How to Find a Stronghold in Minecraft 2026 - End Portal Guide

The stronghold is the most important structure in Minecraft: it holds the End Portal, the only way to reach the End dimension and fight the Ender Dragon. This guide covers everything about stronghold location — crafting Eyes of Ender, throwing them correctly, triangulation, navigating the maze of corridors inside, and safely activating the End Portal. Everything here applies to every modern version of Minecraft, from 1.20 through the current releases.

What is a Stronghold?

A stronghold is a large underground structure made of stone bricks that generates beneath the Overworld. It is the only place in the game where an End Portal can be found, which makes locating one an essential milestone for any survival playthrough. Strongholds are worth exploring even beyond the portal:

• The End Portal: The one and only gateway to the End dimension and the Ender Dragon fight
• Libraries: Rooms filled with bookshelves and chests that can contain enchanted books
• Storage rooms: Chests with iron, ender pearls, food, and other useful loot
• Bookshelves: Dozens of them, which you can mine with Silk Touch for your own enchanting setup

Strongholds do not generate randomly. On Java Edition they generate in rings around the world origin (coordinates 0, 0). The first ring contains 3 strongholds, each roughly 1,300 to 2,700 blocks from spawn. Further rings exist thousands of blocks out, but for a normal playthrough you will always be hunting one of the first three — the stronghold is never right under spawn, and never impossibly far away either.

What You Need Before You Start

Stronghold hunting is a mid-game task. Before you set out, gather the following:

• Eyes of Ender (15-20+): The tool that points you to the stronghold — crafting them is covered in the next section
• Good armor: Iron at minimum, ideally diamond. You will fight endermen, blazes, and silverfish along the way
• A strong pickaxe: Iron or better, with spares — you will be digging through a lot of stone
• Food: A full stack of cooked food for the long overland trip
• Torches: Strongholds are pitch dark and full of monsters
• A water bucket: For the lava pool under the portal and for safe descents
• Building blocks: Cobblestone or dirt for pillars, bridges, and marking your route
• A bed: Set your spawn near the stronghold once you find it, so a death doesn't cost you the whole journey

Tip: Travel with a fairly empty inventory. Strongholds contain a lot of loot — enchanted books, ender pearls, iron, bookshelves — and you will want the space to carry it all home. If your gear could use an upgrade before the trip, our Minecraft Enchantments Guide explains how to get the most out of your enchanting table first.

How to Craft Eyes of Ender

An Eye of Ender is crafted from 1 ender pearl + 1 blaze powder, combined anywhere in a crafting grid. Each ingredient comes from a different dimension, so plan two collection trips.

Getting Ender Pearls

There are three practical ways to collect ender pearls:

• Killing endermen: Endermen have a chance to drop an ender pearl when killed. They spawn at night in the Overworld, but only in small numbers. Fight them from under a two-block-tall ceiling so they can't reach you.
• Piglin bartering (often the fastest route): Toss gold ingots to piglins in the Nether and they throw items back — ender pearls are a common result. Bartering 30-40 ingots usually covers all the pearls you need.
• The warped forest: This Nether biome has the most endermen of any biome in the game, and almost nothing else spawns there. If you'd rather fight than barter, farm your pearls here in one session.

Getting Blaze Powder

Blaze powder is crafted from blaze rods, which only drop from blazes — and blazes only spawn in Nether fortresses. Find a fortress (the dark, netherbrick castles that generate in the Nether), locate a blaze spawner, and fight blazes until you have at least 8-10 rods. Each rod crafts into 2 blaze powder.

Blaze tips: Blazes shoot fireballs, so bring a shield and fight from behind cover. And here's the good news: blaze powder is also the fuel for every brewing stand, so nothing you farm here goes to waste. Grab extra rods while you're at the fortress and read our potion brewing guide — you're already collecting what brewing needs most, and you'll want potions for the dragon fight anyway.

How Many Eyes Should You Bring?

Bring at least 15-20 Eyes of Ender. Every thrown eye has roughly a 20% chance to shatter instead of dropping back down, and the End Portal itself can require up to 12 eyes to fill its frames. A stack of 15-20 gives you a comfortable margin; running out of eyes 2,000 blocks from home is a miserable way to end a trip.

Step-by-Step: Finding the Stronghold with Eyes of Ender

Step 1: Walk Away from Spawn First

The nearest strongholds sit 1,300 to 2,700 blocks from the world origin, so eyes thrown right at spawn are wasted. Pick a direction and travel about 1,500 blocks out from (0, 0) before your first throw — you had to cover that distance anyway, and every eye you don't throw early is an eye saved for the portal. Press F3 (Java) to watch your XZ coordinates as you go.

