Stronghold1,852 blocks
Village57 blocks
Trial chambers102 blocks
How to Find a Stronghold in Minecraft
By the ChunkScan Team · Updated October 2026
A stronghold holds the only End portal in the Overworld. You have to reach it to fight the Ender Dragon, and it often has a library worth looting. Strongholds are buried underground, usually more than a thousand blocks from the world origin, so wandering around rarely turns one up. There are three reliable ways to find one: read its position from your world seed, use the /locate command, or follow thrown eyes of ender. This guide covers all three. It explains where strongholds generate and how to use the free ChunkScan stronghold finder. It also shows example seeds from our database of more than 1.7 million scanned worlds where a stronghold sits almost directly under spawn.
Top matching seeds
Distances in blocks from spawn
- Stronghold34 blocks
- Trial chambers176 blocks
Ocean ruins215 blocks
- Stronghold131 blocks
Buried treasure158 blocks- Trial chambers206 blocks
- Stronghold158 blocks
Ruined portal178 blocks
Shipwreck211 blocks
- Stronghold212 blocks
- Ocean ruins215 blocks
- Shipwreck249 blocks
- Stronghold215 blocks
- Ocean ruins228 blocks
- Buried treasure264 blocks
- Stronghold224 blocks
- Trial chambers217 blocks
- Ocean ruins239 blocks
- Stronghold266 blocks
- Ocean ruins147 blocks
- Trial chambers155 blocks
- Stronghold282 blocks
- Buried treasure111 blocks
- Shipwreck199 blocks
- Stronghold288 blocks
- Buried treasure141 blocks
- Ocean ruins152 blocks
- Stronghold305 blocks
- Ruined portal45 blocks
- Shipwreck104 blocks
- Stronghold325 blocks
Abandoned camp229 blocks- Trial chambers249 blocks
Not quite it? Try these:
Where strongholds generate
Strongholds only generate in the Overworld. In Java Edition, every world has 128 of them, placed in 8 rings around the world origin (0, 0). The first ring holds 3 strongholds between 1,280 and 2,816 blocks from the origin, spread roughly evenly around the circle. Each ring further out holds more strongholds. They are built underground and can break into caves, ravines, mineshafts or the ocean floor, so the entrance you find may not be the portal room. Bedrock Edition uses its own placement rules, which is why the finder asks you to choose your edition. Inside, look for the portal room: a lava pool under a frame of 12 End portal blocks, with a silverfish spawner on the stairs.
Using the ChunkScan stronghold finder
Open chunkscan.com/stronghold-finder and enter your world seed. You can copy it in-game with /seed, or from the world's settings screen. Pick Java or Bedrock: the two editions place strongholds differently, so the wrong choice gives wrong coordinates. The map draws your world's biomes and marks each stronghold. Hover over or click a marker to read its X and Z coordinates, then press F3 in-game (Java) or turn on Show Coordinates (Bedrock) and walk there. To share a result or save it for later, link straight to /stronghold-finder?seed=YOUR_SEED with your own seed number in place of YOUR_SEED.
How our scanner verifies stronghold positions
The finder and our seed database both run Cubiomes, a C reimplementation of Minecraft's world generation. It computes stronghold positions the same way the game does, from the seed alone. In your browser, the map is rendered by Cubiomes compiled to WebAssembly, so nothing is guessed and no world download is needed. For the database, our scanner records the stronghold nearest to each world's spawn point along with the other structures around it. It stores how far each one is from spawn, which is how we can rank seeds by stronghold distance. The coordinates point to the stronghold's starting position. Dig down there and expect to search a few nearby corridors for the portal room.
Seed 5448632949221656650: a stronghold under a snowy spawn
In this Java seed, the world spawns in snowy plains with a stronghold at X -1180, Z -956, only 16 blocks from spawn by our scan. That is the closest stronghold among the top matches. Trial chambers sit nearby at X -1088, Z -928, 81 blocks from spawn, and an ocean ruin at X -1136, Z -864 is 86 blocks away. Because spawn itself is more than 1,500 blocks from the origin, the world spawns right inside the first stronghold ring. You can dig down on day one and reach the portal room before you even need eyes of ender to find it.
Seed -3282003515117732354: plains spawn with treasure nearby
This Java seed spawns in plains, with a stronghold at X 212, Z -1340, 28 blocks from spawn. A buried treasure at X 217, Z -1431, 75 blocks away, can give you an early heart of the sea and some iron. A shipwreck lies at X 192, Z -1520. For the Nether, our scan lists a bastion at Nether coordinates X 176, Z -256, 174 blocks from spawn's Nether position, which is a short trip for gold and pearl trading. The rest of the list below follows the same pattern: every stronghold is within about 100 blocks of spawn.
In-game methods: /locate and eyes of ender
With cheats on or in Creative, type /locate structure minecraft:stronghold in Java (1.19+) or /locate structure stronghold in Bedrock. The command returns coordinates for the nearest stronghold. No explorer map leads to strongholds: cartographers only sell ocean, woodland and trial chamber maps. In Survival, craft eyes of ender from blaze powder and ender pearls, then throw one. It flies toward the nearest stronghold, and in Java it breaks 20% of the time. Walk a few hundred blocks and throw again; where the lines from two throws cross is the location. When an eye sinks into the ground instead of flying, you are standing above the stronghold.
What to bring
Bring at least 12 eyes of ender. Each of the 12 portal frame blocks has only a 10% chance to already hold an eye, and you will lose some while tracking. Pack a pickaxe and spare blocks for digging down and bridging, plenty of torches to mark the way you came through the maze, food, and iron armor or better against silverfish and cave mobs. A water bucket helps with drops and with the lava pool under the portal. Before you light the portal, sleep in a bed nearby or set your spawn there so a death in the End sends you back to the stronghold.
Frequently asked questions
How far is the nearest stronghold from 0, 0?
In Java Edition, the first ring of 3 strongholds sits between 1,280 and 2,816 blocks from the world origin. Your spawn point can be closer to one of them, as in the seeds listed on this page.
Does the finder work for Bedrock seeds?
Yes. Select Bedrock before you read the map. Bedrock places strongholds by different rules than Java, so the same seed number gives different stronghold coordinates in each edition.
Why are there no stronghold explorer maps?
Cartographer villagers sell ocean, woodland and trial chamber explorer maps, but none point to strongholds. Use eyes of ender, /locate with cheats, or the seed-based finder at chunkscan.com/stronghold-finder.