With a world that’s seemingly endless, Minecraft has few options to guide our path. At times, it can become impossible to even find your house in Minecraft. But fortunately, you only need to learn how to make a compass in Minecraft to solve a majority of such problems. It works in the same way on all Minecraft Java and Bedrock editions. We have not only covered its crafting recipe but also how to make the compass point to specific locations in-game. All you need to do beforehand is build a house in Minecraft and claim a bed to make it your spawnpoint to have the compass point towards it. With that said, let’s not waste time and learn how to make a compass in Minecraft.
Our guide focuses on the crafting and usage of a compass in Minecraft. We have also included a new type of compass added to the game recently, which points to the spot where the player last died. Use the table below to explore each section at your convenience.
- How Does a Compass Work in MinecraftHow to Get a Compass in MinecraftItems Required to Make a CompassCrafting Recipe to Make a CompassHow to Make Compass Point to BedBonus: Make a Recovery Compass in Minecraft
How Does a Compass Work in Minecraft
Even though the appearance of a compass in Minecraft is like real-world compasses, its functionality is different. Instead of pointing in a specific direction, Minecraft’s compass points towards the spawn point of your world. It’s the location where you spawn in the world when you first load in. You just have to go towards the direction where its red pointer is pointing to reach the world spawn point.
Because that point is in the overworld, the compass points in random directions while it’s in the Nether and the End dimension. As for the activation, the compass always keeps pointing. It can be inside your inventory, in your hand, or even an item frame; the compass always points towards its assigned point. You can make it point to custom locations with the help of a loadstone, but more on that later.
You can find a compass naturally available in chests at the following locations:
- ShipwrecksStronghold LibrariesVillages with a CartographerAncient Cities
Out of these, the cartographer villager‘s houses have the highest chances of spawning with a chest that has a compass in them.
You can trade with expert-level librarian villagers in Minecraft to get a compass in exchange for emeralds. Contrary to popular belief, the cartographer doesn’t sell the compass at any level.
To make a compass in Minecraft, you need the following items:
You can use our Minecraft ore distribution guide to find iron ore and Redstone in no time. But keep in mind that mining the iron ore only gets you raw iron. You have to smelt it in a furnace or a blast furnace to get an iron ingot.
Once you have found the ingredients, you need to combine them using a crafting table to make a compass in Minecraft.
To do so, you first need to place a piece of Redstone dust in the middle cell of the second row of the crafting area. Then, you need to surround the Redstone dust with iron ingots on all sides, leaving only the diagonal cells of the crafting area empty.
How to Make Compass Point to Bed
To make a compass point towards a bed or any custom location, you need to craft a lodestone. It’s a utility block in Minecraft that makes your compass point towards the location where the lodestone is placed. It ignores the original world spawn point after being connected to the lodestone.
To craft a lodestone, you need to combine 8 chiseled stone bricks with a netherite ingot. Use our linked guide to easily find Netherite in Minecraft. As for the bricks, you can use a stone cutter to craft them with ease.
When it’s ready, you just have to use the compass on the lodestone to activate it. This works even in the Nether and the End dimension. But if the loadstone gets destroyed, the connection will break, and the compass will start pointing to the world spawn point again. You can even have separate compasses pointing to different lodestones. This game mechanic is useful to mark different locations in the game.
Change World Spawn Point
If you want a permanent way to make your compass point towards a certain location, you can change that world’s spawn point. To do that, you can use the following command:
Realistically, most Minecraft players only need a guide when they are looking for their lost resources on dying. Keeping that in mind, with the Minecraft 1.19 update, the game has introduced a new recovery compass.
You can craft it by combing echo shards with a regular compass. This new compass points towards the direction of the location where you last died. It’s useful to recover resources even if you don’t remember where you died.
