The Deep Dark and the Warden: A Survival Guide

Don't fight it; the numbers are against you. The Warden has 500 health and hits for 45 on Hard, more than twice your 20 health. Killing it earns one Sculk Catalyst and 5 XP. Everything worth having is in the city's chests, and you can empty them without the Warden leaving the ground.

Finding the Deep Dark and an ancient city

The Deep Dark generates deep underground, usually in the deepslate layer, and is most often found under mountain biomes: Frozen Peaks, Jagged Peaks, Stony Peaks, Grove and Snowy Slopes. Ancient cities generate only in this biome, with their floor at Y=-51. The game makes one placement attempt per 24-by-24-chunk region; the attempt fails unless that spot is Deep Dark, so cities are usually far apart, though two can generate side by side.

• The seed map marks each spot where the game tries to place an ancient city. Only markers that land in Deep Dark are real cities, so confirm one before you dig. The best seeds page lists seeds with reported cities.
• With cheats on, /locate structure minecraft:ancient_city prints the nearest real one.
• Since 26.3, some Abandoned Camps hide an Oxidized Copper Chest whose map roll is a Buried Ancient City Map one time in seven. The abandoned camps guide shows where to look.

No mobs spawn naturally in the Deep Dark or an ancient city, though a dungeon spawner or a mob from nearby caves can turn up.

How the sculk alarm works

A Sculk Sensor hears vibrations within 8 blocks. A Sculk Shrieker shrieks when a sensor within 8 blocks picks up a vibration a player caused, or when a player stands on it. Standing on one sets it off even while you sneak.

Each shriek from a naturally generated shrieker raises your warning level by 1 and gives Darkness to players within 40 blocks. On the fourth, the Warden digs out of the ground near that shrieker. Three details catch people out:

• The warning level belongs to you, not to the shrieker. Three shrieks at three different spots still leave you one away.
• It drops by 1 only after 10 minutes with no shrieks.
• In multiplayer, every player within 16 blocks of the shrieker is blamed too, and all of them are set to one more than the highest warning level among them, so you can inherit a teammate's count.

Shriekers you place yourself, or that a Sculk Catalyst grows, can never summon a Warden.

What sneaking hides

Sneaking hides your movement, not your looting.

How to loot a city without waking it

1. 1.Sneak the whole time and treat every chest, block and snack as noise. Eat before you go in.
2. 2.Carry a stack or two of wool or carpet, and a stack of 16 snowballs. Footsteps and dropped items on wool or carpet make no vibration, and placing or breaking them is silent. Since 26.3, wool slabs and wool stairs dampen vibrations the same way.
3. 3.Step around sensors and shriekers, never onto them.
4. 4.Check for sensors within 8 blocks before you open a chest or mine anything. Sculk blocks break fastest with a hoe. Breaking a sensor or shrieker is itself a vibration, so first put a wool block between it and every other sensor within 8 blocks.
5. 5.Cut the line. A wool block on the line between a noise and a sensor, or between a sensor and a shrieker, blocks the signal. Carpet does not block the line; only full wool blocks do.
6. 6.Count the shrieks. After the third, stop, back away and wait out the 10-minute decay before you touch anything else. In a group, go by the team's highest count.

If the Warden comes out

It is blind. It hears vibrations within 15 blocks and walks toward them, and every few seconds it sniffs, which finds you even while you sneak. Its anger toward you runs from 0 to 150; at 80 it roars and hunts you, and it cools by 1 per second. A vibration you cause, being sniffed out and bumping into it each add 35; hitting it adds 100.

The melee hit also disables your shield for 5 seconds. The armour calculator shows the melee hit for your own armour.

• Distract it with snowballs before it locks on. While it is still searching, a landing snowball pulls it toward the spot. Once it has roared and is hunting you, it chases you and ignores the snowball, so run instead. Each one adds 10 anger toward you, but two landing within 5 seconds add 35, so wait more than 5 seconds between throws. A projectile fired from more than 30 blocks away adds no anger. The city's ice box chests hold snowballs 97% of the time.
• Do not pillar up or hide behind a wall. Once it has been after you for 10 seconds and has not attacked for 5, as happens when it cannot reach you, it fires a sonic boom that reaches 14 blocks horizontally and 20 vertically, passes through blocks and ignores armour, Protection and shields. Distance is your main defence. Only the Resistance effect reduces the boom; an Enchanted Golden Apple gives 5 minutes of Resistance.
• Leave and let it settle. It gives Darkness to players within 20 blocks every 6 seconds, so Darkness that keeps returning means it is still close. After 60 seconds calm, with nothing heard or sniffed, it digs back underground and despawns.

Lava and knockback tricks do not work: it is immune to fire and lava and cannot be knocked back. A Totem of Undying in your off-hand still saves you from either attack.

What the chests hold

Each main chest rolls 5 to 10 items, plus a separate roll for an armour trim template. The items worth the trip:

• Swift Sneak comes from nowhere else: not the enchanting table, trades or fishing. Books roll level I to III. On leggings it adds 15% of walking speed per level while sneaking or crawling, so level III sneaks at 75% instead of 30%. The Swift Sneak page has more.
• Echo Shards are also exclusive to these chests. Eight around a Compass craft a Recovery Compass, which points to your last death while you are in that death's dimension. At about 0.7 shards per chest, budget twelve chests for one compass.
• Nine Disc Fragments craft Music Disc 5. The music disc guide covers the others.
• Ward and Silence are worth duplicating before you use them. The smithing template guide covers how.