Building an underground base in Minecraft is a cool way to store your items, build a home, and change up your game. It is usually more difficult to build underground in survival since you will often need to dig out rooms and hallways. Regardless, there are some clever ways to make building underground easier like using existing cave networks, efficiency enchantments, and beacon buffs.
It’s your choice whether the entire base is underground, or just a portion. For example, you could build a nice cottage house on the land with a ladder going down to a storage vault. Or, you could build a hidden trapdoor in the forest going down to a massive base with storage, housing, a decorated nether portal, enchanting nook, and more!
If you’re finding that you build the same old base every time you play Minecraft, building an underground base can be a really cool thing to build in Minecraft.
Here are some pros and cons of building an underground base in survival Minecraft:
Pros of Underground Minecraft Bases
- Largely hidden from other players and the world, giving it a cool and secretive theme. Can be an advantage on PvP multiplayer servers where players can steal or grief your base.
- Often more unique and creative than standard Minecraft houses and buildings on land.
- Easy access to ores, cobblestone, and other underground resources.
Cons of Underground Minecraft Bases
- No natural sunlight requires a lot of lighting like torches or lamps to be installed. Monsters will spawn anywhere there is darkness, even during the “daytime”.
- Can be more difficult to grow trees due to height requirements.
- May require alot of digging to clear out rooms and hallways.
- Less access to animals, dirt, flowers, and other resources found on land. This may not be that big of a deal if you build just below the surface though!
- Often there’s more mobs nearby, and higher chance of mob spawners and dungeons.
Best Minecraft Underground Base Ideas
Now that you have settled on building an underground base, we have compiled the coolest designs to give you some inspiration and ideas. Here are our favorite designs!
1. Basic Underground Base (with Storage Room)
This underground base design has a nice storage room with a convenient enchanting nook in the middle. Note the use of lots of glowstone and torches to ensure mobs are not spawning and the area has proper lighting.
2. Large Cave Village
This is a large underground base built in an existing cave network that was naturally generated. The builder added lots of grass, trees, water, and vines to give the appearance of a lively “above ground” village that is underground.
3. Semi-Underground
A unique take on underground bases, this build is “below the ground” but is not covered in dirt or stone. It remains completely open to the land above it, except for some glass.
4. Modern
Modern base, but underground? Look no further! This base built by WiederDude is a great take on a modern luxury apartment, but underground. It even has an secret entrance!
5. Tiny Underground Minecraft Base
If you want a small and easy underground house, this is the design for you. This base features a fairly small room built underground with a glass roof for natural sunlight. Watch out for monsters at night walking on top of the glass!
6. Large Room
In this work-in-progress underground room, this Reddit user has a great design. This underground base would be great as a hallway, throne room, or grand entrance to an underground base.
7. Massive Underground Room
In this grand underground base, there are stone brick walls, water features, beautiful gardens, and walkways! Note that larger builds like this often struggle with lighting and tend to be darker in general! Something like this would be a ton of work on survival mode, it may be better suited to creative unless you want a challenge.
8. Basic Underground Minecraft Base
In this video, the author shows you how to build a basic underground Minecraft base. The underground base includes a small farm, a bedroom, a nice storage room, and an entry hall. This is a nice and simple underground base that anyone can build in survival Minecraft!