Every Structure in Minecraft and What Is Inside

Seventeen structure types are worth crossing a world for, spread across the three dimensions, and nearly every one holds something you cannot get anywhere else — a totem, an elytra, a Swift Sneak book, a netherite template. Small generated features like dungeons, desert wells, fossils and ocean ruins are not on this list; these are the trips worth planning. Here is the whole list: dimension, how to find it, and the loot worth the trip. Java Edition, current version.

How to find any structure

• Explorer maps. An apprentice cartographer sells an ocean explorer map (monument); a journeyman sells a woodland explorer map (mansion). Both cost emeralds plus a compass.
• Buried treasure maps come out of shipwreck map chests and some ocean ruin chests.
• Eyes of Ender for strongholds. Nothing else finds one without cheats.
• The seed map. Know your seed and you can plot every structure before you leave the base, on our seed map. A week of sailing becomes a set of coordinates.

Overworld surface

Villages

Plains, desert, savanna, taiga and snowy biomes, out in the open. Most profession buildings carry a themed chest, and the one you want is the toolsmith: iron ingots, iron tools, coal and a real chance at diamonds. The rest is a supply depot — beds, hay bales, crops, bells, workstations. A small fraction generate as zombie villages: cobwebs, no doors, zombie villagers inside, all curable for permanent trade discounts.

Pillager outposts

A dark oak watchtower, generating near the biomes villages use, patrolled by crossbow pillagers under a captain carrying the ominous banner.

• Loot — one chest at the top of the tower: crossbows, arrows, iron ingots, wheat, potatoes, dark oak logs, tripwire hooks. The tents, cages and target around the base are decoration, not containers.
• The real reward — killing the captain drops an Ominous Bottle. Drink it for Bad Omen, walk into a village, and you have started a raid.
• Cages beside the tower sometimes hold an iron golem or allays. Outposts and mansions are the only places allays appear.

Ruined portals

These generate in both the Overworld and the Nether: a broken frame of obsidian and crying obsidian, with netherrack, gold blocks and usually lava. Every one comes with a chest, normally buried a block or two away, holding gold nuggets, golden apples, enchanted golden tools and armour, obsidian, flint and steel, sometimes a bell. That is most of a working portal already — and crying obsidian works as portal frame exactly like plain obsidian, so fill the gaps in the ring with what you find and light it where it stands.

Shipwrecks

Oceans and beaches, upright, listing or half-buried in sand. Up to three chests survive, and a badly broken hull can be missing one or two of them:

• Map chest — a buried treasure map, plus compasses, clocks, paper and empty maps.
• Supply chest — food, wheat, coal, paper and other stores.
• Treasure chest — iron and gold ingots, emeralds, lapis, occasionally diamonds.

Follow the map to the X and dig at that exact block. Every buried treasure chest contains a heart of the sea, the core of a conduit, plus ingots, emeralds, TNT and prismarine crystals.

Desert pyramids

Sandstone with an orange terracotta pattern on the roof. The chamber is under the centre: a blue-and-orange terracotta pattern set into the floor, a stone pressure plate at the bottom of the shaft below it, and nine TNT underneath that. Dig down one block to the side of the pattern and break the plate before touching anything else.

Four chests line the walls: diamonds, ingots, emeralds, enchanted books, saddles and horse armour of all three tiers. Suspicious sand generates here too — brush it for the Archer, Miner, Prize and Skull pottery sherds.

Jungle temples

Mossy cobblestone, three storeys, swallowed by foliage. Two traps guard two chests. The corridor trap is a tripwire wired to arrow dispensers: cut the string with shears and it never fires, then mine the dispensers out. The lower chest sits behind a three-lever piston puzzle — do not guess combinations, mine through the wall beside the levers. Loot matches the desert pyramid.

Igloos

Snowy plains, snowy taiga and snowy slopes: a snow dome with a bed, furnace, crafting table and a carpet with a redstone torch under it. Roughly half of all igloos hide a basement. Pull the carpet, take the ladder down, and you find two cells holding a villager and a zombie villager, a brewing stand with a splash Potion of Weakness, and a chest with a golden apple — the complete cure kit, pre-packaged. Splash, feed the apple, wait, and you own a villager who trades at huge discounts.

Woodland mansions

Dark forest only, and dark forests are uncommon, so a mansion can sit tens of thousands of blocks from spawn. Buy the explorer map; searching is not a plan.

Inside are vindicators and evokers, and every evoker drops a Totem of Undying. Chests through the rooms hold enchanted books, diamonds, iron, gold, redstone and the odd enchanted golden apple, and several rooms are sealed with no entrance at all — spot the gaps in the floor plan and mine in. Full walkthrough in the woodland mansion guide.

Trail ruins

Almost entirely buried, in taiga variants and jungles, usually with only a scrap of mud brick breaking the surface. Dig the footprint out to expose suspicious gravel, then brush it with a brush (feather, copper ingot and stick in a column). Most gravel gives seeds, dyes, candles and coal. Some uses a rarer table, and that is the point of the structure: the Wayfinder, Raiser, Shaper and Host armour trim templates, which generate nowhere else, a set of pottery sherds you cannot dig up anywhere else either, and the music disc Relic.

