Tutorials/Exploring an ancient city

Ancient cities are among the most challenging structures to be in the game. There is very little light throughout the place, and the cities are home to wardens, which can easily smother players, even in full netherite armor.

Why bother?
There will be several benefits to go to an ancient city:


 * An easy way to obtain sculk blocks without a sculk catalyst.
 * Obtaining soul-related blocks and basalt without going to the Nether.
 * Easy way to obtain skeleton skulls without creating a charged creeper.
 * The useful Swift Sneak enchantment, which is exclusive to ancient cities.
 * Has the completely blast-resistant reinforced deepslate.
 * May have some interesting loot added later on.
 * The city can be converted into a mob-proof base after all the sculk shriekers are removed.

What you might need

 * Multiple stacks of wool for blocking off vibrations.
 * A pair of shears to break wool quickly, and to collect the wool generated on the floor of corridors in case you run out of wool.
 * Some iron ingots to craft more shears.
 * A hoe with Silk Touch for collecting the various sculk blocks, and to destroy the dangerous sculk shriekers.
 * The usual sword, pickaxe, and any other tools you usually take with you.
 * Lots of good food, like steak or golden carrots.
 * Some Night Vision potions.
 * Plenty of torches, at least two stacks.
 * A bed in case you die.
 * Some snowballs or eggs to distract the warden.
 * A bow, preferably enchanted with Infinity, to shoot arrows for distracting the warden. (Optional)
 * Some arrows, or just one if the bow has Infinity. (Optional)
 * A few milk buckets to remove the Darkness effect. (Optional)
 * Some snow blocks as a compact way to store snowballs, and to construct snow golems for distracting the warden. (Optional)
 * Some carved pumpkins to build snow golems for distracting the warden. (Optional)
 * Golden apples or enchanted golden apples to quickly heal. (Optional)
 * A full set of armor, ideally with Protection IV. (Optional)
 * It is not recommended to bring expensive tools or armor to the deep dark, since there are no regular hostile mobs that might attack you, and the warden is deadly in direct combat, even if the player has superior armor.

Starting Out
To prepare yourself for an expedition to an ancient city, there are a few things you will need to do.

Finding a City
You will first need to go to the deepslate layer, nearly to the bedrock level. If you mine into it from a higher height, there is a higher chance that you will mine into the city and likely die from fall damage. Once you get somewhere around Y -44, begin strip or branch mining. This will give you the highest chance of finding a city. The ancient city will also be more likely to spawn under the new mountain biomes.

What not to do

 * Try not to build or destroy anything unless you are sure there are not any s or s within a 9-block radius.
 * Try not to take any damage, keep your health bar at full.
 * Try your hardest to avoid alerting sculk shriekers or sculk sensors, so do not step on them.
 * Do not try to fight the warden under any circumstances. Instead, try to be as far away as possible, because it may sense your presence the closer you are to it and be able to track you down.
 * Do not place anything, including wool, on top of blocks. They will notify sculk sensor nearby, preventing you from occluding them.

Exploring the City
When you explore the city, the most important thing is to constantly, unless you are on the corridors with  walkways. This will make you slower unless you have Swift Sneak on your leggings, which you won't have if this is your first trip to an ancient city. However, there is a trick to sneak faster: sneak diagonally. when pressing two directional keys (such as and ) at the same time, the player moves at a faster 1.8 m/s as opposed to 1.3 m/s. This can make it hard to see where you are going, so you can use the third-person view to get an eagle eye view at your character.

Use your s of Night Vision to see without having to place torches. Torches, however, are useful as a last resort if you run out of Night Vision potions or are under the Darkness effect, so use your night vision to identify spots where a sculk shrieker or sculk sensor will not notice the sound, and place torches in those places, so that you can see by their light later. There may be some areas where it is extremely difficult to get through if you have run out of night vision potions or have the darkness effect and you should simply avoid these areas.

Destroying sculk shriekers
The most dangerous block in the ancient city is the, which is directly responsible for spawning the wardens. So one of the most important things to do when exploring an ancient city, is to destroy all the sculk shriekers. However, breaking them triggers nearby s, which can in turn alert other shriekers nearby, not to mention that the floor prevents the player from placing wool to occlude the sensors. Breaking all sculk shriekers without spawning any wardens, is therefore, a very challenging task, but it is not impossible. To do so, the player needs to understand how the sculk shrieker works.

