Every Smithing Template and Where to Find It

Nineteen smithing templates exist in Minecraft 1.21: one netherite upgrade and eighteen armour trim patterns. Every one of them is consumed the moment you use it, and every one of them can be copied at a smithing table for seven diamonds and one cheap material. That second fact is the one that matters. You only ever need to find a template once — after that it stops being an exploration problem and becomes a diamond problem.

The rule that shapes everything

A smithing template is single-use. Upgrade one diamond chestplate to netherite and the template is gone. Trim one boot and the template is gone. There is no durability bar counting down and no partial refund — one item, one application.

That is why duplication exists, and why the only sensible habit is duplicate first, use second. Copy the template before you spend it, so the copy becomes the seed for every copy after that. Players who trim a helmet with their only Silence template and then go back for another are the reason ancient cities feel so expensive.

Templates stack to 64, so a duplicated stash of them costs you almost nothing in storage.

The netherite upgrade template: bastions, and only bastions

The netherite upgrade smithing template generates in bastion remnant chests. That is its only source. Not nether fortresses, not piglin bartering, not villager trades — bastions.

The roll happens per chest, and it is not the same roll everywhere. An ordinary bastion chest — bridge, hoglin stable, housing — carries the template about one time in ten. The chest in a treasure-room bastion is guaranteed to hold one, which is why the piglin brutes are standing in front of it. Either way, clear the whole structure rather than the two obvious chests on the way in.

You need one template per item, plus one netherite ingot per item, and the base item has to be diamond — netherite upgrading skips iron entirely. The upgraded piece keeps every enchantment and carries its damage across onto netherite's larger durability pool, gains a small stat bump, and stops burning up when it lands in lava.

Work out the cost before you leave the Nether:

• Full armour set: 4 templates and 4 netherite ingots.
• Armour plus sword, pickaxe, axe, shovel and hoe: 9 templates and 9 ingots.
• Going from one template to nine is eight duplications, which is 56 diamonds.

If you are still working out where the ancient debris comes from, how to find netherite covers the Y level and the bed-mining method.

Where every armour trim template lives

Eighteen patterns, spread deliberately across the game's structures, so collecting them tours you through nearly everything worth looting.

Overworld, above ground

• Coast — shipwreck chests.
• Dune — desert pyramid chests.
• Sentry — pillager outpost chests.
• Wild — jungle temple chests.
• Vex — woodland mansion chests.
• Host, Raiser, Shaper and Wayfinder — trail ruins. These four are not in chests at all: you brush suspicious gravel in the buried section of the ruins. Bring a spare brush — each one lasts 64 uses.

Overworld, underground

• Ward and Silence — ancient city chests.
• Eye — stronghold chests.

Nether

• Rib — nether fortress chests.
• Snout — bastion remnant chests.

The End

• Spire — end city chests.

Ocean

• Tide — dropped by elder guardians, not looted from a chest. It is not a guaranteed drop: each elder guardian hands one over roughly one time in five, and Looting does not improve those odds.

Trial chambers

• Bolt and Flow — vault loot. Bolt comes out of ordinary vaults, but Flow appears only in ominous vaults. Those need ominous trial keys: carry Bad Omen into the chamber, where it converts to Trial Omen and turns the trial spawners ominous, then clear them for the keys. Trial chambers explained walks through the whole loop.

How rare they actually are

Per-chest odds differ between chest types inside the same structure, so treat rarity as a ranking rather than a lottery ticket:

• Silence is the rarest template in the game by a distance. You can strip an entire ancient city and never see one, while Ward from those same chests turns up several times more often. Go in prepared — the deep dark and Warden guide exists for a reason.
• The four trail ruins patterns share one pool of rare suspicious gravel, so a single ruin can hand you two or three patterns at once. If you are missing several at a time, this is the most efficient trip in the game.
• Tide is capped by mob count rather than chest count, and then capped again by luck. Three elder guardians per monument, no more, they do not respawn, and each drops the template only about one time in five — so a monument frequently hands over nothing at all. Budget for more than one.
• Everything else scales with chests opened. Structures with many chests — mansions, bastions, strongholds, end cities — reward a full sweep rather than a smash-and-grab.

