How to Speedrun Minecraft: Beginner's Guide

Minecraft speedrunning involves completing the game (defeating the Ender Dragon) as quickly as possible, testing a player's game knowledge, mechanical skill, and adaptability. It's a thrilling way to experience Minecraft, pushing its boundaries under the pressure of the clock. Here's how to get started on your speedrunning journey:

Types of Minecraft Speedruns

Understanding the different categories can help you choose where to begin:

1. Any%: The most popular and straightforward category. The only goal is to reach and defeat the Ender Dragon by any means necessary, excluding major game-breaking glitches (specific rules vary by version, often banning things like duplication glitches or chunk corruption exploits). This is the best starting point for most beginners due to its focus on core mechanics and relatively shorter run times compared to other categories. You'll learn the essential flow of resource gathering, Nether navigation, and the End fight.
2. Set Seed: Runners use a pre-selected world seed known to have favourable features like nearby villages, exposed surface lava pools for portal building, or conveniently located strongholds and Nether fortresses. This category emphasizes precise execution and route optimization over random chance, making it great for practicing specific techniques or achieving very fast times. Learning a set seed route involves memorizing coordinates, specific movements, and optimal resource paths. It's less about improvisation and more about flawless repetition and refining micro-efficiencies.
3. Random Seed Glitchless: The purest test of skill and adaptation. You generate a random world and must beat the dragon without using major glitches. This requires strong improvisation skills, efficient exploration, and quick decision-making, as every world presents unique challenges and opportunities. Luck plays a significant role (finding a village early, getting good Piglin trades), but consistent runners demonstrate mastery over navigating unpredictable scenarios, quickly assessing terrain, and adapting their strategy on the fly. This is often considered the "standard" competitive category.
4. All Advancements: A much longer and more complex category requiring players to complete every single advancement available in the game before (or sometimes concurrently with) defeating the Ender Dragon. This involves extensive exploration, farming, crafting, and specific interactions across all dimensions, demanding deep game knowledge and strategic planning. Runs can take many hours and require managing complex checklists, long-term resource gathering (like obtaining every type of food for "A Balanced Diet"), and engaging with nearly every game mechanic, from breeding animals to navigating Ocean Monuments and Woodland Mansions.

Other less common categories exist, focusing on specific goals like collecting all music discs, defeating all boss mobs (Wither and Elder Guardian alongside the Dragon), or playing under specific restrictions (like "Half Heart" runs or using only wooden tools). Exploring these niche categories can offer unique challenges once you've mastered the basics.

Basic Speedrunning Strategy

While every run is unique, most Random Seed Glitchless runs follow a general structure:

Early Game (0-10 minutes)

This phase is about quickly acquiring the basic resources needed to survive and progress towards the Nether. Efficiency is paramount. Every second counts.

1. Gather Wood: Immediately locate and punch down trees. Oak and Birch are often preferred due to visibility, but any wood works. Aim for 3-4 logs initially – enough for a crafting table, wooden pickaxe, and potentially a shovel or boat if needed for early travel across water or flat terrain. Punching leaves can yield apples (early food, crucial if animals are scarce) or saplings (if you misclick or need wood later). Don't waste time gathering more wood than necessary right now.
2. Craft Essential Tools: Craft a table, then a wooden pickaxe using the first 2 planks. Mine 3 stone immediately (often found exposed on hillsides, small cave entrances, or cliff faces) and craft a stone pickaxe. Follow up with a stone axe (faster wood chopping, also a decent early weapon) and potentially a stone shovel if you need flint quickly or anticipate digging dirt/gravel. Avoid crafting wooden swords or axes if possible, as stone is acquired within seconds and is much more durable and effective.
3. Find Iron: This is crucial for a bucket (water bucket clutches, lava for portal), flint and steel (portal ignition), and potentially a shield or iron pickaxe (faster mining, especially for obsidian if not using the bucket method). Look for exposed stone near water level (rivers, lakes), small surface cave openings, or shallow ravines. Iron often spawns visibly on these surfaces. Mine coal if readily available (it smelts 8 items per piece), but don't spend too long searching for it; wood planks work fine in the furnace. Aim for at least 3 iron ore initially (for the bucket), smelting it in a furnace using wood planks or collected coal. While smelting, gather more wood, hunt for food, or scout the nearby area for villages or lava pools. Consider grabbing 5 iron if you want a shield, or 6 if you want both bucket and flint/steel.
4. Get Food: Kill nearby passive mobs like cows, pigs, or sheep. Cooked meat restores more hunger and saturation, delaying the need to eat again. Cows are particularly valuable as they also drop leather (useful for armor if needed, though usually skipped). If animals are scarce, prioritize finding a village for hay bales (9 hay bales craft into 9 bread – a massive food boost) or rely on apples, sweet berries, or even zombie flesh temporarily (though it risks hunger debuff). Managing hunger early prevents slowdowns later; sprinting is essential.
5. Locate a Village: Villages are hotspots for speedrunning resources and can drastically cut down early-game time. They offer beds (to set spawn point and skip the dangerous night), hay bales (instant bread), potential loot in blacksmith chests (iron ingots, diamonds, obsidian, food, iron tools/armor), and often have an Iron Golem you can kill for 3-5 iron ingots (pillar up 3 blocks high directly beside it and attack it safely with your stone axe; it cannot reach you). Finding a village early can provide your bucket, flint, food, and even obsidian almost instantly. Look for them in plains, deserts, savannas, and taiga biomes. Listen for bells or look for the distinct structures on the horizon. Church/Temple structures can sometimes contain brewing stands (useful if you need blaze powder later, but usually ignored).

