Minecraft’s Lodestone Update is a Game-Changer for Exploration

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 20, 2025 2 Views 8 Min Read
Minecraft's Lodestone Update is a Game-Changer for Exploration

Crafting, combat, and construction are some of Minecraft’s core pillars of gameplay. However, for gamers who primarily play in survival mode, exploration is an essential and potentially dangerous factor in the game. While players must explore to find rare resources and biomes, many players will seldom leave their home bases in fear of getting lost and losing precious items they find along their journey. Mojang initially strove to rectify this issue with the introduction of the compass in Minecraft, but this tool only directed players toward their beds and wouldn’t work in the End or the Nether dimensions. With a recent update to the lodestone block, exploration within every dimension has become exponentially safer.

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Minecraft’s Lodestone Explained

In 2020, Mojang released update 1.16, otherwise known as the Nether Update, for Minecraft: Java Edition. Here, numerous new mobs, biomes, and items were introduced, such as ancient debris, crying obsidian, soul lanterns, and lodestones. Initially, lodestones could only be crafted or found in chests within bastion remnants which were also first introduced in the Nether Update. To craft lodestones, players would need to craft eight chiseled stone bricks and find one netherite ingot. Netherite ingots could additionally be found in bastion remnant chests or would have to be crafted from netherite scraps from ancient debris and gold.

Once players have a lodestone, they will need at least one compass in order to use the lodestone properly. Clicking on a lodestone while holding a compass will turn the compass into a lodestone compass and cause it to glow similar to enchanted armor and weapons. Lodestone compasses will have their needles pointed in the direction of where the lodestone is located instead of a bed, allowing players to easily find important places without having to sleep there. Lodestones and lodestone compasses can additionally be used in the End and Nether, making it easier for players to locate their primary portals and other significant locations such as Nether fortresses.

The Recent Lodestone Update

While lodestones and lodestone compasses were designed to help people safely explore, their requirement to be crafted with netherite ingots or be found in bastion remnants caused lodestones to be extremely rare and seldom used by players. To rectify this issue, Mojang changed the crafting recipe and spawning locations for lodestones in an early January Java snapshot and Bedrock beta/preview that also introduced leaf litter and pig variations. Lodestones can now be crafted with iron ingots instead of netherite and can be found in chests near ruined Nether portals in the overworld. These new features could only be tested out currently by enabling snapshots for Minecraft: Java Edition or by enabling beta/previews for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition.

Minecraft’s lodestone block is based on real-life lodestones, which are magnetized pieces of the mineral magnetite, the most magnetic naturally occurring mineral on Earth.

How Minecraft’s New Lodestone Can Forever Change Exploration

Despite lodestones’ new crafting and spawning location being restricted to preview modes currently, it will undoubtedly change the way players explore blocky worlds in Minecraft once it’s fully implemented into Bedrock and Java Edition. By being able to easily craft lodestones with iron ingots instead of netherite ingots, more players will be able to use lodestones and place them to easily locate far-away sites. For instance, if players spawn in a normal oak forest and find a far away pale garden and stronghold several biomes away from their base, they could place lodestones at both locations to easily find them in the future or direct newly joined players.

With how complicated and diverse the biomes of the Nether have become in Minecraft, the lodestone will prove to be invaluable for players, especially those who are looking for blaze spawners to craft potions and eyes of ender. Similarly, lodestones will help players easily navigate through the End and locate chorus trees and End cities as well as End Ships to acquire the ever-intriguing elytra wings. While multiple lodestones can be placed throughout different dimensions with their own compasses, Mojang could expand upon this new update by marking each lodestone’s location on framed maps to better organize where each lodestone can be found.

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