How to Obtain Netherite in Minecraft

Find ancient debris and netherite to upgrade your diamond armor and tools

|

Finding Netherite

|

Q&A

With the 1.16 Update came the rarest ore of them all: netherite. Netherite items are the strongest and most durable, and they don't burn in fire or lava. However, they are quite hard to obtain. Ancient debris, one of the components, is only found deep in the dangerous Nether dimension, but this article will tell you the best strategies to find some.

Things You Should Know

Prepare for your expedition by gathering a diamond pickaxe, a sword, and some food.
Mine a staircase down to y-level 15, then create a long tunnel. Use TNT for the safest way to find ancient debris.
Look inside a bastion to find netherite scrap.

Part 1

Part 1 of 2:

Mining for Ancient Debris

1
Prepare for your mining expedition. You will need a diamond pickaxe (preferably with at least efficiency 2 to instantly mine netherrack), food, and some building blocks. To ensure your safety in the Nether, you'll also want to bring a sword, shield, fire resistance potion, and one piece of gold armor.
- Your inventory will fill up quickly, so you should bring some shulker boxes or chests with you.
- Bring a stack of wool and some wooden planks so that you can craft beds once you get to the Nether. Don't craft them ahead of time since beds don't stack.
- Alternatively, craft gunpowder and sand into TNT. This is much more expensive though.
2
Travel to the Nether. Once you're prepared, step into your Nether portal. If you've entered the Nether in a version before 1.16, you need to go to a chunk that you've never loaded before. Otherwise, you won't find any ancient debris there.

Advertisement
3
Mine a staircase down to y-level 15. This is the optimal level for finding ancient debris. Be on guard for any lava you might encounter and block it off.
- Make sure you aren't surrounded by blackstone or basalt because those blocks take much longer to mine and are highly blast-resistant.
4
Create a long tunnel. Using your pickaxe, dig a two-block tall tunnel that is at least a few hundred blocks long. Lighting it up is optional since any torches will end up being blown up.
5
Craft your beds. Since beds explode in the Nether, you can use them for cheap and efficient blast-mining. Dig small side branches off of your main tunnel and put the bed at the very end. Right-click as if you were going to sleep and quickly duck around a corner to avoid taking too much damage.
- This method is quite dangerous, so it's recommended that you are wearing strong, enchanted armor.
- To make the task easier, drink a fire resistance potion since bed explosions create a lot of fire and can expose lava pockets.
6
Use TNT. If you have a lot of gunpowder to spare, this method will be safer and easier compared to the beds. Simply walk back along your tunnel, placing TNT every 2-3 blocks. Once you run out, ignite the TNT and run several blocks away.
- A flame bow is a safe way to ignite TNT from a distance, although flint and steel is the conventional method.
7
Look for ancient debris. It is dark brown with visible cracks and a spiral shape on the top and bottom. Ancient debris is immune to both fire and explosions, so don't worry about accidentally destroying it.
- It can only be mined with a diamond or netherite pickaxe.

Part 2

Part 2 of 2:

Finding Netherite

1
Find netherite scrap inside a bastion. Inside the treasure chests, you can find netherite scrap, netherite ingots, and on rare occasions, even netherite tools. However, these structures are very dangerous, so make sure you know how to safely raid a bastion first.
2
Mine for gold. An easy way to get some gold is by mining the Nether gold ore that you expose while looking for ancient debris. You can also obtain it by mining below y-level 31 in the Overworld.
- Nether gold ore will drop gold nuggets. 9 nuggets can be crafted into one gold ingot. If you mine the Nether gold ore with Silk Touch enchanted pickaxe and smelt it, you will get one whole ingot which is the most efficient way to mine it. You can also use the Fortune enchantment although it is slightly less efficient than Silk Touch on average.
3
Smelt the ancient debris.
4
Craft a netherite ingot. You need 4 pieces of netherite scrap and 4 gold ingots to make one netherite ingot.
5
Upgrade your diamond tools and armor inside a smithing table. Smithing tables can be crafted with four planks and two iron ingots. Then, you put your diamond items on the leftmost slot, the netherite ingot in the middle, and take your finished netherite item on the right.

Community Q&A

Question

What is a silk touch pickaxe?

Vortrexion

Top Answerer

A silk touch pickaxe (or any other tool in the game) allows for the block that is being broken to drop itself. This means that a piece of glass that would normally break, when destroyed using a silk touch pickaxe/tool, will stay intact. This applies to all other blocks.
Question

How much netherite spawns in a world?

Artemi

Top Answerer

Ancient debris generates in veins of 1-3. In a chunk (16x16 area of blocks), two veins attempt to generate (although they might be blocked due to lava or something like that). Minecraft has a functionally infinite amount of chunks since the world barrier extends 30 million blocks in every direction. Therefore, you don't have to worry about running out of netherite.
Question

How do I craft netherite?

Artemi

Top Answerer

To craft netherite, you need to put 4 netherite scrap and 4 gold ingots into the crafting table menu (placement doesn't matter). You get one netherite scrap by smelting a piece of ancient debris in a furnace.