How to Find a Stronghold and Reach the End

Two careful throws beat walking behind eye after eye, and they save eyes, because every throw risks one. You need enough eyes for two jobs: finding the stronghold and filling its portal.

How many Eyes of Ender to craft

An Eye of Ender is one Ender Pearl and one Blaze Powder, crafted shapeless. One Blaze Rod makes two Blaze Powder, so each rod covers two eyes.

The End Portal needs 12 eyes in its frame. Each End Portal Frame has a 10% chance of generating with an eye already in it. That averages 1.2 per portal, but about 28% of portal rooms have none at all, so plan on placing all 12.

Throwing costs eyes too. A thrown eye has a 20% chance to shatter. The other 80% of the time it drops and you pick it back up, so five throws lose one eye on average.

Craft 16: a full stack of Ender Pearls (they stack to 16) and 8 Blaze Rods. That fills the frame and leaves four for throwing.

Without Looting you average one rod per two Blazes, so 8 rods take about 16 kills. The blaze farm guide covers finding a fortress spawner and farming it safely. The Cleric trade is not guaranteed: an Expert Cleric offers two of three possible trades, and the pearl is one of the three.

Triangulate with two throws

A thrown eye flies about 12 blocks toward the nearest stronghold, hovers for a moment, then drops or shatters. That gives you a direction but no distance. Two directions taken from two places give you a point.

1. 1.Press F3 so the debug screen is open. Stand still and right-click with an Eye of Ender to throw it. While it hovers, put your crosshair on it.
2. 2.Write down your X and Z, and the first of the two numbers at the end of the Facing line. That number is your yaw, the horizontal angle you are looking along.
3. 3.Pick up the eye if it dropped.
4. 4.Walk at least 500 blocks at a right angle to that direction, then repeat steps 1 to 3.
5. 5.Enter both throws into the stronghold finder. It returns the X and Z where the two lines cross, and how far that point is from your second throw.

The wider the angle between your two lines, the more accurate the fix. Two throws only a few degrees apart can put the answer hundreds of blocks out. Seen from a stronghold 2,000 blocks away, a 300-block side step opens only about 8 degrees between the lines, and 500 blocks about 14. Walk further if you can, and expect the last throw near the target to correct the fix.

Mistakes that cost eyes

• Following eye after eye. Throwing every 100 to 200 blocks toward a stronghold 2,000 blocks away takes 10 to 20 throws. At 20% each, that costs two to four eyes on average.
• Throwing from the same line. A second throw taken further along the first line lies on that same line, so there is no crossing point to find.

Where strongholds generate

In a normal Java Edition world there are 128 strongholds, laid out in eight rings around the origin (0, 0). The first ring holds three, and none of them is closer than 1,280 blocks to the origin.

Each ring's strongholds are evenly spaced, so the first three sit roughly a third of a circle apart. Each one is nudged toward a land biome and generates mostly underground, but it can still end up under water. Bedrock Edition places them differently, with no fixed count.

For a long trip, cover the distance in the Nether. Eyes do nothing there, but 1 block in the Nether equals 8 in the Overworld. Divide the finder's X and Z by 8 (the Nether portal calculator does it for you), travel to that spot and build a portal. Nether travel coordinates explains the maths and how to stop the new portal linking to the wrong place.

The seed map shows which way the three first-ring strongholds lie from the origin. Use it to pick a direction, then confirm with eyes. In a world with cheats on, /locate structure minecraft:stronghold prints the nearest stronghold's coordinates.

Pinpoint it and dig down

Near the target, throw once more. While you are more than 12 blocks from the target, the eye rises as it flies. Closer than that, it dives toward the ground. The target is the north-west corner of the chunk holding the stronghold's starting spiral staircase, and the centre of that staircase is 4 blocks east and 4 blocks south of the corner.

Dig down in a staircase, not a straight shaft, so you never break the block you are standing on: a cave, a lava pool or a stronghold room could open beneath you. The Eye Spy advancement appears the moment you step inside the stronghold.

Find the portal room

The staircase is only the entrance. A stronghold is a maze of corridors, prison cells, storerooms and libraries. The portal room is the only room guaranteed to generate, and it never generates within five rooms of the starting staircase, so expect a walk. Place Torches on one side of every corridor you walk so you can find your way back.

Some of the Stone Bricks are Infested Stone Bricks, which look exactly like the real thing. Breaking one releases a Silverfish. A Silverfish that survives your hit wakes the others hidden in infested blocks nearby, so kill each one with a single blow. A Silk Touch pickaxe mines infested blocks without releasing anything.

The portal room has Iron Bars, Stone Brick Stairs up to the frame, 15 blocks of Lava and a Silverfish Monster Spawner. Break the spawner first. Torches are a poor fix, because a Silverfish spawner only stops at light level 12. Mining it with a pickaxe drops 15–43 experience.

Activate the End Portal

Right-click each empty End Portal Frame with an Eye of Ender. When all 12 hold an eye, the 3×3 space inside fills with End Portal blocks. The frames cannot be broken in Survival, so the portal stays usable for good.

The Ender Dragon guide covers what to bring and the fight.