Making a beacon in Minecraft is possible if you’re a seasoned survival player or enjoying its creative mode. Regardless, I will walk you through all the nitty-gritty to taste success on the very first attempt. Stay tuned.
Beacons are beautiful items that project light beams in the sky and are used to upgrade the speed, strength, haste, etc., of the nearby players.
Put simply, you just need just three things to craft this magnificent item:
- Glass-easy to get
- Obsidian-still easy
- Nether star-not so easy
So, we will divide this guide into three sections to obtain glass, obsidian, and nether star.
This is a long one. Feel free to grab a coffee or pizza. 😅
Crafting Glass
Crafting glass isn’t much hassle. You only need sand or red sand in addition to any fuel. Next, put those in a furnace to get glass.
Remember to put enough of them to get five glasses. In addition, don’t waste time searching for coal, as all kinds of wood (birch, oak, etc.) would work fine.
Making Obsidian Blocks
Obsidian blocks are formed from the combination of lava and water.
One of the ways is to pour buckets (crafted from three iron ingots) of lava inside any water body. Each such exercise will give you one obsidian block, and we just need 13. (10 will be used to create a nether portal in further sections.)
Alternatively, we can divide a lava lake and then put water in any one division to have obsidian blocks.
This second method is easier since pouring one water bucket still leaves one block of water to refill and continue until you get three obsidian blocks.
Remember, you can only mine obsidian blocks with a diamond pickaxe or better. In case you’re wondering, here’s our guide on how to find diamonds in Minecraft.
Getting Nether Stars in Minecraft
This is the trickiest section of this Minecraft beacon guide.
You need excellent gear and some magic (preferably) to kill wither, a boss mob, to get a nether star.
What’s interesting is, wither is created by the player itself and is so destructive (and flies) that you need to strategize perfectly to get things done in one go.
To help you feel the gravity of the situation, let me put it this way–wither is tough to kill in Minecraft creative.
There I said it. But, we are still nowhere near to ‘creating’ and defeating wither. To help with finding the nether star, let’s further divide this section into micro steps.
1. Enter into a nether fortress
Nether or the Nether is Minecraft’s depiction of hell.
Frankly, I have gone through many books describing the afterlife, and Minecraft’s Nether came very close, despite its block textures.
Besides, the background music and the occasional groans make it a gripping experience, especially if you’re using quality headphones and flying through.
Hostile mobs spawn freely throwing fireballs, and death is imminent the moment we relax.
Notably, we need to find a nether fortress, another little task. But first, we need to create a nether portal for stepping into the nether. It requires 10 obsidian blocks and flint and steel to activate it.
This portal should be at least two blocks wide and three blocks tall. Although you can create bigger ones, you don’t need them.
This portal will lead you to the realm of the undead, nether. Expect lava and hostile mob attacks.
Besides, this will be a dark place, so it’s a whole lot better if you have the potion of night vision. At the minimum, increase the brightness of your screen because wither skeletons, our targets, spawn in very low light areas of the nether fortress.
Finding the fortress isn’t very tough but still needs some searching. An easy way out is turning the difficulty to peaceful, leaving the nether without any mobs.
And turn it back to the desired difficulty once you spot a fortress. Prior to that, collect at least four blocks of soul sand or soul soil, building blocks of nether, that we’ll use to create wither.
Afterward, search for some dark structure that stands out. It can be unfinished bridges, decks, staircases, etc.
There is one formula for finding a nether fortress in Minecraft survival. Press F3 and follow the X or Z direction until you see such structures.
Once you spot them, enter, and get ready to fight.
2. Acquire three wither skulls
You’ll kill many wither skeletons to find three wither skulls, as their dropping chances are just 2.5%. However, you can use loot-enchanted swords to have more rare drops.
Remember to have some plan for health regeneration (food or potions) as you can take a lot of damage. In addition, fire-resistant armor will come in handy.
There are two ways to kill wither skeletons: melee attack or long range, using bow and arrow. The second one is particularly useful and helps you avoid taking damage or getting the wither effect (health bar turns black, blinks, and gradually degrades), which can kill you.
But if you get the wither effect anyways, don’t forget to drink a milk bucket to end the misery.
Check this where I used close-range attacks to kill wither skeletons:
What worked for me was forming a two-block-high wall, which kept these tall skeletons away. In fact, you can create a few such barriers throughout the nether fortress to help attack safely from a distance.
Remember, we need three wither skulls and four blocks of soul sand or soul soil before going back.
3. Create and kill Wither
Now it’s time to create and kill the monster, which will give us the precious nether star to make a Minecraft beacon.
People often make a mess out of this task. You can check Youtube for many tutorials asking you to suit up like anything. Enchanted armors, potions, and whatnot, making this a long and tedious job.
And unfortunately, they are all legit unless you are playing Minecraft creative. In that case, you can simply make a bedrock trap to create and kill wither from a two-block high opening.
So let’s list some enchantments and potions that can help:
| Enchantments | Potions (optional) |
| Unbreaking | Instant health |
| Smite | Strength |
| Mending | Night vision (or torches) |
There can be more, but I feel these are enough to fight off the wither successfully and quickly. In addition, enchanted armor will prove beneficial, but the diamond ones will also work fine.
It will help to know that wither love explosions. Ergo, creating the monster deep beneath while attacking from a two-block high tunnel is the successful strategy most people follow.
The idea is to avoid all distractions and hitting wither when he can’t see us completely. We’ll be moving backward, all the while attacking wither, and will create a long enough tunnel to get it killed before reaching the other end.
Finally, don’t forget to keep a few buckets of milk ready as you might get hit and it can initiate the deadly wither effect.
One additional tip that I can offer is using the offhand for food.
Here’s how I got rid of the monster:
So that now we have our last ingredient, the nether star, you can easily craft a beacon with five glass blocks, three obsidian blocks, and one nether star.
Minecraft Beacons
Using Minecraft Beacons is a lengthy subject that we aren’t covering in this tutorial, and leaving up to the Minecraft Wiki. This gives insights about how to use it, the powers you get, and a truckload of useful information about using beacons that you shouldn’t miss.
Put simply, the beacon’s powers and range depends upon the size of the underlying mineral block pyramid, 3*3 to 9*9. You can use any mineral ores and can even mix and match.
Lastly, beacons are stackable and drop themselves with any tool.
So that will be all from our side, and it’s time to say goodbye, for now.