Step 2: Throw Your First Eye

1. Hold the Eye of Ender and use it (right-click) with open sky above you
2. Watch it carefully: the eye flies up into the air and drifts toward the nearest stronghold, then drops
3. Note the direction it flew — that line points straight at the stronghold
4. Pick the eye back up where it lands (unless it shattered — about 1 in 5 do)

Step 3: Follow the Eyes

Travel in the direction the eye flew, throwing another eye every 300-500 blocks to correct your course. Don't throw constantly — each throw risks that 20% shatter chance. As you get close, the eyes fly lower and at sharper angles.

Step 4: Watch for the Eye to Fly Downward

This is the signal everyone waits for: when you are standing on top of the stronghold, a thrown eye will fly down into the ground instead of drifting off toward the horizon. If an eye flies behind you, you've overshot — backtrack and throw again until the eye dives straight down. That spot marks the stronghold below your feet.

Step 5: Dig Down — Safely

Never dig straight down. It's the oldest rule in Minecraft for a reason — you can drop into a ravine, a cave, or the stronghold's own lava. Instead:

1. Mark the exact spot where the eye went into the ground
2. Dig a staircase down, or dig a shaft one block beside the marker while standing on the edge, so you can see what's below before you fall into it
3. Keep your water bucket on the hotbar for surprise drops or lava
4. Stop and light up when you break through into stone-brick corridors — you've arrived

Strongholds usually generate between roughly Y 0 and Y 30, so expect a decent dig. If you hit a cave on the way down, follow it — caves frequently intersect stronghold corridors.

The Triangulation Method: Find It in Two Throws

If you'd rather do a little geometry than walk-and-throw a dozen times, triangulation locates the stronghold with just two eyes. The idea is simple: each thrown eye defines a straight line pointing at the stronghold. Two lines from two different positions cross at exactly one point — and that point is the stronghold.

1. Throw one eye and stand exactly where you threw it
2. Open F3 and note two things: your XZ coordinates and your facing angle while looking precisely along the eye's flight path (the "Facing" line in the F3 readout gives the exact angle)
3. Walk 500+ blocks perpendicular to that direction — sideways, not toward the stronghold. The farther you go, the more accurate the result
4. Throw a second eye and record your new coordinates and facing angle the same way
5. Find where the two lines cross. You can sketch it on paper, plot it on a map, or use one of the many free stronghold calculator tools online — enter both positions and both angles, and it outputs the stronghold's coordinates
6. Travel to those coordinates and throw one confirmation eye when you arrive — it should dive into the ground

Don't want to do math? That's fine. The simple method — follow repeated throws until an eye flies down into the ground — works perfectly well and needs no calculators. Triangulation just saves eyes and travel time, which is why speedrunners use it. For a first playthrough, follow the eyes and enjoy the journey.

Navigating the Stronghold

Breaking into the stronghold is only half the job. Inside is a maze of stone-brick corridors: staircases, dead ends, iron-doored rooms, and looping passages. The portal room can be anywhere in the structure, so expect to explore. Here's what you'll encounter:

Libraries

Libraries are the loot highlight — tall rooms lined with bookshelves and draped in cobwebs, sometimes with a second floor. Their chests can contain enchanted books, regular books, paper, and compasses. Bring shears for the cobwebs, and consider mining the bookshelves with Silk Touch — a full enchanting setup needs 15 bookshelves, and one stronghold library can supply all of them. Our enchantments guide covers what to do with everything you haul out.

Storage Rooms and Corridors

Smaller rooms hold chests with mixed loot: iron ingots, ender pearls (a nice top-up for your eye supply), bread, redstone, and occasionally a saddle. Loot everything — you made a long trip, make it pay.

Silverfish: The Stronghold's Trap

Many of the stronghold's stone bricks are secretly infested blocks — they look identical to normal stone bricks, but break slightly faster and release a silverfish when destroyed. Three rules keep you safe:

• Don't punch silverfish with bare hands. A hit that doesn't kill a silverfish outright can call nearby silverfish out of the walls, turning one bug into a swarm
• Kill them in one hit or ignore them. A decent sword one-shots a silverfish. If you can't kill it instantly, walking away is genuinely the better play
• Mine carefully. If a stone brick breaks suspiciously fast, it was infested — back up and be ready. Avoid tunneling through walls when a corridor route exists

Don't Get Lost

Stronghold corridors all look the same. Use a simple marking system: torches on the right wall as you explore means torches on the left lead back out. Cobblestone blocks a dead-end so you don't re-check it. Note the coordinates of your entry shaft in case you need to find the way home.

Finding and Activating the End Portal

Eventually you'll open a door into the room you came for. The portal room is unmistakable: a frame of 12 end portal frame blocks arranged in a square, raised on a platform above a pool of lava, with a short staircase leading up to it — and a silverfish spawner sitting right on that staircase.