Mid Game (10-20 minutes)

The focus shifts to entering the Nether to acquire Blaze Rods and Ender Pearls, the two key ingredients for Eyes of Ender.

1. Find/Create Portal: The fastest way is often finding a surface lava pool. Use your water bucket to create obsidian by pouring water next to lava source blocks, turning them into obsidian. Mine the required 10 obsidian with your stone or iron pickaxe (iron is faster but stone works; diamond found in a village chest is ideal). Alternatively, use the "bucket method": find a lava source, mine blocks around it to form a portal frame shape in the ground or against a wall using placeholder blocks (like dirt or cobblestone), then use the bucket to scoop lava source blocks and place them into the frame against these placeholders. Pour water over the lava placements to turn them into obsidian directly in the portal shape without mining it. This saves pickaxe durability and time if done efficiently. Abandoned portals found in the world or village blacksmith chests can also provide obsidian (sometimes enough to complete the frame). Craft a flint and steel (1 iron ingot, 1 flint from digging gravel – use your shovel) to light the portal. Ensure the area around your portal is relatively safe before entering.
2. Trade with Piglins: Once in the Nether, find Piglins. They spawn most commonly in Crimson Forests and Nether Wastes, and also inhabit Bastion Remnants. Gold is key here. Mine Nether Gold Ore (drops gold nuggets) or find gold ingots/nuggets in Ruined Portal chests or Bastion chests. Safely trade by digging a 1x2 hole two blocks deep, trapping a Piglin, or building a simple enclosure around yourself. Drop gold ingots (not nuggets or blocks) one by one near Piglins. They will inspect it and throw back an item – hopefully Ender Pearls (roughly 5% chance per ingot, yielding 2-4 pearls). Fire Resistance potions (from bartering or bastion chests) are incredibly valuable for Nether survival, allowing safe travel over lava oceans. Be cautious: opening chests, barrels, or shulker boxes, or mining gold blocks/Nether Gold Ore near Piglins will aggro them unless you're wearing at least one piece of gold armor (helmet, boots, etc.). A single gold boot is often sufficient. Aim to acquire 10-15 pearls; getting more is safer but costs time.
3. Find Fortress: Nether Fortresses (dark nether brick structures) are essential for Blaze Rods. They tend to spawn more frequently along the positive and negative Z-axis in the Nether (North/South). Use the F3 debug screen to check your coordinates and heading. Look for their distinct structure – tall pillars, bridges, and enclosed corridors – against the Nether fog. Navigate carefully, building bridges over lava and being constantly aware of Ghast fireballs (which can be deflected with a timed sword hit) and Wither Skeleton attacks (their wither effect is deadly). Locate a Blaze spawner within the fortress, usually found on open platforms or small rooms with stairs.
4. Farm Blazes and Return: Kill Blazes safely. Blocking their fireballs with a shield or solid blocks, using ranged attacks (bow, snowballs to knock them back), or cornering them for melee attacks are common tactics. Enclosing the spawner partially can help manage the spawns. Collect at least 6-7 Blaze Rods (more is safer, as drop rates aren't guaranteed – aim for 7-8 to be comfortable) which craft into Blaze Powder (1 rod = 2 powder). Each Eye of Ender requires one Blaze Powder and one Ender Pearl. Once you have enough rods and pearls (aim for 12+ pearls ideally), return to your Overworld portal. Remember the coordinates or mark the path back!
5. Craft Eyes of Ender: Back in the Overworld, combine your Ender Pearls and Blaze Powder to craft Eyes of Ender (place pearl above powder in crafting grid). You'll need around 12-15 Eyes on average to be safe (12 to fill the portal frame, plus extras for locating the stronghold accurately without risk of running out). Craft them all now to save inventory fiddling later.

