The Milky Way Map is a Version 1.0 base-game relic found in Dairy Plant. Once collected, it permanently unlocks the pause-menu map in Vampire Survivors, showing your location and the positions of every pickup, stage item, relic, coffin, and Treasure Chest across every stage in the game. It also adds a "Show Guides" toggle that puts directional arrows on-screen pointing to each item.
This guide covers the exact Dairy Plant unlock chain, the leadmetothecheese spell shortcut, everything the map actually reveals (including the full pickup icon set added across patches), the stages that use a zoomed-in map view, and the Minnah Mannarah secret character unlock that depends entirely on this relic to spot the Cheese.
The Milky Way Map has two distinct effects that most quick-reference guides lump into one. They are worth separating because the second one is a huge quality-of-life upgrade that many players never toggle on.
Open the pause menu (Esc on keyboard, Options button on controller). The center of the screen now shows a zoomable overhead map of the current stage. Your character appears at the center as a yellow dot. Everything that spawns on the stage is marked with a unique icon:
Zoom in and out with the + and - buttons below the map. For most stages the default zoom fits the full stage on screen.
Below the map is a "Show Guides" button. Toggle it on and red directional arrows appear on your live HUD during gameplay, each one pointing to a specific nearby item with that item's icon attached. This is the feature that turns the Milky Way Map from "nice to have" into essential. Without it, you see the item only when you open the pause menu. With it, you see a persistent arrow guiding you to every chest, coffin, and pickup as you play.
The arrows used to jitter when enemies crowded around them, which made the feature frustrating in heavy waves. Patch 0.4.2 (5 April 2022) fixed the jitter, and the guides have been stable ever since.
The Milky Way Map is one of the earliest progression relics in the game. The entire unlock chain is front-loaded into the first three stages, meaning you can have it within a few hours of starting a new save.
The Milky Way Map persists across all saves and all characters. You never have to collect it again. After the first pickup, every new stage you unlock already has the map available from turn one.
If you have the Forbidden Scrolls of Morbane unlocked, you can skip the Dairy Plant trip:
leadmetothecheese — cast in the Forbidden Scrolls of Morbane from the Secrets menu. This awards the Milky Way Map instantly without requiring a Dairy Plant run.
The spell name is one of the most clever in the game because it is a double reference. On the surface, "lead me to the cheese" is a playful line about using the map to find pickups. But it also directly references the Cheese stage-item in Dairy Plant, which players can only see on the map once they have the Milky Way Map equipped. Finding that Cheese is the first step in unlocking the secret character Minnah Mannarah, which we cover below.
In other words: the spell's name tells you the relic's secret purpose. You can only "lead yourself to the cheese" with this relic, and the cheese is the gateway to a secret character.
Every item that appears on the pause-menu map uses a unique sprite icon so you can identify what it is at a glance. Here is the icon key for the most common items:
These icons also appear on the Show Guides directional arrows during gameplay, so once you know the icon vocabulary, you can read the arrows in motion without opening the pause menu. A red arrow with a coffin icon means a secret character is nearby. A red arrow with a green clover icon means a Floor Chicken (health heal) is nearby. And so on.
For three specific stages, the pause-menu map auto-applies a zoomed-in view instead of the default fit-to-stage zoom. This change was made in Patch 1.2.0 (15 December 2022) because these stages are narrow or vertical enough that the standard zoom made items illegible.
The three auto-zoom stages are:
You cannot toggle between the zoom modes manually. The game detects the stage and applies the right view automatically.
The spell code leadmetothecheese hints at the Milky Way Map's most important hidden use: it is the only way to find the Cheese in Dairy Plant, which is the first step in unlocking the secret character Minnah Mannarah.
Here is the full Minnah unlock chain and why the Milky Way Map is essential for step 3:
The spell for unlocking Minnah directly (without any of the above) is foldinthecheese, a reference to the \"fold in the cheese\" scene from Schitt's Creek. This pairs with leadmetothecheese (the Milky Way Map spell) to form a cheese-themed spell pair that ties the two unlocks together thematically.
