Everything You Need to Know About Strongholds in Minecraft

If you’ve played Minecraft long enough, you’ve probably heard about strongholds.

They’re the hidden structures that hold the End Portal, making them essential if you want to reach the End and fight the Ender Dragon. Well, you won’t find them sitting on the surface like a village or a temple. Instead, they spawn deep underground, with multiple libraries, corridors, and secret rooms to explore.

All of this sounds exciting, but it is equally difficult to locate and navigate. However, once you understand how strongholds work, they become less of a mystery and more of a milestone; the final step before you take on the Ender Dragon.

So, we will go through this quick guide, which will help you locate the Strongholds and then explore every part of them. Here is everything you need to know..

Where and How Strongholds Generate

We already know that at the core of any Stronghold, we have an End Portal Room that takes us directly to the Ender Dragon fight. This is what you are here for and the reason you search for Strongholds in the first place.

But the question is, where can you find these structures? They do not pop up anywhere like villages or ruined portals. You need to carefully follow a designated path to be able to track them since they are buried deep in the ground.

In Java Edition, strongholds are arranged in concentric rings around the world’s origin (0,0). The first ring can generate up to 3 strongholds, the second ring adds more, and so on, with a maximum of 128 strongholds per world.

Similarly, in the Bedrock edition, things are slightly different. There are only 3 Strongholds per world in total, and each has an End Portal room. Certainly, it is much less than what you will receive in Java, so you need to ensure that each trip is worthwhile.

Strongholds usually generate underground between Y: -32 and Y: 48, often hidden within cave systems or intersecting mineshafts and ravines. An easy way to identify if you are close to a stronghold is when you dig underground and come across unique building blocks such as stone bricks, cracked stone bricks, mossy stone bricks, and the occasional chiseled stone brick.

How to Prepare for a Stronghold Run

Before you can even think of going for a Stronghold exploration, there are a lot of items you will need, apart from just carrying Eyes of Ender for direction. Here is a complete list:

1. Weapons: Carry at least one melee weapon, i.e., a Sword. If possible, ensure that it is fully enchanted to get the best out of it. Additionally, you can bring a long-range weapon, i.e., a Bow and Arrow.
2. Armor: At minimum, bring enchanted iron armor, but diamond or netherite is ideal if you already have it. You can choose to add enchatments as well if you can, or else skip them.
3. Pickaxes: Carry an iron or diamond pickaxe (preferably enchanted with Efficiency/Unbreaking). You’ll need it to break through stone, mine ores, and dig through dead ends.
4. Food: The journey is going to be tiring and long. You will need a lot of food, not only to keep you going but also to replenish your health faster. The best food is Golden Carrot, but make sure to carry some steak and cooked pork chops as well.
5. Torches: We have already mentioned just how important this particular item is. Stronghold may not be entirely dark, but there are dark corridors and rooms that will need lighting. Also, to ensure you are not lost, you can place torches on the path you have already explored.
6. Blocks: Bring at least 2–3 stacks of cobblestone or similar. Blocks are essential for bridging over lava, blocking off paths, or building safe zones.
7. Water Bucket: This is again a must. You can use this to save yourself from lava and also convert it into Obsidian to build a Nether portal.
8. Extra Eyes of Ender: Don’t just bring exactly 12 of these, bring 15–20 to account for Eyes breaking while locating the stronghold and filling the portal.
9. Shovel: Useful if you need to dig down through dirt, gravel, or sand while following the Eyes.
10. Flint and Steel (Optional): Many players plan to build a Nether Portal near an End Portal. You will need Obsidian as well as Flint and Steel to activate it.

And that is all you are ever going to need to explore the Strongholds.

How To Find Strongholds

This is where the real challenge begins. Exploring a Stronghold is far easier than actually locating it. But not impossible. You need to follow certain steps to get there. Let’s see how you can do it:

1. Using Eyes Of Ender

This is the classic method that everyone follows to locate the Stronghold, which is by using Eyes of Ender, and you will need a lot of these.

1. Start by crafting Eyes of Ender: For this, combine Blaze Powder (from blaze rods in the Nether) with an Ender Pearl (dropped by Endermen). Make sure you have enough of these since you will need a lot of them.
2. Throw the Eye: To use this as a guide, you need to throw the Eyes of Ender into the air. It will float a short distance, pointing you toward the nearest stronghold, then drop back down or shatter.
3. Follow the Path: Keep throwing the Eyes of Ender every 50-100 blocks, and all you have to do is simply follow the path now.
4. Eye drop under: Once you are close to the structure, the next time you throw the Eye, it will drop under rather than float above. That’s your signal to start digging carefully.

Pro Tip: You need at least 15–20 Eyes of Ender. Some are used just to locate the stronghold, and the End Portal itself might need up to 12 more to activate.