Late Game (20-30 minutes)

The final push involves locating the Stronghold, activating the End Portal, and defeating the Ender Dragon.

1. Locate Stronghold: Throw an Eye of Ender into the air (right-click). It will float towards the nearest Stronghold for a few seconds before falling (catch it if you can!) or shattering (about 20% chance). Travel several hundred blocks (300-500) in that direction and throw another. Repeat this process. To pinpoint the location more accurately (triangulation), throw an eye, note the precise angle (use F3's 'Facing' direction), move perpendicular to that path (left or right) by about 100-200 blocks, and throw another eye, again noting the angle. The intersection of these two directional paths is roughly where the Stronghold lies beneath the surface. When an eye floats downwards into the ground instead of forwards, you are directly above the Stronghold. Mark this spot.
2. Navigate to Portal Room: Dig down carefully (staircase or MLG water bucket drops if confident, but be wary of lava). Strongholds are mazes filled with dead ends, libraries (good source of cobwebs for potential dragon fight use), dining halls, prisons, and potentially dangerous mobs like Silverfish (which spawn from infested stone brick blocks when broken). Listen for Silverfish sounds (hissing/scurrying) or look for mossy/cracked stone bricks which often indicate proximity to the portal room or monster spawners. Explore efficiently, lighting your path with torches and blocking off dead ends or already explored corridors to avoid getting lost. Common layouts often involve spiral staircases leading down or long corridors intersecting at various points. Use sound cues (lava hissing) as the portal room always has lava.
3. Fill Portal: Find the End Portal room, identifiable by the lava pool below and the distinctive portal frame structure sitting atop it, usually with a Silverfish spawner nearby. Quickly disable or break the spawner to prevent being swarmed. Place the Eyes of Ender into the empty slots in the portal frame (right-click). You typically need 12 Eyes, but some frames generate with one or more Eyes already present (a lucky break!). Ensure the area is clear and you're ready before placing the final eye, as the portal activates instantly.
4. Defeat Dragon: Enter the End. Your immediate priority is to destroy the End Crystals atop the obsidian pillars, as they heal the dragon. Shoot them with a bow and arrows if you have them (hitting the base of the crystal works). For pillars without easy shots or caged crystals, you must pillar up quickly (using dirt, cobblestone, or netherrack) and break the crystal (and its iron bars if present) with your axe or pickaxe. Use your water bucket strategically to create waterfalls for safe descents or to negate fall damage if the dragon launches you into the air. Once all crystals are destroyed, the dragon will eventually perch on the central bedrock fountain structure. This is your chance to deal massive damage, ideally using the bed method (see below). Avoid looking directly at Endermen, as they will attack in swarms. Wear a carved pumpkin if Endermen are a major issue, though it obstructs vision. Repeat attack cycles during the perch phase until the dragon's health bar is depleted and it flies to the center to die.

Advanced Techniques

Mastering these can shave significant time off your runs:

Bed Method

Beds explode violently when attempted to be used (right-clicked) in the Nether or the End dimension. This explosion deals significantly more damage than TNT and is the primary method for killing the Ender Dragon quickly in speedruns.

• Mechanics: The explosion originates from the pillow-end (head) of the bed. The damage is immense at close range but falls off quickly. You need to place a block (often obsidian found in the End, netherrack, or even crafting table) between yourself and the bed to absorb most of the blast damage while ensuring the explosion still hits the dragon's hitbox effectively. Without this block, the bed explosion can easily kill a player.
• Placement: During the dragon perch cycle (when it lands on the central fountain), quickly run up and place a bed on the highest bedrock block of the fountain, positioning the pillow end towards where the dragon's head/neck area will settle. Place your protective block adjacent to the bed, between you and the pillow. Stand behind the protective block, aim at the pillow section of the bed, and right-click just as the dragon fully lowers its head into the perch position.
• Timing: Detonating the bed too early (before the dragon's hitbox is fully settled) or too late (as it's beginning to lift off) will result in missing the dragon entirely or dealing significantly reduced damage. Practice the visual and audio cues for the exact moment to detonate. Be ready to place and detonate multiple beds (typically 3-5 per cycle) during a single perch. Having extra beds and blocks ready on your hotbar is crucial.

One-Cycle Dragon

This highly advanced technique aims to defeat the Ender Dragon during its very first perch cycle using a rapid succession of perfectly timed bed explosions. It saves a huge amount of time by eliminating multiple perch cycles.

