Overview
Every ender chest in the world opens the same 27 slots, and those slots belong to you rather than to the block. Break the chest and nothing spills: the contents are stored on your player, not in the world, so an ender chest at your base and another at the bottom of a mine are two doors into one inventory. In multiplayer that per-player rule is the whole point — a dozen players using the same ender chest each see their own storage. Practically it is how loot gets home from the Nether or the End without a return trip, how a mining outpost stays supplied, and how a player keeps a spare set of gear reachable from anywhere. The catch is that it is a single shared 27 slots rather than storage that grows, which is exactly the opposite trade-off to a shulker box, and the two are usually used together: fill shulker boxes with loot, put the boxes in the ender chest, walk home empty-handed. Broken with an ordinary pickaxe it drops 8 obsidian rather than itself; Silk Touch returns the block. It emits light level 7.
Sending loot home from any dimension instantly, keeping an emergency kit reachable from every base you build, and giving each player on a server private storage that no one else can open.
Minecraft classifies Ender Chest as a storage block. A crafting table turns its ingredients into Ender Chest. A hardness of 22.5 makes it slow going without the right tool.
What you actually collect is Obsidian. Light level 7 is decorative rather than functional — mobs can still spawn beside it. Its blast resistance of 600 shrugs off creeper explosions.
Sixty-four fit in one inventory slot. The recipe calls for Obsidian and Eye of Ender. It is not used in any crafting recipe.
How to get it
Craft it from 8 obsidian and 1 eye of ender. The eye needs 1 ender pearl and 1 blaze powder, so an ender chest is realistically a post-Nether project.
Tips
- Carry 1 ender chest and a pickaxe on long trips: place it, deposit, break it, and it costs you a single slot.
- Without Silk Touch the chest breaks into 8 obsidian — you keep the material but lose the eye of ender.
- Fill it with shulker boxes rather than loose items and the 27 slots become 27 boxes' worth of storage.
- It emits light level 7, which is enough to stop most mob spawns on the block it sits on.
How long it takes to break
Ender Chest sits at hardness 22.5: 34 seconds per block with your fists, 3.8 with the correct netherite tool.
An iron tool takes 5.7 seconds and a diamond one 4.3, so the jump that actually matters for this block is the one to diamond.
There is no tier requirement to worry about. Any tool, or none, returns the drop; the numbers below just say how fast.
The Efficiency formula is level² + 1 added to tool speed — at V that is about 3.8 times the unenchanted rate.
| Tool | No enchantment | Efficiency III | Efficiency V |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hand | 34 s | 34 s | 34 s |
| Wooden | 17 s | 2.9 s | 1.3 s |
| Stone | 8.5 s | 2.5 s | 1.2 s |
| Iron | 5.7 s | 2.2 s | 1.1 s |
| Diamond | 4.3 s | 1.9 s | 1 s |
| Netherite | 3.8 s | 1.8 s | 1 s |
| Golden | 2.9 s | 1.6 s | 0.9 s |
Properties
With 600 blast resistance Ender Chest holds up to a creeper or TNT at point-blank range. It is fully opaque and glows at light level 7. 64 fit in a slot — a full stack. A pickaxe is fastest here; any other class mines it at bare-hand speed, because the bonus only applies to the class the block is tagged for. Broken normally it drops Obsidian rather than itself; Silk Touch is what returns the block, and Fortune raises the ordinary drop instead.
- Transparent
- No
- Required tool
- Any
Crafting recipe
Crafting Table
Ender Chest
Drops
Ender Chest drops Obsidian.
Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
How do you get Ender Chest in Minecraft?
Ender Chest is crafted from Obsidian and Eye of Ender.
What tool do you need to break Ender Chest?
No specific tool is required — Ender Chest can be broken by hand.
Is Ender Chest blast resistant?
Ender Chest has a blast resistance of 600, so it survives creeper and TNT explosions.
How many Ender Chest fit in one stack?
64 per stack, so a double chest holds 3,456 Ender Chest.
How long does Ender Chest take to break?
About 3.8 seconds if you bring the correct netherite tool; 34 seconds with your fists.
