Here at Critic Te Ārohi, we have reported on 100 years of changing student landscapes, but what about the actual land we stand on? In honour of the release of the great piece of media called A Minecraft Movie, as well as our annual National Geographic issue, we booted up a new world save and asked: What would Dunedin look like as a Minecraft map? From glitched-out infrastructure to illagers (breathas in Peaky Blinders costumes), Ōtepoti is a region of rich terrain, strange customs, and cursed loot drops.
Like any world worth exploring (living in), Dunedin has its own biomes, each with unique survival challenges, resource pools, local mobs, and weather cycles. There are highlands with +5 Frostbite resistance, beach zones buffed by Salt Air Aura, and a Netherworld where your stats drop but your lore points skyrocket.
This is a land where a liveable flat takes second-hand couches, a landlord who communicates exclusively in misspelt slang, and at least one airfryer. A night out involves a minimum of three interactions with opps, endless potions of dizziness, and a respawn at Trojan on the way home for a sloppy kebab.
We’ve also included a few rare achievements to keep an eye out for. Some will test your endurance, while others will net you XP and help you to unlock the hidden emote: “sense of belonging”.
So equip your Adidas Sambas, charge your vape, and bring a spare diamond sword for the walk back from the supermarket.
The sun is setting.
Your heat pump doesn't do shit.
And someone just threw an egg at you.
Welcome to Dunedin. Good luck surviving the semester.
Mornington/Roslyn (The Frozen Peaks)
Dotted with precarious driveways, historic villas, and students old enough to have built the ancient cities themselves, the Frozen Peaks offers a quiet retreat from your usual mobs and bottle-breaking wanderers. Still, the spawn rate for rare mobs is high: dog walkers wrangling 5+ dogs, retired geriatrics who know your landlord personally (yuck), and morning walkers equipped with hiking poles for that ‘extra support’.
The Frozen Peaks rest atop the remnants of ancient volcanic activity, part of the greater Otago block uplifted by tectonic forces over millions of years. Common resources in this biome include Basalt and Breccia – stones stacked high to form breathtaking viewpoints and equally excellent ice skating opportunities. The terrain is steep, winding, and often glazed with frost.
Weather here defies logic. You can leave your flat in a shirt and come back an hour later, soggy, windburnt, and frostbitten. Trees in this biome are ornamental and imported – cherry blossoms and towering oaks stand proudly, despite their foreign roots. Pockets of native life occasionally stray here from the town belt, venturing into wine-mum strongholds in search of kai.
The students up here are a rare breed: Honours students, St Margs alumni, and postgrads who value silence, induction cooktops, and personal space. Items commonly found on their persons include a lovely woollen jumper, a pair of glasses, and a large glass of chardonnay – and not the cheap stuff. With resources on the peaks scarce, many villagers resort to growing their own produce and herbs. The only alternatives are artisanal grocers or Fresh Choice (aka an absolute bloody ripoff). However, the greatest resource up here is comfort, tucked up on the hills away from noise, chaos, and, most importantly, from the emotional risk of bumping into your ex at Pint Night. The air is fresher. The roads are free of glass. The likelihood of someone pissing or vomiting on your welcome mat? Effectively zero.
Though, this biome is not without danger. Ice patches are persistent, and there’s always a chance you'll get snowed (or iced) in and be forced to survive on lentils, natural wine, and your neighbour’s romaine lettuce. Parking wardens work around the clock. Rent is higher, but so are the living standards. A number of passive mobs roam freely – designer breed dogs and the occasional arctic cat. Few hostile mobs spawn, but the odd one does sneak through. Watch out for nosy neighbours raiding your carrot farm, and the odd chicken jockey joke from Gen-A school children after 3pm.
And yet, for those who conquer its slopes, the Frozen Peaks offer a kind of peace. It's a place for slow mornings, lovely sunrise views, and coming to terms with the fact you’re not as youthful as most other students. But hey, at least your whole home is double-glazed.