Overworld underground

Mineshafts

Wooden corridors, rails, cobwebs and chest minecarts, generating throughout the underground. Badlands mineshafts are the exception — they sit far higher and often break out into open terrain.

Chest minecarts hold iron and gold ingots, redstone, lapis, coal, every kind of rail, name tags, golden apples, occasional diamonds and, very rarely, an enchanted golden apple. The webbed rooms hide cave spider spawners; cave spiders fit through gaps a normal mob cannot and they poison you, so wall the spawner off first and carry milk.

Strongholds

Deep underground. A Java world generates 128 of them in rings around spawn, so the nearest is usually a couple of thousand blocks out rather than next door. Throw an Eye of Ender, note its direction, walk several hundred blocks perpendicular, throw again, and head for the intersection — full method in how to find a stronghold.

Inside: libraries with mineable bookshelves and chests of enchanted books, paper and maps; corridor chests with ingots, ender pearls, redstone, an iron pickaxe and sometimes diamonds; and the End Portal room with its silverfish spawner. Each of the twelve frames has only about a one-in-ten chance of already holding an eye, so bring twelve and expect to place most of them.

Ancient cities

The Deep Dark biome, far below y=0, most often under mountainous terrain. Sculk covers everything, and three shrieks from sculk shriekers summon the Warden. Walk on wool to kill the vibrations, sneak constantly, and never fight what turns up — read the Warden guide first. The chests justify the risk:

• Swift Sneak books, which exist nowhere else in the game.
• Echo shards — eight plus a compass make a Recovery Compass, and again, nowhere else.
• Disc Fragment 5; nine craft the music disc 5. Otherside generates here too.
• Enchanted golden apples, enchanted diamond hoes, saddles, name tags and potions.

The reinforced deepslate frame in the centre does nothing. It is scenery.

Trial chambers

Copper and tuff complexes down in the deepslate layer, under most Overworld biomes. Trial spawners produce waves scaled to how many players are nearby, then eject rewards and go on cooldown — a chamber is farmable, not a one-time raid. Vaults open with Trial Keys and pay out once per player, so bring friends. Drink an Ominous Bottle for the ominous version: harder waves, ominous vaults, and the Heavy Core that combines with a breeze rod to craft the Mace. Room-by-room detail in trial chambers explained.

Oceans

Ocean monuments

Deep ocean biomes, prismarine, lit by sea lanterns. Guardians shoot lasers, and three elder guardians hit you with Mining Fatigue on sight — milk clears it, but they reapply it until all three are dead.

There are no chests here. The treasure is structural: eight blocks of gold sealed inside dark prismarine in the treasure chamber, sponge rooms full of wet sponges, and a mountain of prismarine and sea lanterns. Every elder guardian also drops a wet sponge.

The Nether

Nether fortresses

Dark netherbrick corridors and bridges, in any Nether biome, often spanning open lava. Three reasons to go:

• Blaze spawners — the only source of blaze rods, and therefore of the blaze powder needed for brewing and Eyes of Ender.
• Wither skeletons, which spawn anywhere inside the fortress boundary, corridors and bridges alike. Three skulls plus four soul sand summon the Wither.
• Nether wart in the soul sand stairwell gardens. Take the wart and the soul sand.

Chests hold gold and iron ingots, golden swords and chestplates (sometimes enchanted), obsidian, flint and steel, saddles, and golden or diamond horse armour.

Bastion remnants

Blackstone fortresses in four layouts: bridge, hoglin stables, housing units and treasure room. Wearing any piece of gold armour stops ordinary piglins attacking on sight, but opening a chest, breaking gold or mining gilded blackstone in view of them turns the bastion hostile anyway. Piglin brutes never care about gold and hit brutally hard.

• Netherite Upgrade smithing templates generate here and only here. One template plus seven netherrack and a diamond duplicates it into two.
• Ancient debris in chests, and occasionally a netherite ingot in a treasure room.
• Blocks of gold, enchanted golden apples, crossbows, spectral arrows.
• Gilded blackstone in the walls, which drops gold nuggets and responds to Fortune.

The End

End cities

Out on the outer islands, past the void gap around the central island. Once the dragon is dead an End Gateway appears; throw an ender pearl into it and you land roughly a thousand blocks out, in end city country.

Purpur towers full of shulkers that teleport and inflict Levitation; shells drop about half the time, and Looting improves that. Chests hold diamonds, emeralds, ingots, saddles, horse armour, and enchanted diamond and iron gear that often beats your own table's output. The End Ship beside some cities is the jackpot: two chests, a dragon head on the bow, and an Elytra in an item frame. Shells plus chests become shulker boxes — see shulker boxes and end cities.

Three mistakes that cost people their loot

1. 1.Breaking suspicious sand or gravel instead of brushing it. The item dies with the block. Both obey gravity too, so digging out the support drops the block, reverts it to plain sand or gravel, and the loot is gone before you notice.
2. 2.Standing on the desert pyramid pressure plate. Nine TNT removes you, the four chests and everything in them. Enter beside the pattern and disarm first.
3. 3.Letting a sculk shrieker fire three times. Warning level follows the player rather than the room and decays only slowly, so two careless steps at the entrance plus one deep inside spawn the Warden at the worst moment.