World
Minecraft structures
All 29 generated structures in Java Edition 1.21.4, with the biomes they appear in, their loot and the mobs inside.
VillageOverworldCommonVillages generate in five architectural variants — plains, desert, savanna, taiga and snowy — each built from local materials with its own house shapes, and the variant is fixed by the biome of the village centre even if it sprawls across a border. A village is a cluster of houses, farms, paths, a well, and job site blocks that assign villagers their professions. Villages with at least twenty beds and ten villagers spawn iron golems on their own. Desert villages are the only place camels generate, and every village is a raid target once you carry Bad Omen.Desert PyramidOverworldUncommonA sandstone temple with an orange-and-blue terracotta motif on its floor, always with a hidden shaft under the centre tile. Break through it and you land in a small chamber with four chests around a stone pressure plate wired to nine blocks of TNT, which will kill an unarmoured player instantly. Disarm it by breaking the plate or by mining down beside the shaft instead of through it. Since 1.20 the chamber floor also contains suspicious sand holding pottery sherds, so bring a brush and excavate before you dig anything up carelessly.Jungle PyramidOverworldRareA mossy cobblestone temple buried in jungle canopy, and the only structure in the game built around an actual redstone puzzle. The lower floor holds three levers that must be flipped in the correct order to open a sticky-piston door onto a chest; the sequence differs per temple, though tunnelling around the piston works just as well. Two corridors are trapped with tripwires wired to arrow dispensers, and a second chest sits behind one of them. It is the cheapest early source of redstone components you can dismantle and take home.Swamp Hut (Witch Hut)OverworldUncommonA small stilted shack of spruce planks standing over swamp water, registered internally as the swamp hut and known to everyone as the witch hut. It contains a cauldron, a crafting table, a potted red mushroom, and one witch who generates with it, plus a black cat. Its real value is that the hut applies a permanent witch spawning bias to the area, so an enclosed, lit-out platform above it becomes a self-sustaining witch farm producing redstone, glowstone dust, sugar and gunpowder. There is no loot chest of any kind.Pillager OutpostOverworldUncommonA dark oak watchtower flying an ominous banner, surrounded by tents, log piles, and often a cage holding an iron golem or, beneath the tower, cages containing allays. Pillagers spawn continuously in the area regardless of light level, so clearing it once does not make it safe. The chest at the top of the tower is guarded and holds a crossbow and modest supplies. Outposts never generate within a few hundred blocks of a village, and the captain here is the reliable way to acquire Bad Omen deliberately.Woodland MansionOverworldVery rareAn enormous three-storey house of dark oak and cobblestone, generated only in dark forests and typically tens of thousands of blocks from spawn, which makes a woodland explorer map from a cartographer villager the practical way to find one. Inside is a randomised set of themed rooms: a fake End portal room, a chicken-and-lava trap, hidden treasure rooms behind secret walls, and rooms full of vindicators and evokers. It is the only reliable source of totems of undying outside raids, and the rooms are pitch dark, so mobs also spawn inside.Ocean MonumentOverworldUncommonA prismarine fortress on the deep ocean floor, guarded by three elder guardians that inflict Mining Fatigue III across a fifty-block radius so you cannot simply mine in. The central chamber contains eight blocks of gold behind a dark prismarine shell, and one or two of the wings contain sponge rooms, the only renewable source of sponge for draining water. There are no chests anywhere in the structure: everything of value is either a block you mine or a mob drop.Ocean RuinsOverworldCommonScattered clusters of sunken buildings, in a sandstone warm-water variant and a stone cold-water variant. Small ruins are single rooms; large ones are multi-building complexes with several chests. They generate with drowned already inside, sometimes many. Since 1.20 warm ocean ruins contain suspicious sand, and this is the only place sniffer eggs can be found anywhere in the game, so bring a brush rather than a shovel. Loot chests here frequently contain buried treasure maps.ShipwreckOverworldCommonA wrecked sailing ship, generated upright, capsized, or broken in two, on the sea floor or beached on the sand. It holds up to three distinct chests: a map chest in the bow with a buried treasure map, a supply chest amidships with food and useful odds and ends, and a treasure chest in the stern with ingots and gems. Shipwrecks are the standard early-game route into ocean exploration, because one map chest chains you straight into buried treasure and a Heart of the Sea.Buried TreasureOverworldCommonA