Minecraft

The Badlands Mineshaft

The orange terracotta biome finally gets its own LEGO mine, and it earns its place.

Brick Rated Score

3.9/5

Set 21263 · 2024

Pieces538

Minifigs3

Year2024

Set number21263

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The verdict

This is one of the more characterful mid-size Minecraft sets, and the reason is that little bat.

Its wings fold up so it hangs upside down, and I did not expect a $60 mining set to hand me something that charming. The explode function is genuinely fun, the mob roster is generous, and it looks great on a shelf. The catch is the price, because for 538 pieces you are paying a Minecraft premium, so this is one to grab on a discount rather than at full retail.

Best for: Minecraft players aged 8 and up who want an interactive mine with a big mob roster

The full review

What it is

The Badlands Mineshaft drops you into the orange terracotta biome, an abandoned mine cut into striped desert stone, and the whole thing centers on a play function I keep coming back to. You place TNT among the rock, trigger a hand-operated lever, and the stone bursts apart to show copper, gold, redstone and amethyst crystals underneath. Load the loot into the minecart, run it down the track out of the mine, then hop on the donkey (it has proper large saddlebags) to reach the Explorer's little base with its bed and crafting gear. It is a tidy loop of play, and the bat honestly got me. Its wings fold up so it hangs upside down from the ceiling, which is the kind of small touch that makes a set feel considered rather than churned out.

The catch

I will be straight with you about the price. 538 pieces for $59.99 works out to around eleven cents a part, and that is steep even by Minecraft standards, where the licensed premium and all those blocky studded builds always cost a bit more than they look like they should. The build itself is quick, roughly one to two hours, and the finished base and track are compact once you have it all together. If you have built a Minecraft set before, the pixel-block technique will feel very familiar, and some builders find that repetitive rather than relaxing.

Who it's for

If you already love Minecraft, or you are building for a kid who plays it, this is an easy recommendation, because the play features and the mob count give it real life on the table. The husk, cave spider, Creeper and two slimes mean there is plenty to stage battles with, and the explode function has genuine replay value. If you are a display-focused adult builder chasing clever engineering or a big centerpiece, this is not the set for you, and I would point you toward one of the larger Minecraft biome builds instead. Wait for a sale and it becomes a genuinely fun buy.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building this is a very Minecraft experience, which is to say lots of small plates and tiles stacked to make deliberately pixelated shapes. The mine section is the most interesting part to assemble because of the explode mechanism hidden underneath, where the stone is built to fly apart on a trigger, and watching that come together is more satisfying than the usual stack-and-repeat. The terracotta cliff face uses the striped Badlands colors, so you spend real time placing orange, red and tan blocks in bands, which is either soothing or tedious depending on how you feel about the theme.

The standout here is the folding bat, a small but neatly engineered mob whose wings hinge up so it can hang upside down, and it is easily the most collectible piece in the box. Beyond that, the value is in the mob roster more than in rare molds: the husk (the desert zombie variant), the cave spider, the Creeper and the two slimes give you a genuinely useful spread of Minecraft figures. The donkey with its removable saddlebags is a nice inclusion too. There are no headline new molds for parts collectors, so the appeal is the printed mob heads and the biome-specific terracotta color mix rather than a bin of exotic elements.

Fun facts

01The set brings the Badlands biome, with its distinctive orange and red terracotta, to LEGO Minecraft, a landscape that stands out sharply from the usual green forest and grey stone sets.
02It packs an unusually large cast for its size, including a folding bat, a baby rabbit, a saddlebag donkey, two slimes, a cave spider, a husk and a Creeper alongside the Badlands Explorer.
03The centerpiece is a hand-operated explode function: place the TNT, pull the trigger, and the stone scatters to reveal hidden copper, gold, redstone and amethyst.
04It launched in 2024 at a $59.99 US recommended price for 538 pieces, one of the higher per-piece costs in that year's Minecraft lineup.