How To Find Bastions in Minecraft: The Ultimate Guide

The Minecraft 1.16 Nether Update was one of the biggest updates in the history of the game. The update introduced a revamp of the Nether with the addition of new mobs, biomes, and structures. This gave players a new experience and a new place to explore in Minecraft.

The update included a new structure called the bastion remnant. This castle-like structure is a stronghold for new and rare loot. If a player is able to find one, the player will then have the ability to upgrade their gear and become stronger.

However, the bastion remnant is very difficult to find since the generation of a structure depends on the seed of the world. The bastion remnant is also guarded by newly added mobs called piglin brutes, which will attack players if they try to steal the loot. In this guide, we will teach you how you can find a bastion remnant and collect the loot with ease.

Bastion Remnant

Bastion remnants are large, castle-like structures found in the Nether. They are distinctively made out of blackstone and are the only places where you can find gilded blackstone. All of them have piglins and piglin brutes guarding the stronghold.

There are four different variants of bastion remnants that you can find: bridges, hoglin stables, housing units, and the treasure room. All of these variants of bastion remnants contain loot chests that you can find inside the bastions.

Bridges

The bridges variant of bastion remnants has a unique feature of a bridge. Bridge bastions are a little smaller than the other bastions, but they also include some amazing loot.

Hoglin Stables

Hoglin stables are huge, ruined, building-like structures. The building is hard to navigate due to the ruined structure, but the bastion is huge, so it contains many loot chests.

Housing Units

The housing units have four separate buildings and each of them contains a lot of piglins and piglin brutes. You can tell if it’s a housing unit if there are nether warts in the middle of the four buildings. Each of these buildings can contain a loot chest with amazing treasure inside.

Treasure Rooms

The treasure room variant has two structures – a huge square stronghold with a bridge connecting it to another tall building. This bastion remnant variant is what most players want to find due to the loot you can collect.

If you go inside the square stronghold, there is loot at the very bottom, with lava surrounding the loot chest. Treasure rooms contain many gold blocks and loot chests. These loot chests are important because they are the only chests that are guaranteed to contain a netherite upgrade smithing template. This template helps players upgrade their diamond equipment to netherite.

When a bastion is generated, piglins and piglin brutes will also spawn. Be careful when opening any of the chests around the piglins, because it will anger them and cause them to attack you.

Biomes of Bastion Remnants

The Nether is vast, but there are only certain Nether biomes that are capable of generating a bastion.

The only biome that you should avoid when searching for a bastion remnant is the basalt deltas biome. These biomes are guaranteed to never spawn a bastion remnant. You can identify a basalt delta biome with the volcanic look and a mix of basalt and blackstone blocks.

Every other Nether biome can generate a bastion remnant. Below is a list of Nether biomes that will give you a higher chance of finding bastions:

• Nether wastes
• Soul sand valley
• Warped forest
• Crimson forest

The majority of bastion remnants that generate can be found in the Nether wastes biome.

Nether Fortresses and Bastion Remnants

You should also avoid areas where Nether fortresses have generated. The way that Nether structure generation works is that the Nether splits the world into areas of 432×432 (in Java Edition) or 480×480 (in Bedrock Edition). Between each 432×432 area is a separation border of 4 chunks. When we subtract the north, west, south, and east border with the area, there is a 368×368 area for either a Nether fortress or a bastion remnant to generate. Below is a picture to help visualize – the green shows the area the Nether structures can generate in and the red shows that they can’t.

Nether fortresses and bastion remnants cannot generate in the same region, meaning that only one Nether structure can generate inside the 368×368 area in Java and 416×416 in Bedrock. If you happen to find a Nether fortress, start leaving the structure and venturing in another direction, because it is guaranteed that you won’t find a bastion remnant within 400~500 blocks from the fortress depending on the version of Minecraft you play.

In Java Edition, there is a 60% chance of a bastion remnant generating inside the area instead of a Nether fortress. In Bedrock Edition, the chances increase to a 66% chance of a bastion generating instead of a Nether fortress.

How to Find Bastion Remnants

Creative Mode

To find a bastion remnant in creative mode, enter the command ‘/locate structure minecraft:bastion_remnant’ into the chat. The command should then show you the coordinates of the nearest bastion remnant to you. Then, type ‘/tp {x y z}’ into the chat and your character should be teleported to the nearest bastion remnant.

Survival Mode

Finding bastions in survival mode is very technical, so below are steps to how you can increase your odds of finding a bastion remnant.

Step #1: Building a Nether Portal

To find a bastion remnant, you must first go into the Nether by building a Nether portal. You can build one by putting 10 obsidian blocks in a 5×4 rectangle. You can save obsidian by not placing any obsidian on the corners of the portal. Then, light up the portal by using flint and steel and walk into the portal.

Step #2: Opening Your Debug Screen

The debug screen is a tool that will help you identify your coordinates and more importantly, the entity count. The entity count can be identified by looking at the ‘E:’ on the 5th row of the top left corner. For example, in the photo below, the entity count is 0/30.

This will display the number of entities or mobs in the direction that you are facing.

Step #3: Change FOV to 90

The next step is to change your FOV to 90. Increasing your field of view will give you more surroundings to look at and could increase the entity count of the direction you are facing. To change the FOV, hit ‘ESC’ on your keyboard and then click on ‘Options’. The FOV slider should be on the top left and adjust it so that it reaches 90.

Step #4: Find a Direction with High Entity Count

Once you have locked your FOV and opened your debug screen, run around and look at every direction until the entity count is somewhat high. For example, the photo below shows an entity count of 45/122.

Step #5: Change FOV to 30

Once you have found a direction with high entity count, lower your FOV to 30. This will decrease your surrounding view and also the entity count. If you look left and right and the entity count doesn’t go up or change a lot, this means that there is a lot of entity towards the direction you are facing. This is also an indication that there may be a bastion remnant in that direction.

Step #6: Go Toward the Direction

Once you have identified the direction with high entity count, start going towards that direction and it shouldn’t be long until you find the bastion remnant.

Other Notes

If you still need help figuring out how to use this technique to find bastions, check out this YouTube guide for clarity.

Prepare for the Bastion Remnant

Once you have found a bastion remnant, you should gear up and be ready to enter the giant structure. Bastion remnants are guarded by piglin and piglin brutes that will attack you on sight if you are not wearing gold armor. To avoid this, you can wear one piece of equipment that is crafted with gold ingots.

Piglins and piglin brutes will also attack you if you are mining gold or opening loot chests. You can avoid them attacking you when looting chests by using hoppers to transfer loot items into your inventory. Unfortunately, there isn’t really a way to avoid them attacking you when mining gold blocks, so be prepared to fight if you do.

Piglin brutes do a lot of damage, so it would be wise to give your equipment enchantments so that you have a higher chance to survive. You can also bring fire resistance potions in case you get knocked into lava or need to jump into it to escape.

Conclusion

Now that you know the secrets to finding a bastion, go out there and search for one. These bastion remnants may be tough and guarded by strong mobs, but the loot inside the chests makes every exploration worth it. If you need more help or information on bastion remnants, check out this guide on YouTube.