Minecraft Speedrunning/Printable version

Minecraft Speedrunning

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Contents
Getting Started
Overworld
Shipwrecks
Villages
Savanna Villages
Plains Villages
Desert Villages
Taiga Villages
Snowy Villages
Ruined Portal
Buried Treasure
Structureless
Other Structures
 Abandoned Mineshafts
Ocean Ruins
Desert Pyramids
Igloos
Jungle Temples
Pillager Outposts
Swamp Huts
Woodland Mansions
Dungeons
Building a Nether Portal
Lava Pool
Magma Ravine
Nether
Classic Bartering
Bastion Strats
Hoglin Stables
Bridge
Housing Units
Treasure room
Nether Fortresses
Exiting Nether
Stronghold
Ender Dragon Fight
Getting Started
Welcome to Minecraft Speedrunning!

The first decision you may want to make is the version you decide to play. Generally the fastest and most
played version of Minecraft for speedrunning is version 1.16.1.

This is because 1.16 introduced the piglin bartering mechanic which is the fastest and easiest way to obtain
ender pearls which are an essential item for beating the game and in 1.16.2 the rates of piglin bartering for
ender pearls were significantly decreased and piglin brutes were added to bastions, making the game harder
and slower to beat.
Overworld
The overworld is the initial dimension of the game Minecraft. There are a number of important resources
you will want to obtain in the overworld before making your way to the next dimension: the Nether.

The main resources you will be looking to obtain are tools that allow you to break blocks quickly and
combat mobs, a bucket to build a nether portal and lots of food to regenerate health and keep sprinting.
Other useful materials can be blocks to build around and a shield/armour to survive taking hits from hostile
mobs but when trying to go fast, these can be lower priority. The fastest way to obtain these resources are
generally from overworld structures and which one you decide to go for should depend on the seed you are
given:

Shipwrecks

Villages

Ruined Portal

Buried Treasure

Structureless

Other Structures
Shipwrecks
Shipwrecks are generally the fastest method of gaining resources to prepare for the nether since they consist
of at most 3 chests that can be quickly looted.

Generally you will want to go for shipwrecks when you spawn on an island or near an ocean and useful
items to craft when going for them are a boat for travelling through the ocean fast, doors since they allow
you to breathe underwater in java edition. Also be on the lookout for dolphins which allow you to travel
faster than boats. There are 16 different variants of shipwrecks and they spawn with different chests so
being able to identify them quickly is a useful skill.

In a full shipwreck, there are 3 chests:

The supply chest or food chest which is useful since it can have food like carrots, potatoes,
suspicious stew, wheat for crafting into bread and rotten flesh if needed.
There is the treasure chest which is the most useful one since it contains necessary iron and
gold and sometimes diamonds.
There is also the map chest which contains a buried treasure map for locating buried
treasure for more useful resources.

Shipwrecks also come with some wood logs which may be useful if you need to obtain them.

After looting a shipwreck, depending on the resources obtained you should be ready to build a Nether
Portal to head to the Nether.
Villages
Villages are an important source of resources in minecraft speedrunning. They can contain haybales for
food and easy access to items such as beds, wood, stone, iron and obsidian for later progression in the
game. The village type depends on which biome you are in, and there are 5 of them with some similarities
but also some important differences.

Villages can be quite large, so going through every house can be quite slow, especially since some houses
aren't useful. Generally the main resources you will want to get from a village is food, some beds and a
bucket.The most valuable house in every village is the weaponsmith which is mainly called the blacksmith
for historical reasons since its chest has the most valuable loot, can contain iron pickaxes, iron ingots, gold
ingots and iron armour and it is marked by a grindstone. Other notable houses are fishermen houses which
can have buckets in their chests, marked by buckets.

The main way of obtaining a bucket is killing the iron golem in a village. By hitting the golem and pillaring
up 3 blocks you can easily kill the golem without much risk. However you should be careful as iron golems
do a lot of damage and have a large range. Iron golems drop 3-5 iron, enough to craft a bucket. If you only
get 3 it may be awkward to obtain a flint and steel though.

