How Many Blocks For a Full Beacon? Beacons are a powerful endgame item in Minecraft. They have the benefit of not only acting as location markers that can be spotted from extremely far away. On the other hand, they have a powerful status effect in a typical situation. Due to this, beacons are one of the most famous rare blocks in the game, despite how time-consuming it is to get one.
However, the game doesn’t actually describe how beacons are best used and activated. Even after a beacon block has been prepared, creating a foundation for them is quite resource-heavy and expensive. That’s why it’s even more imperative to know how beacons work. It’s also imperative to know where they should ideally be placed, and what shape and size the foundation for a maximum power beacon should be.
Crafting A Beacon
The first step is to really craft the beacon block itself. The player can prepare as many as they like in their survival world, so long as they have the materials for it. Here’s what you’ll need to create a single beacon block:
- Five blocks of glass
- Three blocks of obsidian
- A Nether star
Glass can be easily made by smelting sand in a furnace. Obsidian is mined with a diamond pickaxe from an even lava surface that has come into contact with water. Both of these are fairly easy to reach, but the Nether star is a different story.
In order to get the Nether star, you must beat the Wither, which is a boss mob in the game. Summoning him will require you to first have three Wither Skeleton heads, which are a random and rare drop from Wither Skeletons, most commonly found in Nether fortresses. Utilizing a Looting III sword makes the drop chance slightly higher.
After you have three Wither Skeleton heads, pick four pieces of soul sand, typically found in the Soul Sand Valley biome in the Nether. Place the soul sand in a T-shape, either on the ground or upright, and place the skeleton heads on the horizontal, top part of the T-shape to summon the Wither.
Building The Foundation
It isn’t sufficient for the beacon block to function on its own. In order to work, the beacon must be put on top of a pyramid-shaped foundation or base, made entirely from blocks of ores. No matter how deep the beacon block is buried, it must also have access to the sky.
To reach the full power of the beacon, the player should ideally have four levels built. This is with the beacon set on top, in the center block of a 3×3 area, which is the top layer of the beacon base.
Any ore will perform just fine for the base, with the exception of redstone and quartz. Diamonds, gold, iron, and emeralds, when turned into total blocks, are all valid options and can be mixed as well. However, given how valuable diamonds, gold, and emeralds are in trading and crafting gear, it’s advised to simply use iron blocks, which are the cheapest investment.
Since the 1.16 update, Netherite blocks also function as base blocks for the pyramid, although this would be a horrible waste of a rare resource. Iron stays the most suitable option in all cases, and the choice of blocks has no effect on the actual strength of the beacon.
For a full pyramid with four layers, here’s how big every layer should be, what powers are available, and what the block range for separately variant is.
- 4th layer: 9×9 blocks, all primary and secondary powers are accessible, the maximum range of 50.
- 3rd layer: 7×7 blocks, all primary powers available, the maximum range of 40.
- 2nd layer: 5×5 blocks, only Haste, Speed, Jump Boost and Resistance are available, a maximum range of 30.
- 1st layer: 3×3 blocks, only Haste and Speed are available, the maximum range of 20.
Selecting Powers
Beacons that have three layers or less will only come with prior status effects, meaning they only introduce one specific power while the player is in their range. If you’ve built a fourth layer, you can also pick a secondary status effect, making the beacon even more powerful.
To set the beacon’s powers, right-click on it to bring up the interface. For it to start working, it must be given either one Netherite ingot, an emerald, diamond, gold ingot, or iron ingot. This also needs to be done every time the status effects are altered.
The primary powers come in five variants. When it arrives at secondary powers, the option is to either get passive Regeneration or upgrade all primary powers to their level II strength, making them even more potent when selected. Essentially, players can choose to pick either one main and secondary power or even two primary powers.
- Strength: The damage you do with swords is increased.
- Speed: you move faster.
- Haste: You mine and attack faster.
- Resistance: damage taken is reduced.
- Jump Boost: you jump higher and further.
Conclusion
In this post, we have spelled out how many blocks for a full beacon are required in Minecraft. Though beacons are not an essential part of Minecraft, however, they can be heavily utilized to include portion effects that may assist with other tasks in the game. On the other hand, the beacon can be identified as they emit beaming light into the sky to underline their location. The beacon is powered up by a structure of a pyramid of expensive mineral blocks. The said structure is premised on a structured base for beacons.