2. Seed Mapping

There are a lot of online tools, like Chunk Base, where you can add the seed for your world and locate the exact location for all the Strongholds. This is much easier and direct than actually moving around using Eyes of Ender.

Surely, these tools are accurate (since strongholds have fixed generation rules), but they take away the sense of discovery. If you’re going for an authentic experience, stick to Eyes of Ender.

Searching for a Stronghold is a journey in itself since it pushes you to visit the Nether for the Blaze Powder, farm Endermen for Ender Pearls, nd then tests your navigation skills as you track the Eyes across the overworld.

This isn’t an entry-level experience that you can go with; you need to be fully prepared with all the resources for this hectic and long journey.

Stronghold Structure: Rooms & Layout

The moment you enter a Stronghold, you will see twisting staircases, dead-end hallways, and the occasional room that makes you wonder why it’s even there. However, every Stronghold features a particular structure with a specific set of rooms, and once you know what to expect, they become much easier to navigate.

Let’s look at what you can find here:

1. Corridors and Staircases

The moment you enter any Stronghold, you will notice all sorts of stone brick variants (cracked, mossy, and regular) lining the walls, making it easy to know you’re in the right place.

Speaking of the layout, the entire Stronghold is filled with long and narrow corridors connected by staircases. While a lot of them lead you to different rooms, some corridors have doors that lead to dead ends; a detail that makes strongholds feel like puzzles.

You need to ensure you put torches on every path you cross as a mark, so that you are not entirely lost while exploring the corridors.

2. The Library

Another very prominent room that you will come across in the Stronghold is a Library filled with hundreds of bookshelves.

For survival players, this is a huge shortcut. Instead of farming sugar cane and leather for weeks, you can instantly collect enough bookshelves here to max out your enchanting table and still have leftovers for trading with villagers.

You will also find at least two chests here that contain multiple plain books, enchanted books, and paper. These can give you powerful upgrades like Sharpness, Efficiency, or Protection without needing to gamble on the enchanting table.

There is one thing you need to look out for: the cobwebs. They are everywhere in this room, and if you are not too careful, you might get entangled. You can either break them down on your way using a Sword or simply break down the bookshelves and make your way through it.

3. Prison Cells

On your way through the corridors, you will find many rooms that look like prison cells. They are mostly empty, but they might spawn a few hostile mobs trapped in them; overall, they are pretty useless.

From a survival perspective, prison cells aren’t very useful on their own. However, many players repurpose them; they can work as ready-made holding areas for villagers, mobs, or even storage builds if you like the atmosphere of keeping them intact.

4. Fountain / Well Rooms

Next, we have the Fountain and Well rooms. While exploring, you will come across small rooms that have fountains or waterfalls flowing from the ceiling. Unlike libraries or the portal room, these don’t serve any direct gameplay purpose; there’s no loot, no mobs tied to them, and no hidden tricks.

They simply spawn here to give the entire structure a meaningful and aesthetic effect. These rooms can also be used as a landmark so that you are not lost and can easily make out if you accidentally revisit them.

5. Storerooms and Dead Ends

Next, we have Storerooms and Dead Ends. Let’s talk about Storerooms first. They are small chambers that sometimes contain a single chest tucked away in the corner. It does not spawn in every stronghold and can be rare to spawn, but it can give you pretty good loot, such as iron ingots, bread, redstone, coal, ender pearls, or the occasional enchanted book (if you are lucky).

Dead Ends, on the other hand, are more of a wasted space. You’ll open a door only to find a blank wall, or a corridor that goes nowhere. These don’t serve any real purpose other than making the stronghold maze-like and harder to navigate.

However, make sure to always break the walls in these areas since they can lead to more rooms that you have missed.

End Portal Room: All You Need To Know

There is one room we did not speak about yet: the End Portal room. This is what you are here for. Let’s learn about the anatomy of this room and what you will find here. We will also talk about how you can activate the portal.

1. Anatomy

Each Stronghold has one portal room, which serves as the gateway to the End World. This room consists of a raised platform of 12 End Portal Frame blocks arranged in a rectangle. You may find the slots empty by default in the frame; however, some might be filled with Ender Pearls. The number of pre-filled eyes is random: sometimes you’ll find 1 or 2, and occasionally none at all.

Since each portal needs 12 Eyes, make sure to carry 15-20 of them, since you will also need them to show you the way to the Stronghold.

2. Silverfish Spawner

The moment you enter the room, you will see a staircase by which you can access the portal floating from the ground level. Just above the staircase, there is a Silverfish Spawner.

Silverfish are not too dangerous and can be easily killed, but they swarm quickly and can trigger nearby infested stone bricks, leading to a sudden wave of attacks. Hence, most players tend ot destroy the spawner immediately to avoid trouble. That said, some keep it and build a silverfish XP farm, though this is much more niche.