Savanna Villages

Savanna Villages spawn in the savanna biome and have haybales which are very useful since they can be
crafted into wheat and then into bread for food. Crafting a hoe can be useful to mine the haybales faster.
The blacksmith in this village is quite large and rare. The most notable difference in this village is that
normal house chests can contain buckets so it can be worth it to check them.

Plains Villages

Plains Villages spawn in the plains biome and have haybales. The blacksmith is quite large containing two
lava sources.

Desert Villages

Desert Villages spawn in the desert biome and have haybales. The blacksmith is quite large containing two
lava sources. Make sure to obtain wood logs before heading into a desert since there are no trees in the
desert. Otherwise you will need to break dead bushes for sticks and use crafting tables inside houses.

Taiga Villages

Taiga Villages spawn in taiga biomes and they don't have haybales. One big advantage of these villages is
their chests contain logs, however food is awkward to come by and you can find bread in chests, or trade
emeralds in chest with a farmer villager for bread or potentially cook potatoes from chests on campfires in
the village. Also there is some haybales underneath some campfires. Also the blacksmiths are more difficult
to identify since they are smaller but they are more common. Another note is that iron golems sometimes do
not spawn in these villages, so it can be more awkward to obtain some iron.

Snowy Villages
Snowy Villages spawn in snowy tundra biomes and they don't have haybales. One advantage of these
villages is they tend to have lots of furnaces which could be used for smelting food/iron. Other than that,
these villages tend to be not that useful.

Once you've finished looting a village, you should be ready to build a Nether Portal to enter the nether.
Ruined Portal
Ruined Portals are a new structure added in 1.16 and can spawn in both the overworld and the nether,
although the overworld ones are most useful. There are 13 different ruined portal variants, with different
chest locations so learning them can be useful. The chest can contain useful loot such as a flint and steel or
fire charge for lighting a nether portal, flint for crafting a flint and steel, gold or iron nuggets, obsidian, gold
blocks or enchanted gold armour.

If the ruined portal contains no crying obsidian in the portal part of the structure and you have some
obsidian in your inventory or in the chest, the portal can be completable meaning you just need to place the
obsidian down and light the portal without the need of a bucket although this is somewhat rare

There can also be enough lava to build a nether portal using the normal bucket method to enter the nether.
Buried Treasure
Buried Treasure spawns in beach biomes randomly and are easiest to find using a buried treasure map
which can be obtained from a shipwreck or ocean ruins. A useful thing to know is that buried treasure
always spawns at chunk coordinates 9 ~ 9. This means if you press f3 and next to "Chunk: " you have the
first and third coordinates equal to 9 and you are over the X on the map, the treasure will be below you.
This can save time since the map isn't perfectly accurate to the block. Buried treasure contains lots of
valuable loot, including iron, gold, diamonds, cooked cod/salmon and tnt so can be very useful if it doesn't
take too long to find. Once you have obtained this loot, you should be ready to build a nether portal to enter
the nether.
Structureless
Playing an overworld without structures can make sense if you have a lava pool and a cave with exposed
iron ore. This means you can play Minecraft similar to a casual start, smelting iron ore in a furnace to craft a
bucket. A flint and steel will be very useful in this situation since the only way to obtain food this method is
to kill animals such as pigs, cows, sheep and chickens. If you light them on fire first with a flint and steel
they will drop cooked food, saving time cooking the food in the furnace. You should be trying to do as
much as possible while the iron is smelting such as obtaining blocks, building the portal, gathering food,
etc.
Other Structures
There are quite a lot of miscellaneous structures which are useful for minor things but aren't common or
useful enough to be a staple in a speedrunner's repertoire. Still knowing some things about them can be
useful in some situations.

