How to Make a Compass in Minecraft

So you just lost your spawn point and you need a direction to travel in Minecraft? Although there are many advanced methods to find your coordinates, some people may prefer the simple way, using a Compass. In this article, we’ll show you how to make a compass in Minecraft and other ways to obtain it!

3 steps to make a Compass in Minecraft

The compass is a renewable uncommon item in Minecraft that points to the spawn or a defined lodestone of your choice. To be honest, not so many Minecrafters use this item because it’s not that helpful, and the required materials are also expensive in the early game.

#1 Obtain 4 Iron Ingots

Iron is the most common mineral in Minecraft that play the main role in many crafting recipes. The main way to get iron ingots is to go mining for iron ores or deepslate iron ores. Then smelt them under a furnace.

You can find iron ores spawn commonly underground, in caves, or even on top of the mountains. They usually spawn in a batch of 5 or even more. Deepslate iron ore is another variant of normal iron ore, which can only be found while mining deep underground. (at Y level below 0).

Both ores will drop Raw Iron on broken, which you can put in the furnace, later on, to smelt for iron ingots. If you use a Silk Touch pickaxe to mine the iron ores, you will get the ore block instead of raw iron. So with that being said, you can either cook iron ores, deepslate iron ores, or raw iron to obtain Iron Ingots in Minecraft.

Because Iron Ingots are crucial materials, there are many other ways to obtain iron ingots in Minecraft. First, you can loot the chests spawn in many generated structures like dungeons, mineshafts, bastions, temples, end cities, nether fortresses, pillager outposts, shipwrecks, villages, and more! They have a fairly high chance to contain up to 9 iron ingots per chest!

If you have a Block of Iron, you can put it in the crafting grid to get 9 Iron Ingots.

On another hand, you can use 9 Iron Nuggets to craft 1 Iron Ingot.

Alternatively, zombies, zombie villagers, and husks can drop 1 iron ingot on death. And an iron golem can drop up to 5 iron ingots on death. So making an iron golems farm is a great way to farm iron ingot in Minecraft!

#2 Obtain 1 Redstone Dust

Redstone Dust is a unique item drop from Redstone ores. And you can find Redstone ores generate naturally underground, mainly below Y level 15. Each Redstone ore can drop up to 5 Redstone Dust.

Chests in special structures and even themself may contain some Redstone dust so you may want to look for jungle pyramids, woodland mansions, ancient cities, strongholds, mineshafts, and dungeons.

If you have a block of Redstone, put it in the crafting grid to get 9 Redstone dust. Or if you have some leftover emeralds, you can trade one with the cleric villager for 2 Redstone dust.

#3 Craft a Compass

Once you have 4 iron ingots and 1 Redstone dust, right-click the Crafting Table and put the Redstone dust in the middle grid, then place 4 ingots adjacent to craft 1 compass.

Other Ways to Obtain a Compass in Minecraft

#1 By Adventuring

Compass can be found in loot chests that spawn in ancient cities, shipwrecks, strongholds, and villages. The chance oscillated between 7.7% and 26.3% for each chest to contain 1 compass.

#2 By Trading

You can trade a compass directly with the librarian villagers in Minecraft. They sell it for 4 emeralds, fairly cheap! But remember that not all librarian villagers sell compasses so you may want to make another villager a librarian and start the trade again.

By reaching the expert level, the librarian villagers have a 50% and 33% chance to have this trade respectively on Java and Bedrock Edition.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does compass point to bed Minecraft?

A compass in Minecraft always points to the world spawn – the location you first spawn in the world. Even though you can set your spawn point later by sleeping on the bed, the compass will always point to the world spawn, not the player spawn location.

Can you enchant compasses?

You can’t enchant a compass in Minecraft normally by putting it on the enchanting table. But you can add a specific enchantment called “Curse of Vanishing” to a compass using the anvil.

Do compasses work in the Nether?

Because a compass always points to the world spawn and you always spawn in the overworld dimension, compasses will not work in the Nether or the End dimension. You can still see the arrow moving, but it’s randomly pointed so you shouldn’t follow it.