Danger Level: 2/5
Top Mobs: Yummy mummys, ghosts, and Columba College students
Loot Drops: Fair trade coffee, Range Rover keys, and a sense of superiority
Survival Tip: Wear boots with grip. And never mock your flatmate’s sourdough starter, it may be sentient.
Extra Achievements for this Biome:
The End? – Hand in your final exam
The End – Walk across that Town Hall stage!
The End Again – Successfully enrol in a panic Masters program because you aren't ready to face the overworld just yet
North East Valley and Woodhaugh (The Meadow)
Nestled at the foot of Signal Hill, The Meadow stretches through the North East Valley and into Woodhaugh. This biome is a whimsical place, full of overgrown gardens, surprisingly affordable flats, and a plethora of neighbourhood cats.
The Meadow lies within a long, sheltered valley that channels cool air and runoff water from the surrounding hills. Carved by the Leith River, the ground is rich with alluvial soils—fertile deposits perfect for a backyard veggie plot, ideal for the cottagecore lesbian in us all. Pīwakawaka flit among the hedges, and bees gather on lavender bushes with the same sense of urgency students have on the way to the Baaa pub quiz night.
Mossy cobblestone is a favourite among the builders of Woodhaugh, and moss occurs naturally here too – this biome is a certified ‘damp’ zone. The atmospheric texture this block provides adds to the fairytale vibes of the area, while also causing a few hip replacement surgeries a year (PhDs, I'm looking at you). As the place where cold air sinks and settles, frost pockets linger well into the day during winter. In Mahuru (September), kōwhai trees explode in yellow, drawing in a fresh chorus of birdsong from tūī and korimako. Summer brings fruit, and autumn leaves signal the end of the cycle.
Socially, it’s the calmest place on earth. Community events are the bread and butter of The Meadow’s inhabitants. You're more likely to hear birdsong than bass drops– a gentler rhythm of life for the students who call it home. As the less remote younger sibling of The Frozen Peaks, The Meadow is for those who want to escape the hustle, bustle, and gear-snorting and step into the calmer, more serene land of shrooms. Everyone knows someone who once flatted in NEV and never left.
Mobs here are all passive. You’ll encounter barefoot villager children on their way to playgrounds, cyclists in hi-vis, and retirees trimming their prize-winning roses. There's the occasional wandering trader: a man who feeds the ducks in the Botans every day, or a woman singing songs out on the street. None of them are hostile; they just have a deeper understanding of the world–or at least some really good weed.
There's magic here, the kind that slowly wins you over. It’s in the community gardens, the street art, the chatty creeper strangers and the delicious Beam Me Up bagels that, despite costing half a stack of emeralds, are so worth it. The Meadow doesn't seem like much at first. But it welcomes you, draws you in, until you become a fixture of it.
Danger Level: 1/5
Top Mobs: Stoned Garden appreciators, park runners, and Knox freshers
Loot Drops: Plant cuttings, op-shop clothing, and aligned chakras
Survival Tip: Never flat on the dark side of the valley… zombies will be your worst enemy
Extra Achievements for this Biome:
Bake Bread – Have your sourdough starter survive one in-game semester
Enchanter – Read your Horoscope every week
Getting Wood – …
North Dunedin (The End/ Soul Sand Valley)
You know this biome. You've either survived and thrived or blocked that shit out faster than you can say ‘Dunner Stunner’. This is North Dunedin, Ōtepoti’s most infamous suburb. If the rest of the city is a world of academia and structure, The End is its anarchic black sheep sibling: teeming with mobs, overflowing inventories, and lenient police. North Dunedin marks the beginning of many people's adulthood– but really it’s The End. It’s where undergrads descend into their most chaotic forms, where Castle and Leith parties become a rite of passage, and where the local fauna consists of students, possums, and stolen road signs.
The End is built on a sedimentary basin beside the Leith Stream– a flat, easily walkable zone where the hardest part is navigating piss puddles and beer bottle shards. Sure, the Leith floods when rain and hill runoff hit all at once—but it also gives the canoe club the rare chance to kayak right outside the Clocktower. Westerlies funnel through Castle and Leith streets, tossing bins and earning students a messy reputation in the ODT (#promiseitsthewind).
