Stronghold



Strongholds are structures that occur naturally underground, and are primarily important because they house End Portals. Strongholds can be located using Eyes of Ender.

Unlike most structures, Strongholds are intended to be difficult to locate through conventional means, providing almost no outward indication to exposed areas; though they are often intersected by cave systems, ravines, and Abandoned Mineshafts.

Strongholds vary in size but are generally large and complex, containing multiple rooms, corridors, stairwells, doors, and other features. Strongholds each contain a 'portal room' with an unactivated End Portal, which can be activated with twelve Eyes of Ender, for travelling to The End.

Appearance


Strongholds vary in size. They contain several doors and rooms made mostly of Stone Brick, Mossy Stone Brick, and Cracked Stone Brick. Strongholds are lit by enough torches to provide visibility in most areas, though not enough to suppress mob spawns.

Each Stronghold contains several dispersed Chests containing a variety of loot.

Strongholds are primarily generated underground, usually unexposed to the surface and only visible within caves, possibly even underwater caves. They may be connected to a dungeon or even merge into an abandoned mine. Strongholds contain regular mobs that spawn under normal conditions, as well as Silverfish that are created when someone either mines one of the blocks within, or finds the End Portal room, which contains a Silverfish Spawner.

Rooms
Strongholds feature various types of main rooms. Each room has an entrance, which is either a plain 3×3 opening, a wall with a wooden door, a wall with an iron door (with buttons), or a 3×3 opening with a grate of iron bars leaving a 1×2 opening, and may have exits to other room pieces or dead-end "exits" into stone. Additional "passages" between rooms may exist if their generation overlaps or if the stronghold intersects a cave, mineshaft, or other structure.

Stronghold generation begins with a spiral staircase room with a 5-way crossing at the bottom, with additional rooms being randomly generated from the exits of previous rooms up to a maximum distance of 50 rooms and 112 blocks horizontally. If a portal room is not generated, generation is redone.


 * End portal room: Contains an unactivated End Portal and a Silverfish Spawner. There are two pools of lava in the front sides of the room and a bigger lava pool below the End Portal. There are 16 Iron Bar windows in the room, and the entrance is always an grate. One per stronghold, and never within 5 rooms of the starting staircase.
 * Libraries (see below). Maximum two per stronghold, and never within 4 rooms of the starting staircase.
 * Large rooms: A room with three exits (four counting the entrance). The center of the room may have various decorations. Maximum six per stronghold.
 * Empty rooms: Has no decoration.
 * Stone Pillar rooms: Has a stone brick pillar with torches on it.
 * Fountain rooms: Contain a fountain in the center, which consists of a stone brick ring and pillar with a water source block on top of the pillar.
 * Store rooms: Dual-level rooms, each 2 blocks high, with a cobblestone center structure joining the two. A lone torch is housed within the structure. A ladder runs up the side wall for access to the second floor, which is made of wood planks and contains a Chest.
 * Five-way crossing: Has up to five exits (six counting the entrance): one across from the entrance down a short stairway made of stone slabs and stone brick blocks, one each to the left and right of the entrance, and one on an upper level reached by a short stairway made of stone slabs and stone brick blocks, and one on the upper level across a bridge of stone slabs and double stone slabs over the downward stair. A single torch is on the side of the bridge. Maximum five per stronghold.
 * Empty prison cells: A corridor with one wall partially made of iron bars and with two iron doors (in an "open" position, with no buttons). Beyond each iron door are cells with an iron bar wall between them. An exit is opposite the entrance. Maximum five per stronghold.
 * Spiral staircase: A 3×3 spiral stair made of stone brick blocks and stone slabs, leading down, with an exit at the bottom. Maximum six per stronghold.
 * Straight staircase: A 3 block wide staircase of cobblestone stairs leading downwards, with an exit at the bottom of the stairs. There is also an empty alcove under the stairs. Maximum five per stronghold.
 * Corridor: A bare corridor with up to 3 exits: one straight ahead, and optional exits to the left and right.
 * Chest corridor: A corridor with a small altar made of stone slabs, with a chest on the altar. One exit, opposite the entrance. Maximum four per stronghold.
 * Corridor turn: A bare corridor with one exit, left or right. May resemble a small room if both the entrance and the next room's entrance have doors.
 * Dead-end corridor: A bare corridor with no exits, although it is likely to intersect other rooms. This room type never has a door or grate at the entrance.

Libraries
Libraries occur in two sizes: Small single-level libraries, and larger duplex libraries. All libraries contain bookshelves, wooden planks, chest(s) and cobwebs dispersed randomly.

Large libraries contain a second level consisting of a surrounding balcony with Fences as railings, and fences/torches arranged in a chandelier formation over the center of the room. The two levels are connected by ladders on the wall furthest from the entrance.

Chests are found on the corner of one bookshelf in each library, with an additional Chest in the corner of the top floor in duplex libraries.

Store rooms
Chests found in store rooms contain 1-4 stacks of items, chosen from the following list. Chance listed is per stack, not for the chest as a whole.

Slab altars
Chests found on slab altars in corridors contain 2-3 stacks of items, chosen from the following list. Chance listed is per stack, not for the chest as a whole.

Libraries
Chests found in libraries contain 1-4 stacks of items, chosen from the following list. Chance listed is per stack, not for the chest as a whole.

Spawning


There is a limit of three strongholds per world (1 per world in console versions). All strongholds are located at random positions in a radius between 640 and 1152 blocks from the world's original spawn point, at 0/0 (but may extend further in or out of that area). The three strongholds are spawned at roughly equal angles from the center point of the world (that is, each stronghold is in the region of 120 degrees from the others, measured from the origin). The game will not generate a stronghold partially above-ground: any portion above the ground layer will be replaced with air blocks, leaving a cutaway.

Strongholds are very often broken by caves, ravines, and Abandoned Mine Shafts. They can also be intersected by Dungeons. This means that navigating the stronghold can sometimes be very difficult.

Trivia

 * Due to the way the overground generates, empty blocks replace any part of a stronghold that exceeds the predetermined ground level, thus making a cross section similar to that seen in the first screenshot.
 * Ravines may cut across strongholds, making navigation difficult but locating them easier.
 * Of all the Stone Brick blocks in a stronghold, approximately 45% are regular stone brick, 30% are mossy stone brick, 20% are cracked stone brick, and 5% are actually Monster Egg blocks.
 * While strongholds are usually quite large, some can be generated with only a few rooms.
 * Strongholds usually spawn underwater, meaning reaching them is difficult, and whole rooms can be flooded if the stronghold is intersected by a mineshaft or ravine.
 * Very rarely, floating End Portal rooms can be found in the ocean. Reaching those is also a challenge.
 * There is also on average one room with Cobblestone Stairs in every Stronghold.
 * There can possibly be only one eye of ender in one of the portal frames, and as many as six.
 * The primary reason for Abandoned Mineshafts, Caves, and Dungeons intersecting Strongholds so often is that, while other structures overwrite anything in their path, strongholds only overwrite non-air blocks, leading to anything overwriting them.