Minecraft Structures: Where to Find Them and What's Inside

Structures are the buildings, ruins and dungeons the game generates with the world. They hold almost every item you can’t craft: elytra, Totems of Undying, netherite upgrade templates, Swift Sneak books, heavy cores. Each page below explains where a structure generates, how to find it, the loot worth taking and the dangers between you and the chest.

In roughly the order you’ll need them

1. Mineshafts come first, often by accident while caving. Free rails, name tags and early iron.
2. Trial chambers are a good early-to-mid game dungeon with vault loot and the parts for a mace.
3. Nether fortresses give you blaze rods and nether wart, which you need for brewing and for eyes of ender.
4. Bastion remnants are the only source of netherite upgrade templates. Dangerous; go well armed.
5. Strongholds hold the End portal. Find them with eyes of ender.
6. End cities come after the Ender Dragon, and the end ships beside some of them carry the elytra.

Optional but valuable: the ocean monument for gold, sponges and a guardian farm site, the woodland mansion for Totems of Undying, and the ancient city for Swift Sneak and enchanted golden apples, if you can stay quiet around the Warden.

Smaller structures like desert pyramids and jungle temples are covered on their biome pages: see the desert and jungle guides.

How to find structures faster

• Biomes first. Most structures only generate in certain biomes. Woodland mansions need dark forests, ancient cities need the deep dark, monuments need deep ocean. The biomes guide tells you where to look.
• Explorer maps. Cartographer villagers sell maps to ocean monuments, woodland mansions and trial chambers. Since Java 26.3 and Bedrock 26.50, chests in the new abandoned camps (scattered through forests, taigas, jungles and swamps) can hold maps to other camps, ancient cities, mineshafts, desert pyramids and warm ocean ruins.
• Eyes of ender point to the nearest stronghold. Our stronghold finding guide covers the triangulation trick.
• Commands. With cheats on, the /locate command gives exact coordinates, for example /locate structure minecraft:ancient_city.

A note on editions

Structures are almost the same on Java and Bedrock. The biggest difference is stronghold placement: Java has 128 in fixed rings, while Bedrock scatters them and puts some under villages. Where loot or mob behavior differs, each page says so.