Duplication: seven diamonds and one material

At a smithing table:

1. 1.Template slot — the template you want to copy.
2. 2.Middle slot — seven diamonds. Diamonds, not diamond blocks.
3. 3.Right slot — the duplication material for that specific template.

The output is two templates: your original comes back plus one copy. Each extra template therefore costs 7 diamonds and 1 material, and going from one template to N costs 7 x (N-1) diamonds in total. It makes no difference whether you copy the original repeatedly or copy the copies — the diamond bill is identical, so use whichever is quicker to set up.

The duplication material is almost always the signature block of the structure the template came from. Flow is the one exception, taking an item rather than a block:

• Netherite Upgrade — netherrack
• Bolt — block of copper, waxed or unwaxed (the oxidised stages do not work)
• Coast — cobblestone
• Dune — sandstone (plain, not red, cut or chiselled)
• Eye — end stone
• Flow — breeze rod
• Host — terracotta (plain, uncoloured)
• Raiser — terracotta
• Rib — netherrack
• Sentry — cobblestone
• Shaper — terracotta
• Silence — cobbled deepslate
• Snout — blackstone
• Spire — purpur block
• Tide — prismarine (the plain block, not bricks or dark prismarine)
• Vex — cobblestone
• Ward — cobbled deepslate
• Wayfinder — terracotta
• Wild — mossy cobblestone

Seven diamonds is a real cost early and a rounding error later. If diamonds are the bottleneck, how to find diamonds has the Y level and the branch-mining pattern that makes them routine.

How trims combine with materials

Trimming needs three things in the smithing table: the armour piece, the template that sets the pattern, and a material that sets the colour. Template and material are both consumed; the armour keeps every enchantment and all of its durability.

Eleven materials work: iron, copper, gold, lapis lazuli, emerald, diamond, netherite, redstone, amethyst shard, quartz and resin brick — the last of those arriving in 1.21.4, so older guides still say ten. Eighteen patterns times eleven materials is 198 combinations per piece, and any armour material can carry any of them — leather, chainmail, iron, gold, diamond, netherite and turtle shell helmets all accept trims.

Worth knowing before you spend anything:

• Trims are purely cosmetic. A trimmed netherite chestplate has exactly the same armour points, toughness and durability as a plain one.
• Contrast is the whole game. Quartz or gold on netherite reads from across a room. Netherite trim on netherite armour is nearly invisible, which is either the muted look you wanted or a wasted template.
• A trim can be overwritten but not removed. Applying a new pattern and material replaces the old one, at the cost of another template, but there is no way to strip a piece back to plain armour. A cauldron washes dyed leather, not trims.
• Wolf armour is dyed, not trimmed, and elytra cannot be trimmed at all.
• Armour stands display trims, which is the cheapest way to show off a set you are not wearing.

Decide what you want before you spend templates: the armour trim gallery renders every pattern in every material, and the full armour trims guide goes deeper on how each combination looks.

The mistakes that cost people templates

1. 1.Using the only copy. Duplicate first, always. Seven diamonds is cheaper than a second Warden encounter.
2. 2.Diamond blocks instead of diamonds. The recipe wants seven individual diamonds in the middle slot.
3. 3.Assuming the original is consumed. It is not — duplication hands it straight back, so you can never lose a pattern by copying it.
4. 4.Hunting netherite templates in fortresses. Fortresses hold Rib. Bastions hold the upgrade template and Snout.
5. 5.Expecting stats. Trims give none. If protection is the goal, the diamonds belong in gear instead.
6. 6.Forgetting the count. A four-piece matching set needs four templates of the same pattern, so budget 21 diamonds and three duplication materials on top of the one you found.

A sensible collection order

Run trail ruins first: four patterns come from one structure type and none of them require fighting anything. Pick up Coast, Dune, Sentry and Wild opportunistically, since those structures are cheap detours on any exploration trip. Take the bastion next, because one visit covers Snout, the netherite upgrade template and the ancient debris to use it on — and if you find a treasure-room bastion, the upgrade template is a certainty rather than a gamble. Leave ancient cities, trial chambers and the End until your gear is finished, and treat Tide as the long tail, since elder guardians hand it over only about one kill in five. Duplicate every template the same evening you find it, before it has any chance to be spent by accident.