Ecologically, The End is … fucked up. Native birds are mostly absent, despite the Botans being right next door. In their wake: noisy pigeons, feral cats and rats thriving on Castle Street, munching on student waste– alongside seagulls fattened on discarded UberEats orders.
Culturally, The End is folklore in motion, with many “I will never tell my children this” adventures to be had. The “traditions” run rampant – O-Week, Hyde Street and St Paddy’s passed down like taonga.
Every flat has an appropriately inappropriate name. Half the windows are boarded up, the other half are framed in black mould. Speaking of mould, The End's most abundant resource fills flats, fridges, and flatmates' lungs, thriving in every corner like it pays rent. Otago flats are well known to host the most strains, both of mould and weed.
The mobs here are relentless and seasonal. In February, herds of freshers roam in packs, rugby lads tote boxes of “Full Cream Speight’s”, and jaded zombies mutter about exam stress come October. The draw of this biome is its high-octane social life, where everything happens at once: flat parties, rugby games, beginner DJ sets, and blazing couches lighting up the night.
One of The End’s biggest threats? Griefers. Whether it be a horde of zombie piglins raiding your fortress for your end-game loot (the air fryer and heater your grandparents kindly funded), or just the general destruction of your de-fences– you’ll want to cultivate a good relationship with your landlord. Otherwise, you’ll end up more financially ruined than the guy who decided to make his portal edges obsidian while he was still on iron tools.
You won't find a heat pump turned on before 9pm. Instead, you will find 16-man flats, copious amounts of alcohol, and lots of bongs. There are mobs of students with gambling addictions, landlords with morals looser than slime in a boat, and the random flat cats who have seen some stuff. Yet beneath the chaos, there's camaraderie. Everyone here is whānau. A shared struggle that forges lifelong stories and banger memories.
Danger Level: 4/5
Top Mobs: Freshers, Campus Watch
Loot Drops: Speight’s merch, a bag, DJ decks
Survival Tip: Always check the couch before you sit down.
Extra Achievements for this Biome:
Bodyguard – Befriend an Iron Golem (former first XV player)
Have a Shearful Day – Get a haircut at a Castle Street flat
Adventure Time – Wake up on the beach in South D after a night on the potions
Central Dunedin (The Warped Forest)
Dense with glowing signage and brutalist architecture, The Warped Forest includes the Octagon, George Street, and all the winding streets in between. Buildings spawn at random, with vape shops beside sushi shops and curated second-hand stores galore. If North Dunedin is chaos incarnate, then central Dunedin is its polished mirror: equally volatile, but drenched in neon signs and political posters.
The Forest's canopy is made of heritage facades and the ghostly remains of businesses that died in the George Street makeover era. It’s a place where vape clouds drift like fog, nothing ever finishes construction but somehow everything keeps functioning. Geologically, The Warped Forest overlays a volcanic plateau worn down by humans. Pavement replaces soil, and shops sprout from asphalt like invasive fungi. Here, you're never quite grounded.
Mob behaviour in this biome is unpredictable. You’ll find flocks of Villagers working minimum-wage jobs alongside aggressive Traders emerging from alty coffee shops, waving posters for free club entry or suspicious meal deals. Feral hens wander the streets, guarding the road cones that students try to smuggle back to The End to decorate their abodes. Loot is abundant, but often cursed. Stop to look at a flyer for too long and you'll be hexed into attending a DnB night you never agreed to. Be wary of bakery pies that have been left in the warmer for too long– they’ll curse you with 48 hours of Poison II. That said, stumble upon the right chest and you may be rewarded with lava chicken, flint and steel.
‘Don’t mine at night’ does not apply here. The Forest is always active: queues at the bank, cafés abuzz with strawberry matchas, and street preachers competing for the best spot in the Octagon. With no structures here obeying Euclidean geometry and buildings that seem larger inside than out, players must remain alert. Here you can go from a lecture to a job interview to a gin bar, all in three blocks. Beware the potions in this biome– effects often aren’t worth their trade values. But after a few, you might just find yourself buying a stack for all the other patrons too.