Abandoned Mineshafts

These spawn underground and have chests in minecarts which can contain food and iron. They spawn
most commonly and are often exposed in mesa biomes. They have cave spiders inside which will poison
you if the difficulty is higher than easy.

Ocean Ruins

These spawn in or near oceans and can have stone axes and buried treasure maps but are otherwise not
very useful and you will often get attacked by a drowned.

Desert Pyramids

Also called desert temples, these spawn in deserts and have some useful resources like golden apples, iron,
gold, diamonds, string and 9 tnt. Definitely can be very useful although they tend to not have quite enough
iron or food and take too much time to loot to be a mainstay of speedrunning in 1.16.

Igloos

Igloos spawn in snowy biomes and will contain a furnace. Half of igloos spawn with a basement section
which contains a golden apple and a splash potion of weakness for curing a zombie villager which gives
good trades. This would be useful for the trading with villagers for ender pearls strategy, but this strategy is
slower in 1.16.1 than bartering with piglins. Also can contain a stone axe in the chest in the basement.

Jungle Temples

Jungle Temples spawn in jungle biomes and contain 2 chests, one hidden behind the lever puzzle and one
behind some dispensers with arrows. Can contain some iron, gold and diamonds but are quite inconsistent.
Oftentimes, mining through the lever puzzle and accessing the chest this way is much faster than solving it.

Pillager Outposts

Pillager Outposts spawn in the same biomes a village can spawn in. They have one chest at the top which
can contain some iron and logs as well as some food. They can also spawn with a caged iron golem, but
killing the golem while being harassed by pillagers is very difficult.

Swamp Huts

Swamp huts, or witch huts are basically useless for speedrunning since they have no chests. Theoretically
one could obtain a useful potion by killing the witch at the right time, but this is very inconsistent and not
very applicable.
Woodland Mansions

Woodland mansions are actually quite useful but they are so rare as to not really be worth investing time
into. They also can take a lot of time to navigate because of how large they are. There are many different
rooms and lots of loot from chests. Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuKYDyJdm9U) is a semi-
serious guide to mansions made by T_Wagz.

Dungeons

Dungeons can have iron and buckets and some food in their chests so can be useful but as with most
underground structures they are somewhat rare to find.
Building a Nether Portal
In casual Minecraft, generally players will get a diamond pickaxe, mine 10 obsidian and build a nether
portal from that. However since getting diamonds is inconsistent and each obsidian takes around 10
seconds to mine, in a speedrun this is quite slow and a much faster method that only requires a water bucket
and some lava. The main idea is to place some water so that lava can be placed to form obisidian in a portal
cast. There are two main different areas to build a nether portal in: a lava pool either above or below ground
or a magma ravine below which often has lava.

Lava Pool

If you're on land, either looking around for a lava pool or digging down for one, this will be the method
you will want to use to build a portal and get to the nether.

Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faFPbGlmlK0) is a simple guide to the most basic nether portal

setup, created by former world record holder Cscuile.

Magma Ravine

If you've looted a shipwreck/buried treasure and are in an ocean, you may want to enter the nether via an
ocean ravine. At the bottom of some ocean ravines are magma blocks which have lava beneath them and if
you're crafty you can build a nether portal with it, although this can be awkward with swimming
mechanics.

Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGyMWYhHYoQ) is quite a lengthy guide to a few different

methods of building a portal in an ocean ravine by T_Wag

Once you've built your nether portal you're headed into the Nether!
Nether
The nether is the most important but also most dangerous part of your speedrun. You will need to fight
dangerous mobs and navigate some structures to obtain the resources you need to beat the game. The main
things you will need to obtain are ender pearls and blaze rods. There are two strategies for obtaining ender
pearls: classic bartering or bastion strats. To obtain blaze rods, you must go to a fortress and kill blazes.

Classic bartering

Bastion Strats

Nether Fortresses
Classic Bartering
Classic bartering is a beginner strategy for obtaining ender pearls and is generally not as fast as bastion
routing.

