Minecraft End Portal Finder

The Minecraft End Portal Finder will show you how to triangulate the nearest End Portal with as few as two Eyes of Ender, with no mods and no cheats! With this straightforward method, anyone can learn how to find the End Portal in Minecraft. Imagine meeting the beautiful and ferocious Ender Dragon and exploring the vast unknown!

Our tutorial is designed to work with both Bedrock and Java versions. The example provided uses Bedrock v1.14.60. For hardcore survivalists, you can even use our equations below and triangulate the End Portal location yourself.
So, grab a stack of Ender Pearls and read on!

If you are wondering how to find the (roughly pixel art circle-shaped) End Portal in Minecraft, all you need to do is use two Eyes of Ender a few hundred blocks apart from each other.

Write down the X, and Z coordinates and the direction the Ender Pearl flies in (specified in degrees, measured clockwise from south, where south = 0°). If you then input these numbers into our End Portal Finder, you can easily calculate the location of the End Portal.

Suppose your initial calculation says that you are more than 500 blocks away. In that case, we highly recommend repeating the process closer to the portal, as there can be some error in the direction measurement. You will save a lot of time, effort, and pickaxes by triangulating closer to the portal at least once more.

You can craft an Eye of Ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Ender pearls can be obtained by trading with cleric villagers or killing endermen. Since the 1.16 Nether Update was released, you can also get large quantities of ender pearls by trading with piglins (i.e., by throwing gold bars at them). Blaze powder is crafted from blaze rods, which you can get by defeating blazes found in Nether fortresses.

In Minecraft, a player's location is represented by three numbers X, Y, and Z. These are the player's positions along the X, Y, and Z axes:

• The X-axis runs from east to west, with positive X being in the east direction;
• The Y-axis runs above to below, with Y increasing towards the sky and the bedrock layer being at Y=0; and
• The Z-axis runs south to north, with positive Z being in the south direction. This might seem a bit unusual as we often associate positive values with north.

The world origin and spawn point are located at the X, Z coordinates of 0, 0.

In Minecraft, the direction you are facing is represented in degrees, measured clockwise from south.

In Java versions of Minecraft, you have an see the direction your player is facing using the debug screen, which you can access by pressing F3 on some systems. You will see two numbers in brackets, such as (-90, 24). The first number is the azimuthal angle, which is the direction you are facing in the horizontal plane. Since in Minecraft we count clockwise from south, an angle of -90 means you are facing due east, and an angle of 0 means you are facing south.

To complete this tutorial, you will need:

• 24 dirt blocks;
• 2 or more Eyes of Ender; and
• 4 different colored blocks with 2 blocks each (we are using red, white, black, and yellow wool).

If you're using the Java version of Minecraft, you can find the direction you are facing using the debug screen by pressing F3, which means you can skip straight to Step 3. However, if you're using the Bedrock edition, the debugging screen is not available. Instead, we will estimate the direction by creating a "ground compass." By standing in the middle of this compass, we can find out where the Eye of Ender is headed.

Step 1. Find a 15 x 15 flat open space

The easiest location to do this is probably the plains or desert biomes, but all you need is a flat open space of 15 x 15 blocks.

Step 2. Set up the "compass"

Lay out a grid of dirt blocks (or other generic block) as shown below. The north, south, east, and west markers are each 7 blocks away from the center. Place the colored blocks of wool on top to help distinguish them.

Use eight more blocks of dirt to split the compass into 30° intervals. Place them exactly 4 blocks to the sides each of the four compass markers.

These distances of 7 and 4 work well due to trigonometry. In a right triangle with side lengths 7 and 4, the small angle is 29.7°, which is sufficiently close to 30° for our purposes.

Feel free to use different colors, but you can use these if they're easy to remember:

• North is white (like snow);
• East is yellow (like the rising sun);
• South is red (reminds us of heat); and
• West is black (like the darkening sky).

If you don't know what direction is north, look up at the sky. The sun, clouds, and moon always move from east to west. Then, remember that 90 degrees clockwise from west is north. And Never Eat Soggy Waffles! Another way to find your bearings is to use a locator map and orient yourself so that the pointer points north (up).

Step 3. Throw the Eye of Ender

Stand on the center block of your compass. In your game settings, toggle on the show coordinates option to see your position. The X, Y, and Z coordinates will appear in the top left of the screen, in that order (Y is depth).

Write down your X and Z coordinates. Then, look up and throw the Eye of Ender, following it with your view as it travels. Using our calculator's compass diagram, estimate the direction in degrees clockwise from south. It'll probably help to take a screenshot like the one below!

In this example, the X coordinate is -14, the Z coordinate is 174, and the estimated direction is 273° (just a little south of east)

Step 4. Repeat at a second location

Once you've gathered data at the first location, travel to a second location and repeat. Get the X, Z coordinates and the Bearing (direction) and write it down.

Our recommendation is to travel a few hundred blocks at a 45° angle from the first direction. Going on an angle like this should give you a better chance of getting an accurate result.

Step 5. Triangulate

Once you have the X, Z, and Bearing for two locations, enter the data in the End Portal Calculator and head to the coordinates shown! Keep in mind that any errors in measurement could lead to lower accuracy of the calculated location.

Expect that your first triangulated location could be off by about 50 to 100 blocks (assuming you're not using the debugging screen), especially if the portal is over 500 blocks away.

After your first triangulation, get close to the source and take two new measurements about 50 blocks apart to get a more precise location.

Once you're sufficiently close, you can test the final location by throwing an Eye of Ender in the air and see if it falls to the ground.

Looking to fight a different kind of dragon? Create your Dungeons and Dragons character with our point buy calculator 5e!

When we tested this Minecraft End Portal Finder, we had to do three rounds of triangulation to get the precise location of the End Portal. You know you're above the portal when the Eyes of Ender fall straight to the ground. For reference, our first triangulation was off by 92 blocks in the east-west direction and 78 blocks in the north-south direction. However, the portal was over 1000 blocks from our starting point, so that's not too shabby!

Our advice is to be patient and take your time with the ground compass technique. One accurate measurement taken with care is better than multiple hasty attempts or randomly throwing Eyes of Ender as you run around.

Once you pinpoint the portal, you can dig a spiral staircase straight down and practically land right in front of the End Portal room!

You only need two equations if you'd like to do the math to find the End Portal yourself.

For the equations to work properly, you must convert the Minecraft angle to a cartesian angle. A cartesian angle is measured counterclockwise from east (or the positive X direction), with the positive Y-axis in the "north" direction. Remember that Minecraft angles are measured clockwise from south. Don't worry; this simple conversion takes care of both problems:

After that's done, the two equations you need are:

and

The variables $\small x_1$, $\small z_1$, and $\small \theta_1$ are the $\small X$, $\small Z$, and cartesian angle for point 1, and $\small x_2$, $\small z_2$, and $\small \theta_2$ are the same for point 2. We are looking for point $\small (x_3, z_3)$. Make sure your calculator is using degrees, not radians.

If you're interested in learning how these equations are derived, visit our triangulation calculator for a more detailed explanation.

Did you find your End Portal? Give the Minecraft End Portal Finder a rating, and let us know how it went in the feedback!