#mineswap

Base: Minecraft AU: Underswap

List of swaps for Witchshaft Nether Fortress <> Stronghold since they're both important to getting to the end Ocean Monument <> Ancient City Pale Garden <> Mooshroom island The End <> The Nether Wither skeletons <> Endermen Wither <> Enderdragon Illagers <> Villagers Witches <> Wandering Traders Iron Golem <> Ravager Copper Golem <> Allay Snow Golem <> Vex Minecraft: Education Edition <> Minecraft Earth Minecraft Dungeons <> Minecraft Legends Minecraft Story Mode <> A Minecraft Movie Microsoft <> Valve Infiniminer <> Half Life 2 Minecraft <> GMOD Magma Cubes <> Shulkers

The Nationalists

Villager <> Illager A type of mob specializing in different professions. They believe strongly in the Illager nation they belong to and do what they can to conquer others and bring their ideals and beliefs to others. Unlike villagers, Nationalists can take an entire biome to build their cities in. They are neutral unless provoked. They use lapis as currency and primarily sell their wares.

The Naturalists

Illager <> Villager

Mimics

Slime <> Creeper A mob that mimics another to get a combat advantage

Alien and Ghost

Zombie <> Skeleton

Void Alien

Wither Skeleton <> Endermen

Cattle Jockey

Witchshaft is a 2009 videogame made by Garry Newman using the leaked source code to Finidiver 2. The head of Valveware Gabe Newell saw how promising the game was and offered to buy it. Garry agreed as long as he would retain creative control and it has been owned by Valveware since.

AU, writing, and artwork by Kola

Thumbnail: None have been recovered thus far

Base: Minecraft AU: Underswap

List of swaps for B!Mineswap Zombies <> Villagers Skeleton <> Creepers

Zombies are more like normal people, looking like players, yet having underground colonies The reason for this is due to Villagers being scared of a "zombie infection" myth, attacking anyone who looks like a player.

Creepers sneak up behind you and stab you with their blades

Skeletons throw grenades too

AU by blanon

Thumbnail: None for now

Base: Minecraft AU: Underswap

List of swaps Villager <> Wandering Trader (villager societies are now chiefly pack-based and nomadic; the rarer ones set up houses) Iron golem <> Snow Golem Strider <> Endermite Creeper <> Slime or Magma Cube Sniffer <> Sulfur Cube Copper Golem <> Allay Glow Squid <> Zombie Nautilus (glow nautilus and zombie squid) Zombie <> Skeleton Piglin <> Pillager Hoglin <> Ravager Blaze <> Enderman Ghast <> Phantom Breeze <> Shulker Vex <> Guardian Witch <> Zombie Villager Drowned <> Bogged Husk <> Parched Ender Dragon <> Wither Warden <> Creaking The End <> The Nether Deep Dark <> Creaking Forest

Only fantasy/fictional mobs swap here, not mobs that exist irl (ie; Cows, Chickens, Sheep, etc.,)

Villagers are much more piglike, referencing older Pigmen designs and also justifying the Pillager <> Piglin swap

Timeline notes for the development of Build Order, and the fandom built around it

Markus "Dock" Persson began by making an early Dwarf Fortress-style game called Ruby Online, later developing it into an unreleased tech demo called Wormdung.

This ends up becoming Build Order, named after a forum suggestion, and another set of suggestions from Markus's good friend Hayden "Notch" Scott-Baron lead to the creation of the main character- a woman named Rana. Later, the male equivalent, Logan, was added. Rana was notably given some frog-related theming, and frogs were an early mob, because of Notch's love of frogs. Logan was inspired by another interest of Notch's, comic books- Logan looks like a non-green version of one of Notch's favorite characters, Beast Boy.

Rather than being eventually criticized for not adding enough and making everything one specific use, the major complaint is how there's just too much, and a perceived glut of ways to do simple things in the game (in reality, these things all do have notable differences in function- but the complaint this mostly gets leveraged towards is weapons)

Currently, the game is surprisingly quite closed off to community suggestions, with interactions from the creators ranging from cold to downright sarcastic at times, which the modern Build Order fanbase has simply taken as a given, learning to appreciate what they're given because they sure as hell can't reason with Microswap.

Build Order begins as a more natural, chill and general fantasy game, but it eventually takes on more adventurous elements with additions of bosses and new late-game materials, becoming more like something like Runescape or Skyrim, while never straying TOO far from our reality's Minecraft. A cozy town simulator spinoff is made, which later gains a sequel, Build Order Towns and Build Order Towns 2, being a swap for Minecraft Dungeons.

Build Order was surprisingly somewhat slow to catch on due to Dock having a bit of a reputation as a shit-starter and a general internet troll, but he made Build Order during a period of recovery and rehabilitation, and is now widely considered to be a stand-up individual who's done a lot of great things for people- leading to him, despite willingly selling everything but his involvement to Microsoft, being reinvited as lead developer on the new Microsoft version of Build Order a few years after the buy.