It consists of just mining nether gold ore for gold ingots and bartering these with stray piglins and hoping
for 2 ender pearl trades. In the version 1.16.1, there is around a 4.73% for 4-8 pearls from each gold ingot
and you would prefer to have 12+ pearls so on average you will need two ender pearl barters to have
enough to beat the game. Stray piglins will only spawn in the nether biomes of Nether Wastes and Crimson
Forests and they tend to wander so it can be useful building a pit or putting them in boats so they stay in
place while bartering so you can mine more gold or look for a fortress. Be careful since piglins will attack
you when you mine nether gold ore even if you have gold armour on. You can give them gold ingots to
distract them or simply run/kill them.

Note that with this strategy you will tend to only obtain pearls and not much potions of fire
res/obsidian/string/crying obsidian/glowstone and other useful items that would be obtained in a bastion
strategy. This means it is generally slower and more linear.
Bastion Strats
Being able to get resources from a bastion is one of the most important skills in Minecraft Speedrunning.
There are four different types of bastions and they each have random elements to how they spawn and each
of them can have multiple different ways to route them depending on how they spawn, how terrain
generates and how you approach them. Note that bastions will generate in every nether biome except for
the Basalt Delta biome.

What you should be hoping to obtain from a bastion is at least 10 obsidian, one fire resistance potion and
16 ender pearls. Also looking for string can be used to craft wool which can be used to craft beds or
glowstone and crying obsidian which can be used to craft respawn anchors. Beds and respawn anchors are
useful for the end fight.

There are a lot of useful ways to corral piglins to get them all into one position for quick bartering such as
when you break a gold block or chest, all piglins within 16 blocks of you will be aggroed on to you and go
towards you but will still be distracted by gold. Note that just opening a chest aggroes piglins with line of
sight on you and hitting a piglin aggroes all piglins around you and makes the piglin you hit ignore gold
you throw. Understanding piglin mechanics is very useful for efficiently routing bastions.

Note that the guides in these videos are outdated and are missing newer/faster routes/techniques but they
will often be better for beginners than the fastest but riskiest routes for top runners. Try seeking out guides
to different bastions yourself and practising them and finding out what you're comfortable with in runs.

Hoglin Stables

Often just called "Stables", this bastion consists of three upper ramparts and two lower ramparts as well as
the main section. Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AczOTF5QpZ4) is a guide by EleventyBillion
on routing stables.

Bridge

Bridge is the simplest bastion for newer runners, since the gold blocks are all exposed away from the
piglins. Just make sure you don't die to the hoglins in the middle and try to find a spot to barter with as
many piglins as possible.

Housing Units

Housing contains two ramparts and a centre area with housing units around.

Treasure room

Treasure is probably the most distinctive bastion, consisting of two ramparts and a massive treasure room
area separated by lava. While the treasure room has a chest with very good loot and lots of exposed gold, it
is generally riskier and slower than using the gold hidden in the ramparts, since the piglins are harder to
collect at the bottom of treasure room and you can get mobbed by magma cubes.
Nether Fortresses
Nether fortresses are one of the essential structures since they are the only places you can find blazes which
drop blaze rods which are essential to beating the game.

Each nether fortress spawns with 2 blaze spawners or blazes can spawn naturally around the fortress. Each
blaze has a 1/2 chance of dropping a blaze rod when killed by the player. To be safe, you generally want 7
or 8 blaze rods but can leave with fewer if you're pushing for time. These tend to be quite dangerous since
wither skeletons roam the fortress and blazes can snipe you from quite a long distance.