1. Preparation: Requires destroying all End Crystals before the dragon begins its first perch descent. This often involves quick pillar climbing using blocks like dirt or netherrack, precise archery for exposed crystals, and sometimes specialized techniques like ladder-clutching up pillars or using TNT explosions to break caged crystals faster. Every second counts during this crystal phase.
2. Execution: As the dragon flies towards the center fountain for its initial perch, you must already be in position. Rapidly place 4-7 beds (depending on exact placement and timing) near its head position on the portal fountain structure. Place your protective block correctly to shield yourself while allowing damage to the dragon.
3. Detonation: Detonate the beds in rapid succession, timing each explosion perfectly with the dragon's hitbox settling into place. This requires immense precision, fast clicking, perfect positioning, and excellent knowledge of the dragon's perch behavior. A successful one-cycle often kills the dragon in just a few seconds after it perches. Having backup food, blocks, and potentially a water bucket is essential in case the one-cycle fails and you need to survive for subsequent perch cycles.

Bastion Routing

Instead of relying solely on random Piglin trades in safer biomes for Ender Pearls, routing through specific Nether structures called Bastion Remnants can be faster and more consistent for pearl acquisition, though significantly riskier.

1. Finding Bastions: These large, imposing blackstone structures generate in most Nether biomes except Basalt Deltas (where they are replaced by Delta-specific formations) and Soul Sand Valleys. They house numerous Piglins and, critically, Piglin Brutes – hostile mobs that attack on sight regardless of gold armor and wield powerful axes. Learning to recognize the different Bastion types from a distance is key.
2. Types and Looting: There are four main Bastion types: Bridge (long bridge structure, often dangerous open spaces), Hoglin Stables (large open areas with Hoglins, potentially good food from chests), Housing Units (multiple small buildings, maze-like), and Treasure Room (distinct central area with lava and magma cube spawners below a suspended loot platform). The Treasure Room variant is often the most sought-after for speedrunning, containing a center loot area with guaranteed gold blocks and high chances of Ender Pearls, obsidian, enchanted gear (like diamond armor or swords), and other valuable loot in chests. Hoglin Stables often have good food sources (cooked porkchops) and decent chest loot distributed around the stables. Efficiently navigating the chosen Bastion type, looting key chests and gold blocks while actively avoiding or strategically dealing with Piglin Brutes (they don't respawn), is the core challenge. Brutes often guard choke points or treasure areas.
3. Trading: After looting the valuable gold blocks (quickly craft them into ingots), use them to trade with the numerous Piglins found within the Bastion itself or find others nearby in a safer location if the Bastion is too chaotic. This concentrated trading opportunity, combined with potentially finding pearls directly in chests, often yields the required number of pearls much faster than wandering the Nether Wastes hoping for trades. However, the high density of hostile mobs (Piglins aggroed by chest opening, Brutes, Hoglins) makes Bastions extremely dangerous.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Beginners often fall into similar traps that cost valuable time and lead to frustration:

1. Over-Preparing: Wasting precious minutes mining diamonds you don't need, crafting full iron armor (a shield and maybe iron boots are sometimes useful, but full armor is usually overkill), enchanting tools, or gathering excessive resources like stacks of cobblestone or wood. Speedrunning prioritizes speed over absolute safety – get only what's essential for the next step. A shield can be helpful, especially against skeletons or Blazes, but often isn't necessary if movement and awareness are good. Learn the minimum required resources.
2. Poor Inventory Management: Fumbling through a disorganized inventory or crafting menu costs seconds, which add up significantly over a run. Keep essential items like your pickaxe, sword/axe, food, water bucket, key building blocks (dirt/cobble/netherrack), gold for trading, and later Eyes of Ender on your hotbar for instant access. Practice efficient crafting using shift-clicking and hotkeys (like hovering over an item and pressing a number key to move it to that hotbar slot). Minimize time spent looking at your inventory screen.
3. Ignoring Triangulation / Inefficient Stronghold Search: Throwing Eyes of Ender too close together (less than 100-200 blocks apart) makes the angles too similar for accurate pinpointing. Not understanding how triangulation works (visualizing the intersecting lines from throws) leads to wasted Eyes and time spent wandering aimlessly. Throw, run a significant distance (adjust based on how far the Stronghold seems), and throw again. Learn to estimate the intersection point based on the angle changes. Once you believe you are above the stronghold (eye goes down), dig straight down efficiently but cautiously (using water to clear lava pockets or two-block-wide shafts to spot dangers).
4. Missing Food / Hunger Management: Letting your hunger bar drop below the point where you can sprint (3 drumsticks full) drastically slows you down. This is a critical error. Always keep food accessible on your hotbar and eat before your hunger depletes fully, ideally keeping saturation high. Eat during downtime like smelting or boating. Prioritize high-saturation foods like steak or cooked porkchops. Hay bales from villages (crafting into bread) are a massive time-saver here, providing easily accessible, stackable food.
5. Getting Lost: Panicking and losing your bearings in the vastness of the Nether (especially after leaving a Fortress or Bastion) or the confusing, similar-looking corridors of a Stronghold is common. Use F3 coordinates diligently: memorize your Overworld portal coordinates before entering the Nether. In the Stronghold, mark paths systematically (e.g., always placing torches on the right wall as you explore, blocking off dead ends with dirt). Pay attention to unique room features to orient yourself.
6. Unsafe Nether Travel: Dying to Ghast fireballs, unexpected long falls onto Netherrack, accidentally swimming in lava, or being cornered by Piglin Brutes can end a promising run instantly. Always be hyper-aware of your surroundings. Scan the skies for Ghasts before crossing open areas, use blocks strategically for cover while building bridges, and master movement techniques to navigate treacherous terrain. Remember the water bucket clutch does not work in the Nether; careful pathing, using Striders (if you have a saddle and warped fungus on a stick), or Ender Pearl clutches (if desperate) are your only saves from fall damage there.

