
Minecraft’s 1.20 Trail & Tales update introduced smithing templates for players to experiment with. These smithing templates are essential when it comes to upgrading and customizing your armor to whatever you desire.
There are two types of smithing templates added to the game. One is the netherite upgrade smithing template, the other is the armor trim smithing template. The netherite upgrade is solely used to upgrade your armor and weapons, while the armor trim allows players to customize their armor to a more fashionable design.
With so many smithing templates added to the game, it gets confusing to know where to find them. This guide will show you how you can use, craft, and find these smithing templates in Minecraft.
Location of Every Smithing Template
Each smithing template has a different way to be found and obtained. Some are harder to find than others, so below is a list that helps you identify where you can find each smithing template in Minecraft.
Chest Loot
Below are the items that can be obtained only in chests at specific locations.
Netherite Upgrade/Snout Armor Trim
Netherite upgrade smithing templates and snout armor trims can only be found in bastion remnants, which can only be found in the Nether. Bastion remnants are large castle-like structures that naturally generate in the Nether. You can tell if a structure is a bastion remnant by the distinctive size and the large number of blackstone blocks.

The insides of the bastion remnants are usually guarded by piglins and piglin brutes. Explore the remnant and open any chest that you find.

You can find the netherite upgrade smithing template and snout armor trim smithing template in any of these chests:
- Hoglin stable chests (10% chance)
- Treasure chests (100% chance)
- Bridge chests (10% chance)

Bolt Armor Trim/Flow Armor Trim
Bolt armor trim and flow armor trim can be found in the Trial Chambers. To locate the Trial Chambers, you will need the trial explorer map. To obtain these maps, talk to a journeyman-level cartographer villager and trade 12 emeralds and a compass with them. The map will guide you to the nearest Trial Chamber.

Once you have located the Trial Chamber, complete the trial to gain a trial key from the trial spawners. Once you have obtained the key, use it on the vault. There is a 6.2% chance that it will dispense the bolt armor trim smithing template.

To obtain the flow armor trim, you will need to obtain the ominous trial key. This key can be used to unlock the ominous vault, which has red eyes compared to the orange eyes of the standard vault. There is a 22.5% chance the flow armor trim will be dispensed from it.

Coast Armor Trim
Coast armor trims can be found on shipwrecks. To find a shipwreck, you will need to venture on the ocean until you locate one.

You can find the coast armor trim smithing template in any of these chests:
- Treasure chest (16.7% chance)
- Map chest (16.7% chance)
- Supply chest (16.7% chance)

Dune Armor Trim
Dune armor trims can be found inside desert pyramids. These pyramids naturally spawn in the desert biome.

After you have located a desert pyramid, find the orange and purple terracotta pattern on the ground and dig the blue terracotta block. Be very careful not to dig straight down because below the pattern is a long empty drop to the bottom. You also need to worry about the stone pressure plate at the bottom, because it is connected to TNT. Make sure to disarm the trap first by breaking the pressure plate to avoid accidentally setting it off.

The dune armor trim smithing template will have a 14.3% chance to be in any of the four chests at the bottom of the pyramid.

Eye Armor Trim
Eye armor trims can be found in strongholds, which is an underground dungeon that contains the end portal. To find a stronghold, you can throw ender eyes to guide you towards the direction. When the eye starts going into the ground, start digging down until you reach the stronghold. You can identify the stronghold with its distinctive stone brick blocks. Once you have reached the stronghold, venture around

The eye armor trim smithing template can be found in any of these chests:
- Altar chests (10% chance)
- Library chests (100% chance)

Rib Armor Trim
Rib armor trims can be found in Nether fortresses. You can find Nether fortresses if you enter the Nether using the Nether portal. Nether fortresses have distinctive Nether bricks, which are dark red blocks, as their main structure. Once you have found a Nether fortress, venture inside the fortress and look for chests.

The rib armor trim smithing template will have a 6.7% chance of being in any of the chests you find within the nether fortress.

Sentry Armor Trim
Sentry armor trims can be found inside the chests of pillager outposts. Pillager outposts can naturally spawn in any biome where villages can spawn. Other biomes where pillager outposts can spawn in include:
- Grove
- Snowy Slopes
- Jagged Peaks
- Frozen Peaks
- Stony peaks
- Cherry Grove

Once you have located the pillager outpost, climb up the stairs to the top where there will be chests. The sentry armor trim smithing template has a 25% chance of spawning in any of these chests.

Spire Armor Trim
Spire armor trims can be found in end cities. To find an end city, you will need to go through the end portal. After defeating the ender dragon, the end city portal will spawn.
Throw an ender pearl into the end city portal and you will be teleported to the outer islands of the End. The end city is a tall castle-like structure that is built with distinctive purple bricks.

After you have located an end city, proceed inside and open any chests that you find. There will be a 6.7% chance that the chests contain spire armor trim smithing templates.

Tide Armor Trim
Tide armor trims can be collected after defeating the elder guardian. The elder guardian resides inside ocean monuments. To find an ocean monument, you will need to venture into the deep ocean biome. You will know that you have found these underwater structures when you see guardians or prismarine blocks.

After you have located an ocean monument, head inside and be prepared to fight the elder guardians. There will be three elder guardians that spawn when the ocean monument is generated. One will be at the top room while the other two will be inside the two wings of the monument.
After you have defeated an elder guardian, there will be a 20% chance that the boss mob will drop a tide armor trim smithing template.

Vex Armor Trim
Vex armor trims can be found inside woodland mansions. To find a woodland mansion, you will need to find a dark forest where the mansion naturally generates. The mansions are huge so they are pretty hard to miss. However, they are pretty rare to find.