single chest buried beneath a beach or shallow sea bed, findable only with a buried treasure map from a shipwreck or ocean ruin. The map marks the chunk, and the chest is always at the centre of the marked chunk, so dig straight down at the white cross rather than searching around it. Every buried treasure chest contains exactly one Heart of the Sea, the core of a conduit, which makes this the only structure you must visit before you can build one.StrongholdOverworldRareA sprawling underground maze of stone brick corridors, spiral staircases, storerooms, prison cells and libraries, and the only place the End portal exists. Strongholds generate in concentric rings out from the world spawn, 128 per world, and you find one by throwing eyes of ender and following the arc they trace. The portal room holds a twelve-frame portal, some frames already containing eyes, guarded by a silverfish spawner and flanked by lava. Library chests are the classic early source of enchanted books.Abandoned MineshaftOverworldVery commonLong branching wooden corridors with rails, minecarts, support beams and floating sections over ravines and caves. Minecart chests along the tracks are the most common source of free rails and name tags in the game, and badlands mineshafts generate near the surface with far more gold. The hazard is cobwebs: they mark cave spider spawners, they slow you to a crawl while spiders swarm, and they are trivially cleared with a sword. Mineshafts cut through caves and lava, so falls and floods are as dangerous as the mobs.Dungeon (Monster Room)OverworldCommonA small cobblestone-and-mossy-cobblestone room with a mob spawner in the centre and one or two chests against the walls. The spawner produces zombies, skeletons or spiders depending on the dungeon, and it fires whenever a player is within sixteen blocks, so approach with a light source and place torches on the spawner immediately to shut it down. Left running, a dungeon spawner is the simplest mob farm in the game and the best early experience source, which is why many players keep one alive rather than destroying it.Ancient CityOverworldRareA vast deepslate ruin buried in the deep dark, built around a central sculk-covered structure and a frame of reinforced deepslate that leads nowhere. The floor is laced with sculk sensors and sculk shriekers: sensors detect movement, shriekers accumulate warnings, and the third shriek summons a warden. The city has no natural mob spawns at all, so everything that happens there is your own noise. It is the only source of the Swift Sneak enchantment and echo shards for the recovery compass.Trail RuinsOverworldRareA buried settlement of terracotta, mud bricks and stripped logs, almost entirely underground, so it is easy to walk over one without noticing. Trail ruins have no chests. Everything comes from suspicious gravel and suspicious sand, which must be brushed rather than mined — hit them with anything else and the contents are lost. They are the only source of the wayfinder, raiser, shaper and host armour trims, and of the Relic music disc, which makes them a purely archaeological structure.Trial ChambersOverworldUncommonA copper and tuff complex of interconnected combat rooms, corridors and reward vaults, generating throughout the Overworld underground. Trial spawners release a fixed wave of mobs scaled to the number of players, then go inert, which makes chambers repeatable rather than a one-time clear. Killing waves drops trial keys that open vaults for loot. Inserting an ominous bottle upgrades spawners and vaults into their ominous versions, harder fights with better rewards, and the ominous vault is the only source of the heavy core for the mace.Ruined Portal (Overworld)OverworldVery commonA broken nether portal frame of crumbling obsidian and blackstone, with lava, netherrack and gold blocks scattered around it, plus a chest. Variants generate on land, in deserts, jungles, swamps, mountains, oceans and fully buried underground. The chest is the reason to visit: it is the earliest reliable source of obsidian, flint and steel, and often gold, which means a ruined portal can be repaired into a working portal on the spot with little more than a bucket of water.Ruined Portal (Nether)The NetherCommonThe Nether-side counterpart, generating on cliff faces, floors and ceilings throughout every Nether biome with the same crumbling obsidian frame and loot chest. Finding one is often more useful than the loot, because a repairable frame gives you a linked portal back to the Overworld without hauling obsidian, and the surrounding gold blocks are free material. Mining the gold blocks in view of a piglin will anger every piglin nearby, so clear the area first.IglooOverworldUncommonA small snow dome containing a bed, a crafting table, a furnace and a redstone torch on the floor. Roughly half of all igloos hide a trapdoor beneath a carpet that opens onto a ladder down to a basement laboratory, where a villager and a zombie villager are locked in separate cells. The lab chest