Danger Level: 2.5/5 before 10pm, 5/5 after
Top Mobs: Vape clouds
Loot Drops: Rob Roy wrappers, capitalism, and a rice ball
Survival Tip: The key is to always be wearing headphones and to avoid the Octagon at night if you're sober
Extra Achievements for this Biome:
Librarian – Study in all libraries on campus
Archer – Bottle a fresher from 20 blocks away
The Lie – Bake a cake with your flatmates whom you secretly hate
St Kilda/St Clair (The Beach)
Ahhh, the land of the Groms, pilates mums and pretentious postgrads – The Beach. St Kilda and St Clair are where the city stops being so rigid and starts living. Life here is ruled by the moon and the surf report. A sandbox sculpted by time and tide, these suburbs sit atop ancient coastal dunes, ever-changing and restless. Their roots stretch back to when sea levels changed and Otago Harbour was still a prehistoric lagoon, shaped over centuries by coastal erosion and sediment drift. The dunes act as windbreaks and barriers to the sea fog that rolls in when cold ocean meets warm air.
The ecology here is resilient but delicate, with native grasses working hard to stabilise the shifting sands. Further down the coast, little friends like ōi and kororā nest. But at The Beach, swarms of gulls dominate the skies, dive-bombing your Friday night fish and chips. Offshore, amongst the surfers, kelp forests sway, filtering water and feeding marine life, doing their part just like the residents. Generations of whānau fish from the pier or walk the esplanade. Beside them, students chase the dopamine of an outdoor life: surf, runs, saunas, and sunset pics.
But don't let the easygoing vibe fool you — this is still an intertidal zone. It’s hard living, but it builds character. Flats are old. Wind knocks over bins instead of students. Sand gets everywhere. You’ll adapt – or perish. You’ll learn to gauge wind speed by the angle of someone's hair. You’ll always wash your feet before coming inside. Every now and then, a server-wide event hits, and harsh rainstorms flood low-lying flats (keep a stack of sponges just in case). This biome is also under threat, not only from extreme weather events, but from the slowly decreasing durability of the floodbanks. One day soon, it might shift into a swamp biome. If you plan on building your base here, prepare to navigate your boat between the vines and lily pads that are inbound.
This biome spawns rare and legendary mobs: territorial surfers who also happen to be in rock bands, speedo-clad retirees who’ve braved the water every day since giving up work, and the occasional rogue sea lion on the footpath, glitching into suburban life from some offshore server.
Danger Level: 3/5
Top Mobs: Sea lions, off-leash dogs, and sunburn
Loot Drops: Surf wax, yoga mats, and oat milk mochas
Survival Tip: Respect Tangaroa, learn how to spot a rip and always check the tides before a beach bonfire
Extra Achievements for this Biome:
Lion Hunter – Pet a random cat
Buy Low, Sell High – Make money at the op shop
Zombie Doctor – Nurse a hungover friend back to the land of the living
Dunedin isn’t just a map, it's a living, glitching, beautifully scuffed server where every player leaves behind their own legacy. Maybe you make your mark in the frozen peaks of Roslyn, or maybe you rage-quit during the North D lagstorm of week 5. Either way, i tū koe, you stood here. You crafted, you explored, you remembered to sort your recycling.
As you log back in for the rest of the sem (save this file), take a moment to honour the biomes that shaped your journey. It's more than a university town. It's a crafted whenua, stitched together by code, chaos and community. This is your tūrangawaewae, and sure, maybe you haven't defeated the Ender Dragon, but maybe – just maybe – you will unlock the rarest achievement of them all: finding your purpose.
So plant a sapling. Build a dirt house. Pet a flat cat. Practice manaakitanga. The world keeps loading and there's so much more to explore.
Respawn point set.
See you when the sun rises.