Minnah Mannarah starts with the Bloody Tear as her opening weapon, which is the Whip's evolution. This means you start the run already holding an evolved weapon, an advantage only a handful of characters in the game have. Her stats cycle every minute (Might, Projectile Speed, Duration, Area, and Cooldown oscillate in sine-wave pairs), which creates a rhythmic build experience unique to her. Opening stats: +50 Max Health, +0.5 Recovery, -70% Might, with Might gaining +10% every 3 levels up to Level 24.
The Milky Way Map has been in the game since early access. Its feature set has expanded through six patches, each adding new map functionality:
| Date | Patch | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Mar 2022 | 0.3.0 | Relic added to game |
| 12 Mar 2022 | 0.3.1 | Treasure chests now visible on map |
| 5 Apr 2022 | 0.4.2 | Guide arrows no longer jitter; Show Guides toggle reminder added |
| 9 Jun 2022 | 0.7.2 | Icons added for Vacuum, Rosary, Orologion, Nduja, Floor Chicken |
| 15 Dec 2022 | 1.2.0 | Zoomed-in map view for Moongolow, Bone Zone, and Mt. Moonspell |
| 1 Jun 2023 | 1.4.200 | Fixed collected Golden Eggs persisting on map screen |
If you are running a pre-Patch-0.7.2 build (very unusual in 2026), the pickup icons will not appear; everything will show as generic colored dots instead. This has been resolved for years, but some mobile ports historically lagged behind Steam on patches. Update your game to the latest version before troubleshooting missing icons.
Unlock Dairy Plant (reach Level 40 in Inlaid Library), start a Dairy Plant run, and follow the green arrow south-southeast. The relic sits far south of the starting area. Walk over it to collect. Alternatively, cast leadmetothecheese in the Forbidden Scrolls of Morbane to unlock it instantly.
It permanently unlocks the pause-menu map, which shows your location and the positions of every pickup, stage item, relic, coffin, and Treasure Chest across every stage. It also adds a Show Guides toggle that puts directional arrows on your live HUD pointing to each nearby item.
leadmetothecheese. Cast it in the Forbidden Scrolls of Morbane from the Secrets menu. This awards the relic instantly. The name is a double reference: it leads you to pickups via the map, and specifically to the Cheese in Dairy Plant that unlocks Minnah Mannarah.
Open the pause menu after collecting the Milky Way Map. The Show Guides button appears below the map. Toggle it on and red directional arrows appear on your live gameplay HUD, each labeled with the icon of the item it points to. Toggle it off at any time via the same button.
The base Milky Way Map shows major items (relics, chests, coffins, stage items) by default. Pickups (Floor Chicken, Nduja, Orologion, Rosary, Vacuum) require the Show Pickups or Show Guides toggle to be enabled. Check the pause menu buttons below the map to enable them.
Moongolow, The Bone Zone, and Mt. Moonspell. These are the only three stages where the map auto-applies a zoomed-in view instead of the default fit-to-stage zoom. The change was made in Patch 1.2.0 because these stages have vertical or narrow layouts that made items illegible at default zoom.
The Cheese appears as a Floor Chicken icon on the map, southwest of the starting area. Picking it up spawns 7 Werewolves. Defeating all 7 unlocks the secret character Minnah Mannarah. The Yellow Sign relic is a prerequisite; without it, the Cheese does not spawn.
No. The Milky Way Map works globally once collected, including all DLC stages (Legacy of the Moonspell, Tides of the Foscari, Ode to Castlevania, and every other DLC). You only need to collect it once. That said, most DLC stages also have their own stage-specific map relics like Mt. Moonspell Map and Lake Foscari Map, but these provide other effects on top of the map functionality.
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Wiki citations: Milky Way Map, Dairy Plant, Minnah Mannarah, Spells.
Sprites and screenshots sourced from the Vampire Survivors Wiki (vampire.survivors.wiki) under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.