Now, despite being just a swapped version of our realities Minecraft, they also include new content, such as other mob vote mobs, the Red Dragon, furniture, and steel ore. This is part of why people complain about there being too much.

To add onto this, Dock has a problem of sticking to his design document a bit too well, doing everything in meticulous order, making updates take longer. However, this makes them more well thought-out and functional, so who's to complain?

A lot of mods are actually consolidation and expansion rather than addition. Wolves and dogs were a late addition and Dock inexplicably hated the idea- implied to be from a very unpleasant conversation with someone he never liked all that much, Will Wright. This lead to a mod called "Better With Wolves," by a very dedicated wolf fan, that added wolves and also streamlined a ton of content to give it more practical use and make interactions more intuitive for obscure or easily-missed actions (like being able to cushion your fall with cauldron water, for example, a technique later known as "cauldron clutching"). After some resistance, Dock caved and began working with the Better With Wolves dev in earnest to add wolves and such.

BuildCon, a gathering of Build Order players, is fairly infrequent. It was planned to be yearly but Dock clearly was uncomfortable with the amount of status he had ended up gaining and no-showed 2 years in, so gatherings became sparse, mostly for anniversaries and big events. BuildCon has semi-yearly "feature votes" where they promise votes for exclusive features with only the winner ever being added- but Dock usually ends up just adding everything anyways, much to fans' amused exasperation.

The Slime mob originated when, while designing the cow, Dock accidentally resized the head to ridiculous amounts. Seeing the thing slide around made him laugh quite a bit, and it only became funnier to him when he deleted the other limbs and it was just a big cow head bouncing through the countryside. The slick movement reminded him of slime characters in fantasy video games, though, so he decided to turn a funny bug into a feature and create slime cubes, which became an intrinsic part of Build Order's culture and lore.

Rana and Logan would later be joined by two other characters, Steve and Alex. This is due to Notch from earlier sending some player models to Dock in a new style, and Dock using them as placeholders in a public build. The community thankfully recognized this as what it was- placeholders- but were fascinated by Notch's new player designs, and they were later formatted into the standard simple voxel style Build Order uses to make into new playable characters.

A popular sect of Build Order's fandom is various movies and TV shows having scenes remade in Build Order with its unique characters and terminology, with one of the most popular and ongoing being The Orderffice, a remake of The Office with various Build Order enemies, which has basically had the entire series made by big groups of unrelated fans.

The most iconic Build Order horror story is T4RGET. T4RGET is purportedly a player with a skeletal skin based on a college friend of Dock's who died in a horrible archery accident, who now haunts the game shooting arrows- which was a much bigger deal in the early days since bows and arrows weren't part of the game yet. Dock was amused by T4RGET and it actually inspired the addition of bows and arrows, as well as the later Choked mob, an underwater skeleton with piercing red eyes like T4RGET's skin. Build Order is fairly notorious for randomly throwing in new content not advertised in update changelogs, so it's often joked about that this is the update that Dock finally adds T4RGET.

The design philosophy everyone points to for Dock's creations is that they shouldn't have to worry about real life consequences. Some groups were up in arms about the shark mob's addition in the "Team Zissou Update," with worries that it could cause complacency around sharks or increased paranoia if it was not handled correctly. Dock simply responded, "I know we have influence, but really, if some kid plays our game and tries to go kill a shark because it attacked him in it, I think that kid just hates sharks." (A fun easter egg: referencing the "jaguar shark" in The Life Aquatic, if you name a shark "Steve Zissou" or just "Steve," it will gain a skin pattern like a jaguar's fur.)

The feature votes were formerly just mob votes, and had a public vote count, but were scrapped and retooled a few years later after accusations of rigging the vote by YouTuber georgeisacommonname. To make it up to the community, Dock added all of the losers gradually over the course of the next year or so while they worked on an alternative.

Fun fact: There has never been a Build Order movie, but there were plans for one. Rana was planned to be played by Amy Schumer, but took a side stance to Logan, who was played by Adam Sandler, despite the fact that Rana was added first and was more important to the lore. After reading the script treatment made in late 2015, Dock reportedly called it "horrid" and said that "if we made this, we'd make The Room look like Pulp Fiction." The experience turned him off so much he's been very wary of licensing out his material, although he did allow Lego to make some extremely game-accurate sets and figures sometime in 2018, and approved of a short Hulu original TV show called "Build Order: Crafting the Hidden Pick," starring Mr. Show creators Bob Odenkirk and David Cross as main characters Axel and Jesse, which later became a series of LucasArts adventure games.

AU and writing by Moniissilly