolt of fear through their bodies.

The wither had found them. He ran home to warn the others. The city sounds the sirens and soldiers begin to march.

The ancient builders are preparing for war once again. The explosions grow louder and louder. The wither is slowly blasting its way through their intricate cave system.

Fortunately, they'd planned an escape route. In the center of the ancient cities, a large circular structure. The smaller versions of these found within the game files call these small portal statues.

And if these are in fact small portals, then the large one in the city center must be a real portal, a big one. Underneath the portal, redstone circuits are found. These were experiments using different kinds of power output to try and ignite the portal.

But up to this point, nothing had worked. So instead, they decided to turn to the most powerful source of energy they knew of, souls. Directly underneath the portal are blocks of soul sand that are lit.

As the wither gets closer and closer, breaking through the final wall into the city, the portal finally ignites. But instead of celebration, there's nothing but stunned silence. Something is coming out of the portal.

A horrifying creature with no eyes that lives off the power of souls, storing them in its chest cavity. The warden. Now they're just left with a Godzilla versus King Kong situation.

Two powerful beings duking it out. And then the builders hear it. A cry that they never thought they'd hear.

The death cry of the wither. The builders are stunned. The wither, this thing that caused them to lose everything, is now gone, and their music disc 5 happened to record the entire event.

This is a cause for celebration. The builders begin to start the party, only for the warden to turn its attention to them. It's triggered by sound, and so it starts to attack anything that makes a noise.

With each death, a new block forms, the skull, a sensient block that uses the power of souls from fallen mobs to spread across the other blocks. Once again, the builder's lives are in danger. But after all they've been through, they just don't have the energy to run anymore.

Instead, they try to live in harmony with the warden. They do what they can to deaden the noises by placing carpets or wool blocks all over the city, but in the end, it's no good. Each opening of a chest would send the warden into a rampage.

This is no way to live. And so, the ancient builders try to leave their home one final time. They continue deeper into the caves somewhere that not even the warden could find them.

Though, they needed something strong enough to hold it back if it ever tried to invade. And so the builders created strongholds, a place fortified so as to protect it against attack. The ancient builders made winding pathways and hidden doors so they could escape the warden should it ever break in.

And the builders made one final attempt at escape. One last portal that this time would have to work, the end portal. The builders bid farewell to the overworld and jump in, not knowing what might be waiting for them on the other side and also unsure if they'd ever be able to return.

The ancient builders enter this vast void of open space and begin to set up their new lives. Building fortresses to house their resources, loot chests containing enchanted armor and weapons, diamonds and diamondplated armor. More advanced tools since the days of the Nether.

Ready to conquer whatever fearsome foes might come their way. Enter the Ender Drgons. That's dragons plural.

Thanks to the amount of Ender Drgon heads mounted on end ships, we can tell that this used to be a plentiful species. The ancient builders came to the end and saw these majestic beasts. how they had complete control over the skies and they wanted that power for themselves.

They wanted to conquer the sky which until now had been impossible. So they hunted down the dragons and used their wings to create elytra, another resource found in the end ships. These were the builder prized possessions.

So they continue to hunt these creatures to near extinction, much like they had done with other species in the past. It would seem that history continues to repeat. But the builders eventually realize that they're making a mistake.

They see how they're bringing an entire species to extinction, and they want to write their wrongs. They use their technology and knowledge from past adventures, using the regenerative powers of the gas tier to create end crystals at top tall obsidian pillars. This will continually regenerate the last Ender Drgon, ensuring that it never dies.

The ancient builders can now rest easy knowing that they had saved a species, sort of. Without a mate, it would always have a population of one. And it seems like their sins eventually caught up to them.

Food was yet again becoming scarce, but not all hope was lost. Defeating an Ender Drgon creates a portal back to the overworld. A few brave souls go through, but most others stay in the end.

Although they were running out of supplies, there was one crop that was endlessly plentiful. Chorus fruit. But it had some strange side effects.

This constant diet of a fruit with teleportation properties causes the ancient builders to slowly evolve into the Enderman, now able to teleport across time and space itself. But this comes at a cost. With this transformation, they slowly forget how to build, though they never truly forget how to pick up the blocks.

And this is where the ancient builders spend the rest of their days. A race teleporting through time and space picking up blocks. The remnants of a once great civilization brought down by their own pride.

Meanwhile, the explorers who returned to the overworld reconnected with their old allies, the illers. It's here that they tell them stories of their adventures, tales of life-giving lapis, end portals, fierce beasts that they overcame. The illagers revel at the ancient builders resources, the elytra made from ender dragon wings, their portal technology, even though they don't quite understand it all.

