How To Find A Stronghold In Minecraft

Exploration is at the heart of many things you do in Minecraft. Traveling through the game’s various realms, biomes, and structures will have you finding all kinds of things. Dangerous mobs, exclusive treasures, and more could be hiding behind any of the world’s many blocks.

One of the more important structures in Minecraft is the stronghold. These locations are hidden deep underground, making them a challenge to find unless you know the proper way to locate them. Instead of relying on dumb luck to stumble upon it, here is how to locate strongholds in a Minecraft Survival world.

Updated 8/27/2025

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How to find a stronghold in Minecraft

As mentioned above, strongholds in Minecraft are located deep underground in the Overworld. Strongholds generate at any Y level, so there isn’t a great way to narrow where it is down. Sometimes, they can even generate underwater. However, with the eye of Ender item, you can be directed to it. Look down below for steps on creating this item (you will probably need quite a few of them), but all you need to do is throw the eye of Ender and follow the direction that it moves.

With the eye of Ender in your hand, press (right-click, L2, LT, ZL) and the eye will float in a direction before breaking apart and letting you pick it up again. That direction is where you need to move to find your stronghold. Keep in mind that as you continue to use your eye of ender, it has a chance to break and not be usable anymore, so you may need to have quite a few depending on how far away you are.

Once you have arrived above the stronghold, the eye of the ender will begin descending into the ground. From this point, save the rest of your eye of enders and start digging down. Make sure you are leaving behind a staircase you can jump back up if you want to leave. Keep going, even if you find a cave system as you dig. Once you start hitting stone brick blocks, you will know you are in the stronghold.

How to get an eye of Ender

To make an eye of Ender, you will need one Ender pearl and one blaze powder.

The only way to get Ender pearls is to defeat Endermen, who are the tall, dark mobs that teleport around and pick up blocks. When you hit them or look into their eyes, they will teleport away and charge you repeatedly. Maintain your health and keep slashing with a sword to take them down. They also take damage when they touch water, so you can use that to your advantage if you are in a particularly wet area.

As for blaze powder, you need to make your way to the Nether. Within Nether fortresses, you can find blaze spawners. These fiery mobs will hurl fireballs at you endlessly, so be sure to rush them with a lot of health and armor. Upon death, they drop blaze rods, which are converted to blaze powder at a crafting table. Instead of destroying the spawner the blazes come from, cover it in torches so they stop spawning. From there, you can remove a torch to control their spawn rate when you need more blaze rods.

Once you have Ender pearls and blaze rods, go to a crafting title and make an eye of Ender by combining one of each at a time. It doesn’t matter what slots you put them in; as long as you have both items on the crafting grid, you can make an eye of Ender. To be safe, you want at least 12 of these if you are planning to go to The End right away.

Navigating the stronghold

Once inside a Minecraft stronghold, you will find the place is essentially a maze. There are winding hallways, spiral staircase to follow, and a couple of different rooms you can come across that will make it hard to keep track of where you’ve been. We recommend using torches and placing them on the right-hand side wall as you travel. With this method, you can know where you have been already as you get lost in this area.

While walking around the stronghold, you can find libraries that are full of bookshelves and spiderwebs, various chests hidden throughout the area, and the End portal room. Along the way, mobs like zombies and skeletons are likely to spawn in the dark corridors, so be sure to light them up to make the travel safer. Also, some of the stone bricks around the structure will be infested with silverfish, so be careful what blocks you break or you can have a horde of silverfish attacking you.

How to find the End portal room in a stronghold

Unfortunately, finding the End portal in a stronghold can be pretty tough. As mentioned above, strongholds are very maze-like, so it is easy to get lost. When using the eye of Ender, it only shows you where the stronghold is; it does not point to the End portal. Use the torch method we outlined above to keep track of places you have been and keep searching through the various floors and hallways until you come across a room that has lava, a silverfish spawner, and weird green blocks floating over the lava. This is the End portal, so be sure to destroy the spawner and make sure you are safe.

How to work the End portal

Once you find the portal room in a stronghold, it is highly likely that it will be incomplete. If you look at the top of it, there will be slots in the portal frame where you can insert an eye of Ender into each block. Once all have an eye of Ender, the middle portion of the portal will activate and become very dark and starry. If you walk in, you will load into The End, and can find the Ender dragon, so be sure you are fully stocked up on items and healed.

How to find a stronghold in Minecraft with cheats

If you are playing in a Minecraft world with cheats turned on, you can make life a little easier on yourself by typing /locate structure stronghold in Java or /locate structure: minecraft:stronghold in Bedrock. Now, using the coordinates given to you, use /teleport @s <coordinates> to transport to that area instantly. We recommend going into Spectator Mode by typing /gamemode spectator to fly through the blocks to find the portal room quickly. Cheats help speed things up a bit.