3. Lava Pool

There are multiple lava pools as well in this particular room. Two of them are present right after you enter the room, on each side. While the biggest one is right below the portal. Make sure to stay clear of it, and you do not accidentally fall into it.

The best use of this lava pool is that you can create Obsidian from it. As mentioned above, many rooms in Stronghold contain waterfalls, fountains, etc. If you have a bucket with you, you can collect water from here.

Then, pour the water on the lava pool to give you Obsidian. This eventually can be used to create a Nether portal right outside the End Portal room.

Mobs and Spawners

You may find a few hostile mobs and spawners here in the Stronghold. Although not the most dangerous, you must carry a fully enchanted sword to tackle them.

Some of the most common ones are listed below:

1. Skeletons: These are probably the most dangerous mobs found in Stronghold. They are either trapped in the Prison cells, or you can find them randomly in dark rooms. To defeat them, use a shield or simply hit them with your sword. Also, stay clear of their arrow; they can do a good deal of damage.
2. Zombies: They are less threatening, but again, they are hostile. You can easily kill them with your sword, but if they spawn in large numbers, it can get tricky. They also break down wooden doors, which explains why you’ll sometimes find random doors missing inside the stronghold.
3. Creepers: Another less threatening mob, but don’t forget they blast off if they come close to you. So, it's best to carry a bow and arrow to kill them or simply run away.
4. Silverfish: The stronghold’s “signature” mob. They spawn from the silverfish spawner in the portal room and can also burst out of infested stone bricks scattered around. Now, they are not dangerous, but they do alert others around them, leading to swarms that overwhelm you fast.

A few players have encountered spiders as well in the Stronghold; you need to be careful of them, too.

Speaking of the Spawners, there is only a single Silverfish Spawner in the End Portal room that we spoke about earlier. It continuously spawns silverfish unless destroyed or disabled. Most players break it immediately, but you can also use torches or blocks to prevent spawns temporarily.

Strategies To Clear a Stronghold Safely

Now that we know everything about the Stronghold, it's time to understand how you can safely explore and navigate it. Every player has a different strategy, but there are a few common things they all do.

Let’s see how you can do it too:

1. Entering and Lighting

The moment you break into a Stronghold, you will see a spiral-like staircase that will be your entrance to this structure. Your first job will be to place a torch and light it up.

That is not all. To ensure that you are not lost in this maze-like structure, you need to keep adding a torch on every wall you cross. A good habit is to place all your torches on one side of the wall (say, the right side). That way, if you’re lost, following torches on the opposite side will always lead you back to the entrance.

2. Follow This Searching Method

By now, you already know what you are searching for: End Portal Room. Instead of wandering around, you need to stick to a plan.

You can either choose to go wall-by-wall and explore everything along the way. Or you can move room by room, working outward or inward in a spiral until you’ve covered the whole structure.

Along with torches, you can also place a dirt or cobblestone block in rooms you have already discovered and covered, so that you do not visit the same place again and continue with your exploration.

3. What To Do With Libraries

We have already spoken about how libraries are one of the treasure rooms if you know exactly what to do with them. Instead of breaking them all and finding your way out of there, you can instead collect them all by using Silk Touch on your tool.

Even if you don’t, try to at least loot the chests first (they often contain enchanted books). Clear out cobwebs with a sword to avoid getting trapped mid-fight, and grab the string since it’s always useful later.

4. Secure the Portal Room

If you finally find the Portal room, don’t simply rush to it. You need to secure the area.

• Break the silverfish spawner immediately (unless you want to keep it for farming).
• Cover the lava pool with solid blocks like cobblestone. This prevents accidents and gives you a flat surface to work on.
• Light the room thoroughly to stop mobs from wandering in while you’re focused on the portal.

Only after the room is safe should you think about filling the frames with Eyes of Ender.

5. Don’t Forget Secret Rooms

There are multiple secret rooms hidden within a Stronghold. While exploring, try to break through walls that may seem suspicious or walls around the dead ends. They often lead to more secret rooms or rooms you have not explored yet.

Furthermore, you will find an area in the Stronghold with four torches on a wall in the middle and four staircases on each end of it that take you further down. You need to go to the end of each staircase and go through them by breaking apart the stone bricks. This is where you will find hidden secret rooms.

Wrapping Up

Well, that is all from this guide. It can feel overwhelming, starting right from finding a Stronghold and then exploring each part of it.

But it's all worth it. They’re meant to test your preparation, patience, and combat skills before letting you step into the End. With the right gear, a good search strategy, and some awareness of common pitfalls, you’ll not only survive the stronghold; you’ll conquer it.