They worship the ways of the ancient builders who would tell them stories and protect them from harm. And because they wanted to follow in their footsteps, they too began to experiment. The overworld was still a dangerous place.

They needed ways to protect themselves. And so they created the ravagers, terrifying beasts with even more terrifying origins. The ravager was created from their fellow villagers.

their unibrow, their green eyes, the noses, even their voices remain after the transformation. That wasn't the only thing that they did to these innocent captured villagers, either. In the woodland mansions, large woolen heads of illers are found, and in the center of the head is a block of lapis lazuli.

The illers knew that the ancient builders saw lapis as a magical resource. So, they took it and injected it directly into the brains of villagers in the hopes of gaining its incredible power. And you know what?

It worked. The Vindicators were born with incredible speed, power, and eyes that changed from emerald green to lapis blue. This was the last straw for the villagers.

According to the mob beastiary, these are the unspeakable acts that get the illers cast out from regular society. From here, they would form their own civilization, wandering into the dark forests and taking over the woodland mansions, continuing their pursuit to bring back the ancient builders, whatever the cost. They become what's known as a cargo cult, where a group of isolated indigenous people begin to imitate the practices and technology from more advanced societies despite not understanding how the technology works.

The illers would make structures like beds, maps, even end portals, but none of them work because they're only made out of wool. The illers don't understand the true nature of these items. But while those don't work, they are able to figure out the secret to new life, and they harness that power in the form of totems of undying.

They use this power to create the Vex, the Phantoms, and they even try to create a new human, a new race of ancient builder. They try to create Steve. Throughout the Woodland Mansions, there are stacks on stacks of blue, cyan, and light blue wool.

These are the same colors that Steve and his ancient builder ancestors wore. This was going to be their final experiment, using these woolen blocks and their powers over life and death to become gods, to create their own race of ancient builders. Little do they know that the ancient builders did this exact same thing all those years ago.

And sadly, history would repeat itself. After the dust settles, what stands in place of the wool isn't a new race of builders, but instead zombies. The overworld now has yet another dangerous mob to worry about.

And thus ends the story of the ancient builders and their influence on the overworld. A land that now lies in ruin, a shell of its former self. And yet, despite everything, hope isn't lost.

With the ancient builders gone, the overworld has had a chance to heal. There's no one left to overh harvest resources. And so nature begins to return with the structures built by this ancient race descending into the earth reclaimed by nature.

Biomes becoming more diverse. That is until you show up. The builder's desire for overh harvesting resources and creating life continue through their descendants.

You. Now we spend our time deforesting so we can have a nicer new house, gutting the ground of whatever resources are left and killing whatever we see, whether it's hostile or not. It's a story of destruction and selfish gain, of greed and ignorance and hubris repeating itself over and over again.

And what's more, this wasn't just a poetic story told to make the game more interesting. The story is a warning to us, the players. Think back to the ending credits of Minecraft.

Quote, "Sometimes I wish to tell them this world you take for truth is merely, and I wish to tell them that they are in the they see so little of reality in their long dream. These two beings, these gods, these hosts, they're talking about us. The dream is Minecraft.

And while we play it, we fail to see the moral that's being told by these two gods. The truth about reality and how this game reflects our own history. In the 8th century, for instance, Vikings used a lot of timber for ship building, construction, and fuel, which led to them deforesting most of Scandinavia.

As they started to run out of resources and land, they began to invade the coastal areas of Europe like England, France, and Ireland, only to do the exact same thing again, cutting down the trees until those places began to lose their forest areas, too. Sound like the fishermen and pirates from Minecraft. Europe's colonization of the Americas was for similar reasons, to access and exploit the abundant natural resources there.

Even today, we're seeing the same thing with deforestation. Burning fossil fuels, fighting one another for more power and control, just like we see with the piglins and the builders and the illers in the nether, the end in the overworld. It's a cycle of repeated abuse and neglect.

Quote again from the ending, but it would be so easy to tell them. I will tell the player a story, but not the truth. No, a story that contains the truth safely in a cage of words.

Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance. We are playing the story. And the naked truth that they're talking about is that our world will die if we let it constantly be ravaged of its natural resources.

So maybe the next time you log on to Minecraft, you'll see it a little differently. Maybe instead of a flat, blocky world, you'll see a reflection of your own. And remember, it can be beautiful so long as we, just like Steve, learn from the mistakes of the past.

It's been a long trope of game theory to prove to you that the hero of the game is actually the villain. In the game of Minecraft and in the real world, that distinction ultimately falls on us to decide. But hey, that's just a theory, a game theory.

Thanks for watching.