Mysterious East is a Minecraft adventure map.
The protagonist is on a sightseeing vacation all across Japan and China. However, while in the city of Shenzhen, their papers are stolen, stranding them there. Now they work a menial job to try and earn enough money to get home. One night, they fall asleep, and wake up in a mysterious land, with no idea where they are or how they got there.
This map contains examples of:
- Big Fancy Castle: The Imperial Palace is huge, with many different sub-areas.
- Bilingual Bonus: Most of the names of characters and locations actually do mean something significant in Chinese or Japanese.
- Black Bug Room: The final part of Chapter 5 is in a part of your mental world that represents the "dark side" of your mind.
- Death Course: In Chapter 3, you're forced to go through the Archway of Nirvana and run three of these to purify you of your gree, hatred, and ignorance so you can access the Sunyata Tree.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Empress Wuqing is the cause of all the problems in the land, and there's a lot of buildup to the fight against her, but there's still a good bit to go after that.
- Disc-One Final Dungeon: The Imperial Palace at the end of Chapter 4 is a huge, complex, difficult area that's set up to be the final challenge before a straight walk for you to reach the Sensei. It is, but you're not done when you meet her.
- Elemental Motifs: The four elemental gods — Diqiu, Mizu, Feng, and Kasai — are themed after the four classic elements.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: The various Jade pieces to collect.
- Happy Ending: The Mysterious East is saved, Wuqing is dead, and you defeated your inner demons. In the real world, your parents find you and get you back home, and Wuqing has been arrested.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Imperial Armor and Kasai's Naginata are the second-best armor and weapon respectively.
- Insistent Terminology: All the items in the texture pack are renamed to sound more appropriately Asian.
- Interchangeable Asian Cultures: The setting is a seemingly random blend of elements from China and Japan, which is justified since it's All Just a Dream and protagonist's memories of their trip are getting all jumbled together.
- Lethal Lava Land:
- The Tanoshi Hot Springs in Chapter 1 are volcanic. The ground is unstable. You can see where this is going...
- There's also a few parts of the Kyohaku-Tekina Caves and the Wexian De Caves, the test to purify Hatred in Chapter 3, Kasai's home area in Chapter 4, the jade caves, and the dark side of the dream world in Chapter 5.
- The Lost Woods: Nanyi Zhixin Forest and Utsukushi Forest in Chapter 1, the Daku Woods in Chapter 2, the Samsara Forest in Chapter 3, Hanleng Forest in Chapter 4.
- Malevolent Architecture: More like malevolent geography. Not even mentioning the series of tiny platforms across the chasm to Xifang Village in place of a bridge, the entire land is designed to facilitate constant platforming challenges, meaning every area is trying to kill you constantly.
- Optional Boss: The four elemental gods, who are hidden away — one in each of the first four chapters. Killing them gives you some extra supplies and a very good weapon or armor set.
- Paper Fan of Doom: Hatsumomo's Metal Fan and Wuqing's Metal Fan, which are actually some of the best weapons.
- Samus Is a Girl: The Sensei turns out to be female.
- Schmuck Bait: If you ate the Fugu, it's probably because you didn't know what it is.
- Shout-Out:
- The impaled heads in Azuma Village all have the skins of popular Minecraft players.
- Three sidequest characters are named Suki, Ty Lee, and Monk Gyatso.
- Side Quest: Quite a few. Some reward you, others are just to be nice.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: It looks like it's going to be the Peak, where the Sensei lives. When you reach it in Chapter 5, it turns out that you still have to go through the "dark side" of your own mental world as the real final area.
- The World Tree: The truly gigantic Sunyata Tree that you have to climb up at the end of Chapter 3.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: The protagonist is forced to live in the Pinkun District, the poorest part of Shenzhen.