Step 1: Deal with the Spawner

The silverfish spawner will pump out silverfish continuously while you're in the room. Break it with a pickaxe (it drops nothing, but stops the spawns) or slap torches on every side to disable it while you work. Do this first — filling the portal with silverfish nipping your ankles is asking for a knockback into lava.

Step 2: Secure the Lava

The portal platform sits directly over lava, and more lava pools around the room. Use your water bucket or building blocks to cover the exposed lava near where you'll be standing. One bad knockback is the difference between victory and watching your gear burn.

Step 3: Fill the Frames

Each of the 12 frame blocks needs an Eye of Ender. Here's the pleasant surprise: each frame block has a 10% chance to have generated with an eye already in it, so on average you'll find one or two pre-filled — and very, very rarely, all 12 (about a 1 in a trillion chance, but it has happened). Stand inside or beside the frame and right-click each empty frame block with an eye. When the twelfth eye goes in, the portal activates with a distinctive sound and the starry black portal surface appears.

Important: make sure you are not standing on top of the frame blocks' inner edge when the portal activates, or you'll fall straight in before you're ready.

Step 4: Prepare BEFORE You Jump In

Warning: entering the End is a one-way trip. Once you jump into the portal, there is no way back to the Overworld until you either defeat the Ender Dragon or die. Do not hop in to "just take a look." Here's what you should have ready before stepping through:

Item	Amount	Why
Full armor (enchanted)	4 pieces	The dragon and dozens of endermen hit hard — Protection IV diamond or better
Bow + arrows	1 bow, 2+ stacks of arrows	Shooting the End Crystals on the obsidian pillars is the core of the fight
Sword (enchanted)	1	For the dragon's perch phases and any endermen you provoke
Water bucket	1	Endermen flee from water; also saves you from long falls
Building blocks	1-2 stacks	Pillar up to crystals, bridge from the spawn platform if you arrive underground
Food	1 stack of cooked food	The fight is long — keep saturation topped up for regeneration
Pickaxe	1	You may spawn inside stone/end stone and need to dig out to the island
Pumpkin (optional)	1	Wearing a carved pumpkin lets you look at endermen without angering them
Slow Falling / healing potions (optional)	2-4	Slow Falling counters the dragon's knockback; healing keeps you alive on the pillars

Set your spawn with a bed near the portal room, stash spare valuables in a chest, and only then take the plunge. For the fight itself — crystal destruction order, dodging dragon's breath, the perch phase — read our full How to Defeat the Ender Dragon guide before you jump.

Practical Tips and Common Mistakes

• Mark the surface spot. Before digging down, build a tall pillar with torches where the eye dove into the ground — strongholds are hard to re-find from the surface without a marker
• Write down the coordinates of both the surface entrance and the portal room. F3 shows them; a sign by your bed works fine
• Don't throw eyes underground. Thrown eyes need open sky to fly properly
• Don't waste eyes near spawn. Walk your ~1,500 blocks out first
• Don't dig straight down. Staircase down, or dig beside your marker — the portal room's lava is exactly what you don't want to fall into
• Don't break infested blocks carelessly. One silverfish is nothing; a summoned swarm in a narrow corridor is a real threat
• Keep 12 eyes in reserve for the frame — pre-filled frames are a bonus, not a plan
• Travel light, return heavy. Between enchanted books, bookshelves, ender pearls, and iron, a stronghold trip can fill your inventory twice over

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Finding a stronghold is one of Minecraft's great mid-game adventures: a Nether trip for blaze rods, a pearl hunt, a cross-country journey guided by floating eyes, and a torch-lit crawl through silverfish-infested corridors to the portal room. Take enough eyes, dig smart, and prepare before you jump — the Ender Dragon is waiting on the other side.

Quick Summary:

1. Farm blaze rods at a Nether fortress and ender pearls via piglin bartering or the warped forest
2. Craft 15-20 Eyes of Ender (1 ender pearl + 1 blaze powder each)
3. Walk about 1,500 blocks from spawn (0, 0) before throwing — the first strongholds sit 1,300-2,700 blocks out
4. Throw an eye, follow its flight direction, and re-throw every 300-500 blocks (or triangulate with two throws and F3 angles)
5. When an eye flies down into the ground, mark the spot and dig a staircase down beside it — never straight down
6. Navigate the stone-brick maze, loot the libraries, and watch out for infested blocks and silverfish
7. In the portal room: break the silverfish spawner, cover the lava, and fill all 12 frames with Eyes of Ender
8. Gear up fully before entering — then go read our Ender Dragon guide and finish the fight

The portal is lit. See you in the End!