supplies a golden apple and a splash potion of Weakness — exactly the two items needed to cure the zombie villager standing next to it, which makes the igloo the game's built-in tutorial for villager curing.Amethyst GeodeOverworldCommonA hollow spherical cavity with three concentric shells: smooth basalt outside, calcite inside that, and a lining of amethyst blocks and budding amethyst around a chiming hollow centre. Budding amethyst grows amethyst clusters over time and cannot be mined, even with Silk Touch, which makes an untouched geode a permanent renewable farm. Break clusters only at full growth and only with a pickaxe, or use Silk Touch to move partly grown ones. Geodes also occasionally intersect the ocean floor and open to the surface.FossilOverworldUncommonA buried skeleton of bone blocks shaped like a spine, rib cage or skull, occasionally with coal ore mixed in. Fossils have no chests and no mobs; they exist as a decorative find and as a compact source of bone blocks, which craft down into nine bone meal each and are otherwise only obtainable by killing skeletons. Because they generate underground in specific biomes, most players meet one accidentally while strip-mining under a desert or swamp.Desert WellOverworldRareA small sandstone well with a water source at its centre, historically a purely decorative curiosity. Since 1.20 it earns a visit: suspicious sand generates under and around the well shaft, and brushing it yields pottery sherds — specifically the Arms Up and Brewer sherds, which appear nowhere else in any quantity — along with emeralds, sticks and bricks. Beyond that it is free sandstone and a water source in a biome that has none.Nether FortressThe NetherCommonA dark nether brick complex of corridors, staircases, balconies and long bridges over lava. It is a mandatory stop on any run to the End, because it is the only structure with blaze spawners and the only reliable source of blaze rods and nether wart, the two ingredients every brewing setup begins with. Wither skeletons spawn on its brick blocks and drop the skulls needed to summon the wither. Nether wart grows in soul sand gardens on the interior staircases.Bastion RemnantThe NetherUncommonA ruined blackstone fortress in one of four layouts — bridge, hoglin stable, housing units and treasure room — each packed with piglins and, in the treasure variant, piglin brutes that ignore gold armour entirely. Bastions hold the richest loot in the Nether: ancient debris, netherite ingots, gilded blackstone, enchanted books with Soul Speed, and the Pigstep music disc. Wear gold armour before entering, never open a chest or mine gold in front of a piglin, and expect a fight regardless in the treasure room.Nether FossilThe NetherUncommonA large bone block skeleton protruding from the soul sand of a soul sand valley, resembling a fossilised ribcage or spine. It contains no loot and spawns nothing, and its whole purpose is as free bone blocks — an easy stack of bone meal for a farm without killing a single skeleton. Soul sand valleys already have the highest ghast and skeleton spawn rates in the Nether, so the harvesting itself is the risky part.End CityThe EndUncommonA tower complex of purpur blocks and end stone bricks on the outer End islands, reachable only through an end gateway after killing the dragon. Towers connect by bridges and are stacked with loot chests, but every corner hides shulkers that fire levitation bullets and float you off the edge into the void. Bring a bow, blocks, and ideally Slow Falling. End cities are the only source of shulker shells, and therefore of shulker boxes, the game's only portable storage.End ShipThe EndRareA flying purpur galleon that generates alongside roughly one in four end cities, hovering in the air with no bridge to it, so reaching it means building out or using an ender pearl. The prow carries a dragon head, the deck holds a brewing stand with potions of Healing, and below deck are two loot chests. The item frame in the stern holds a pair of elytra, and this is the only place in the game elytra can be obtained.End GatewayThe EndCommonA small bedrock frame around a magenta beacon of light, created above the central island each time the ender dragon is killed, up to twenty of them. Throwing an ender pearl into one teleports you roughly a thousand blocks out to the outer End islands, where a matching return gateway appears next to your arrival point and sends you straight back to the centre. Gateways are the only practical route to end cities and elytra.Obsidian PillarsThe EndVery commonTen obsidian towers of varying heights arranged in a ring around the central End island, each topped with an end crystal that heals the ender dragon whenever it flies within range. Destroying every crystal is the first phase of the fight; the taller pillars have their crystals enclosed in iron bar cages that must be broken open, usually with a bow, a thrown item, or a bed detonated next to them. Placing four fresh end crystals around the exit portal respawns the dragon.