How to Find a Stronghold in Minecraft

To find a stronghold, throw eyes of ender and follow the direction they fly, or enter your seed in our stronghold finder to get exact coordinates. Every stronghold contains an End portal room, so finding one is the step that gets you to the Ender Dragon.

What is a stronghold?

A stronghold is a large underground stone brick structure in the Overworld. It has corridors, staircases, libraries, prison halls and a portal room with an End portal frame. According to the Minecraft Wiki, Java Edition generates 128 strongholds in eight rings around the world origin (X 0, Z 0). The first ring has three strongholds, between 1,280 and 2,816 blocks from the origin, and the outer ring has nine, between 22,784 and 24,320 blocks. On Bedrock the count is not fixed and strongholds can be closer to the origin.

That layout is why the first stronghold is usually a long walk, and why a good plan beats wandering.

Method 1: follow the eye of ender

You craft an eye of ender from one blaze powder and one ender pearl. When you throw one in the Overworld, it flies about 12 blocks toward the nearest stronghold, then drops or shatters. Here is the routine:

1. Throw the eye and note which way it moves.
2. Walk the same direction, then throw again.
3. Repeat until the eye starts to sink into the ground instead of rising. That means you are within about 12 blocks of the stronghold's start chunk.
4. Dig down in a staircase pattern and look for stone bricks.

Each throw has a 20% chance of breaking the eye and an 80% chance of dropping it, so pick it up and reuse it, and carry a spare or two. Eyes do nothing in the Nether or the End.

Faster: triangulate with two throws

If you throw an eye from two places a good distance apart and mark the direction each time, the two lines cross at the stronghold. Many players write the coordinates down with the F3 screen and draw the lines on paper or a map. The idea is simple, but a seed tool is much faster.

Method 2: use a seed tool

If you know your world seed, you can skip the trial and error. Type /seed in chat (it works in singleplayer even with cheats off), then open the seed map and turn on the stronghold layer, or use the stronghold finder. You get the nearest strongholds with X and Z and a copyable /tp command. Because the finder shows the exact positions, you only need to carry enough eyes to open the portal.

On Java you can also check a position with /locate structure minecraft:stronghold in a test world with cheats on.

Inside the stronghold

The portal room is the goal. According to the wiki, it holds one monster spawner that produces silverfish, twelve end portal frames and a pool of lava below them. Each frame has a 10% chance to already hold an eye when the world is made, so on average you start with about one filled frame.

Look out for other rooms too: libraries (up to two per stronghold, with chests), prison halls, chest corridors and spiral staircases. Silverfish can also hide in infested stone bricks, so do not mine every block blindly.

How many eyes do you need?

Plan for 12 eyes to open the portal, plus the eyes you spend while finding the stronghold. A practical stock is 14 to 16: blaze rods give blaze powder and endermen or bartering give ender pearls, so start gathering them in the Nether before you leave.

Common mistakes

• Throwing from the Nether or End. The eye only works in the Overworld.
• Digging too early. Wait until the eye sinks, or you may dig in the wrong place.
• Leaving without a plan. Bring food, a bed to reset your spawn, blocks, a pickaxe and water for the lava near the portal.

Stronghold positions in our tool are predictions from world generation, so confirm with /locate before a very long trip. For the next step in the game, see how nether portals link and use the nether portal calculator to plan your route.