Practice Tips

Improvement comes from focused practice, analysis, and learning from others:

1. Use Set Seeds: Start by practicing on known, favourable seeds (you can find popular ones used by top runners online). This removes the randomness (RNG) element and allows you to focus purely on learning and refining mechanics: achieving the fastest possible woodcutting start, quick crafting sequences, optimal Nether portal building, memorizing efficient Nether routes to Fortresses/Bastions, perfecting Piglin trading setups, practicing precise triangulation throws, mastering Stronghold navigation patterns, and consistently executing bed placements for the dragon fight. Compare your times on set seeds to others to gauge your mechanical skill.
2. Split Your Run: Break the run down into logical segments (e.g., Overworld Start to Village Loot, Village to Nether Entry, Nether Navigation & Resource Gathering, Stronghold Hunt & Entry, End Fight). Practice each segment individually using set seeds or specific practice tools/mods (like world presets or data packs designed for segment practice). This helps isolate weaknesses – maybe your Nether navigation is slow, or your bed timing is off. Time yourself rigorously on these splits and work on improving the slowest parts.
3. Watch Top Speedrunners: Analyze VODs (recorded past broadcasts) and live streams of experienced runners on platforms like Twitch and YouTube. Don't just watch passively; actively analyze their movement (strafe-jumping, pillar jumping), decision-making process (why did they choose that route? why skip that resource?), specific tricks (like faster crafting recipes, inventory sorting methods, lava-boosting, specific mob manipulations), and how they handle unexpected situations or bad luck. Learn their routes on popular set seeds to understand optimal paths. Many runners explain their thought process while playing.
4. Use F3 Debug Screen: Learn to effectively read and utilize the wealth of information on the F3 debug screen. Coordinates (X, Y, Z) are absolutely crucial for navigation, especially in the Nether (remembering portal/fortress coords) and for triangulation. The "Facing" direction (and the crosshair indicator on the pie chart) is essential for precise angles when throwing Eyes. Biome information can be useful for predicting village spawns or structure locations. Understanding light levels can help prevent unexpected mob spawns while navigating caves or the Stronghold. Entity counts can sometimes hint at nearby spawners or mob clusters.
5. Review Your Own Runs: Record your attempts using software like OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) – it's free and widely used. Watch your recordings back critically. Identify precisely where you lost time: slow crafting, hesitant movement, navigation errors, inefficient fighting, poor trading luck (and how you reacted). Note down specific mistakes you made (missed jumps, bad trades, getting lost) and areas where your strategy could be improved. Compare your gameplay side-by-side with faster runners on similar seeds to see specific differences in strategy or micro-level execution. Be honest with yourself about your weaknesses.

Minecraft speedrunning has a steep learning curve, but persistence pays off. Achieving the sub-10-minute world record times requires immense dedication, game knowledge, and near-perfect execution, often involving thousands of attempts. However, breaking the 30-minute barrier, then the 20-minute mark, are significant and achievable milestones for any aspiring speedrunner. Focus on incremental improvement, learn from each failed or successful attempt, understand the role of RNG but focus on what you can control, and most importantly, have fun challenging yourself against the clock! Good luck!