Once you have located a mansion, head inside and explore. The chests that you find will have a 50% chance to contain a vex armor trim smithing template.

Ward Armor Trim/Silence Armor Trim
Ward armor trims and silence armor trims can be found in ancient cities. Finding an ancient city is rare, but they can be found in the deep dark cave biome at a Y-level of -51. If you need help locating an ancient city, check out wattles’ guide on YouTube.

Once you have located an ancient city, venture around while looting any chest you find. There is a 5% chance that the chest will contain a ward armor trim smithing template and a 1.5% chance for a silence armor trim smithing template.

Wild Armor Trim
Wild armor trims can be found in jungle temples, which can be found in jungle biomes. A jungle temple is made up of mossy cobblestone, making them very distinctive.

Once you enter the jungle temple, be wary of traps on the floor inside the temple. At the end of the traps is a chest. There will also be a puzzle inside the temple that requires a combination of levers. Once you enter the correct combination, a block will be pulled away revealing a chest. Another option is to just mine everything until you locate the chest.
The chests inside the temple will have a 33.3% chance of containing a wild armor trim smithing template.

Suspicious Block Loot
Below are the armor trims that can only be obtained by finding suspicious blocks in the Trail Ruins and using a brush on them.
- Host Armor Trim
- Raiser Armor Trim
- Shaper Armor Trim
- Wayfinder Armor Trim
Trail Ruins are buried villages that have been ruined and destroyed. You can find these ruins in heavily forested biomes. Check out RajCraft’s video on this for more information.
After you have located a Trail Ruin, look for suspicious gravel. While it is difficult, you can identify a suspicious gravel because it is darker and has cracks on it compared to regular gravel.

To extract loot from the suspicious gravel, you will need to craft a brush first. To craft a brush, you will need:
- 1x feather
- 1x copper ingot
- 1x stick

After crafting your brush and finding suspicious gravel, right-click and hold your crosshair on the suspicious gravel with your brush in hand. The cracks in the suspicious gravel will darken, indicating that the brush is working. There will be an 8.3% chance of a random armor trim being dropped if you brush a rare suspicious gravel.

Duplicating Items
Since a smithing template is very rare to find in Minecraft, with some rarer than others, it makes it inconvenient to find another one every time you use one. Especially since smithing templates are consumables and will disappear from your inventory after use. Luckily, you can duplicate the smithing templates by crafting them.
To duplicate the smithing template that you want, you are going to need:
- 7x Diamonds
- 1x Stone block (depends on what you want to duplicate)
- 1x Smithing Template (depends on what you want to duplicate)
Before you start crafting, make sure you have the correct stone block before duplicating. Each smithing template has its own block that allows it to duplicate. Any other block will not work. Below is a list of the blocks needed and their corresponding smithing templates.
- Netherite Upgrade -> Netherrack
- Bolt Armor Trim -> Block of Copper/Waxed Block of Copper
- Coast Armor Trim -> Cobblestone
- Dune Armor Trim -> Sandstone
- Eye Armor Trim -> End stone
- Flow Armor Trim -> Diamond or Breeze Rod
- Host Armor Trim -> Terracotta
- Raiser Armor Trim -> Terracotta
- Rib Armor Trim -> Netherrack
- Sentry Armor Trim -> Cobblestone
- Shaper Armor Trim -> Terracotta
- Silence Armor Trim -> Cobbled Deepslate
- Spire Armor Trim -> Purpur Block
- Snout Armor Trim -> Blackstone
- Tide Armor Trim -> Prismarine
- Vex Armor Trim -> Cobblestone
- Ward Armor Trim -> Cobbled Deepslate
- Wayfinder Armor Trim -> Terracotta
- Wild Armor Trim -> Mossy Cobblestone
Once you have the correct materials of what you want to duplicate, place your materials in this pattern on the crafting table:

Function of Every Smithing Template
To use each smithing template, you are going to need a smithing table. To craft the smithing table, you are going to need:
- 2x Iron Ingots
- 4x Wooden Planks (any type of planks)

Once you have the smithing table, place it down and right-click it. You should now have access to the smithing bench, which allows you to upgrade your equipment with the smithing templates.
There are three slots on the smithing table. The leftmost slot is where you can put the smithing template you want to use, the middle slot is your equipment of choice, and the rightmost slot is for the ingot/crystal you want to use.

Netherite Upgrade
The netherite upgrade smithing template allows you to upgrade diamond equipment to netherite. To use the netherite upgrade smithing template, you are going to need diamond equipment and a netherite ingot. After you have placed all the required materials down, your diamond gear will be turned into netherite gear.

Armor Trim Upgrade
The rest of the smithing templates are armor trim smithing templates, which are decorative trims that allow players to customize their armor piece’s appearance.
Keep in mind that you can only change the appearance of your armor and not your weapons. If you try to change the appearance of your weapon, the game will not let you.

However, this also means that you can change any type of armor. From leather armor, iron armor, to diamond armor, you can use whatever gear you want.
You can also change the armor trim colors depending on what ingot/crystal you use. The crystals and ingots that you can use are:
- Amethyst Shards
- Copper Ingots
- Diamond
- Emerald
- Gold Ingots
- Iron Ingots
- Lapis Lazuli
- Nether Quartz
- Netherite Ingot
- Redstone Dust
With the various decorative trims available, you can change your armor’s appearance with different colors and pattern textures. While wearing trimmed armor will not make you stronger, it will definitely make you look cooler.
Now that you know how to trim armor, go out there and experience a new world of fashion in Minecraft. If you need help deciding what armor pattern would look best, check out this YouTube video by Shulkercraft for combinations.
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Alex is a gaming enthusiast with a passion in content creation and social media. In his free time,
he enjoys playing golf, building keyboards, and cooking.
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