Mechanics
When a sculk shrieker starts shrieking, it actually does not spawn a warden right away, but does so after its shrieking ends. The shrieking lasts for a total of 4.5 seconds, during which the player can do a couple of things to prevent a warden from spawning:
 * The player can run out of the sculk shrieker's range. A sculk shrieker has a spherical range of 16 blocks. If the player gets outside the 16-block radius before the 4.5-second shrieking ends, the shrieker does not spawn a warden.
 * The player can break the shrieker before its shrieking ends. A is the fastest way to break shriekers, so a player with a fast hoe can quickly break multiple shriekers within a short period of time.

Just one shrieker
When a player approaches a patch of sculk blocks, the first thing they want to do is to count how many s there are. If there is just one shrieker, this makes the task quite easy. The player simply needs to sneak up to the shrieker and break it with their hoe – even though this triggers the sculk sensors nearby, no wardens will spawn because there are no more shriekers nearby to alert.

However, the presence of just one shrieker doesn't mean the player should not prepare for emergencies. It is possible that there is a hidden shrieker the player fails to see, or there is a hidden sculk sensor behind a pillar that alerts another shrieker further away. This illustrates the importance of scouting the area before breaking any shriekers, preferably using the third-person view to view from a higher vantage point and from different angles. Even when thoroughly prepared, the player should also prepare for the scenario below.

More than one shrieker
If a patch has more than one shrieker, or if there are multiple interconnected patches containing shriekers, the player needs to act strategically. They need to be mentally prepared that as soon as they break one of the shriekers, all other shriekers nearby are going to be alerted, and they have to get out of those shriekers' range, or destroy all of them before they stop shrieking.

The most important thing to do before breaking a sculk shrieker is to identify a safe route to escape the shrieker's range. As mentioned above, a sculk shrieker has a range of 16 blocks, and shrieks for 4.5 seconds. Since sneaking is too slow to escape the shrieker's range within time, the player has to. However, if the player simply runs in a random direction, it is highly likely that they trigger more sculk sensors and shriekers along the way, causing a bigger chaos. Therefore, the player should look around, and pick out a direction where there are no sculk sensors or shriekers along the way. Once the player breaks the first shrieker, immediately turn into that direction, and sprint-jump away as fast as possible. After a few seconds, the player can safely return to the sculk patch (don't forget to sneak) and break more shriekers.

Strategies
There are a few strategies with breaking sculk shriekers:
 * Always break the shrieker closest to the escape route first. Because other shriekers are farther from you when you start running, you get out of their range sooner.
 * If there is no flat ground to run away to nearby, try to find a cliffside at least 9 blocks away from the nearest sculk sensor, and dig into it. This way the player creates their own escape route.
 * You may use the wool-covered corridors to your advantage. The wool provides a safe pathway to sprint-jump away from the sculk shriekers, without the danger of triggering any sculk sensors nearby.
 * (This strategy is very risky and requires fast reflexes) If there are only 2 or 3 sculk shriekers next to each other, and the player has a fast hoe, they can stand in the middle of these shriekers, break one, and quickly break the others before any of them ends shrieking. This strategy is riskier because if a warden manages to spawn, it will be within close range of the player, and it will be much harder to get away from.
 * (This is a high-risk, high-reward and efficient strategy) If there a group multiple sculk shriekers close to eachother, you can simply place some torches quickly around the 11x11 proximity of the shriekers. The shriekers will still shrieks, but due to high light level, a warden will not be able to spawn. Notice that, due to shrieking mechanics, if the player failed to disable any shriekers, a warden will surely spawns.

Evading the warden
Even the above strategies are not entirely foolproof, and it is still possible the warden will spawn sometime during your explorations. If this happens, you can still somewhat easily evade the warden without dying. When the warden spawns, it may be very tempting to sprint away, but it will hear your footsteps, start chasing you, and possibly kill you. You must keep sneaking and slowly move away, unless the warden has already begun chasing you. You can tell if the warden has begun chasing you because it will lean forward and roar. If the warden is currently chasing you, try to sprint to somewhere the warden cannot follow, such as though a two block high gap. Another strategy is to simply "nerd pole" up by placing blocks underneath your feet until you are higher than the warden. However, this is only feasible if you are already far away from the warden and it cannot knock you off your stack of blocks while you are building it. If the warden is near you but still has not taken notice of you, you can throw snowballs or eggs to distract it and lead it away from you. Make sure to throw the snowballs or eggs at least five seconds apart to keep the warden from getting angry.