There are two sections to the fortress: the chest section which has walls and a ceiling on the corridors and
the spawner section which is more open with the 2 spawners. The chests can contain some useful stuff such
as iron, gold and obsidian but mostly they won't be that useful. You want to find the spawner section since
the spawners are generally the faster way to get blazes. The wither skeletons are more than 2 blocks high so
blocking off sections of the fortress can be useful to ensure you don't get ambushed by them. If you have a
fire resistance potion you should use it since it nullifies all blazes' ranged damage, although they can still
melee you if you get too close. If you don't have fire resistance, using a shield can help to protect you
although you can still get from behind and the shield doesn't cover your whole hitbox. Otherwise you
should try to dodge the blazes' shots since blazes shoot three shots then have a cooldown before firing three
shots again. Learning blazes' attacking patterns will help you to kill blazes without dying. Other tips are
having plenty of food to regenerate health if you do get hit and using blocks to block blazes' shots.
Exiting Nether
When you have enough ender pearls and blaze rods, it's time to leave the nether. If you did classic bartering
you likely don't have 10 obsidian so you will have to return to your entry portal to get back to the
overworld. If you do have 10 obsidian then you can build a nether portal in the nether which can
potentially land you much closer to the stronghold. There are mechanics with how the strongholds generate
that determine where you should build your nether portal for optimal distance to the stronghold. Note one
block in ther nether corresponds to 8 blocks in the overworld so travelling through the nether is much more
efficient.

Once in the overworld you want to craft eyes of ender and follow the direction they go to find the
stronghold location. Sleeping in a bed will often save time and be safer as you won't be harassed by hostile
mobs. You should try to not throw too many eyes since each eye throw has a 20% chance of breaking.
Efficiently finding the stronghold is called triangulation since you want to go away from the direction the
eye was thrown a little and throw another eye and the stronghold will be where the two eye throws
intersect. This technique takes some practice and only really works when close to the stronghold location.
Also note the eyes will go towards 8 ~ 8 within the starting point of the stronghold's chunk. This means
you can use the chunk coordinates to triangulate against as well.
Stronghold
Strongholds are structures that generate naturally in the overworld.
They spawn in rings.

If you followed the ender eye perfectly you will dig down to the
starting staircase of the stronghold. This is a staircase which
extends into a room which has 5 possible rooms extending from it.
Mainly you want to just go through rooms looking for the end
portal room. Up to 4 stronghold chests can spawn and they can
contain ender pearls, apples and bread mainly. The main principle
for finding the end portal room is that it must spawn at least 5
rooms from the starting staircase, but tends to spawn within 7 or 8
rooms from it so you shouldn't go too deep into the stronghold
looking for it and should return to the starter staircase and choose a Where strongholds generate in
different route. There can be quite a lot of variance and randomness Minecraft version 1.9+
with finding the portal.

Once you find the end portal, there will be 12 end portal frames. Each of these frames has a 10% chance to
contain an eye pre-filled. This means you will need at most 12 eyes of ender to fill the end portal and
because of the way the probabilities work, it is quite unreliable to rely on 2 or more eyes.
Ender Dragon Fight
You will need to have gathered some resources at some point throughout the run. Minimal resources are
some beds which you can use to "one cycle" the dragon. This works since beds explode when you try to
sleep with them in the end. This means when the dragon flies to the middle, you place a bed on the bedrock
and explode it at the right time, dealing damage to the dragon and pushing it up so you can use another bed
to also deal damage and push up the dragon again. This can take a lot of practice and the best runners can
consistently kill the dragon in 4-5 beds.

Probably the easiest way to kill the dragon is to have a bow and at least 32 arrows. Then you can shoot
arrows at the end crystals to take them down while making sure to not look at the endermen and move
away when the dragon shoots dragon breath at you. When the dragon perches you can move around to the
side or behind the dragon to enter the fountain underneath the dragon and hit it with an axe or sword until it
flies away. If you are not in the fountain when it flies away from the fountain be careful since it will fly
towards you, potentially knocking you up into the air. As long as you've shot down every crystal the
dragon won't heal. Note that when shooting at the dragon or hitting it with an axe/sword hitting its head
does much more damage than hitting its body.

After killing the dragon and you enter the end portal, timing ends and you've completed a speedrun!

There are still many, many advanced, complex and varied strategies left unmentioned here. Check out other
guides, resources, streams, runs and discord servers for information on these.

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