You’re standing in the Stronghold. You’ve got the eyes. Everything is ready, but for some reason, the portal just won't light. It’s one of those uniquely frustrating Minecraft moments. Honestly, figuring out how to make an ender portal should be straightforward, but the game is picky about orientation in a way that isn't immediately obvious to the naked eye. If you aren't standing in the literal center of the ring while placing those blocks, you're basically wasting your time.
Most players think they can just fly around in Creative mode and slap down twelve blocks in a rough square. They can't. The game checks the "front" face of every single frame block. If even one is rotated ninety degrees the wrong way, the void doesn't open. It stays empty. You stay stuck in the Overworld.
The Frame Secret Most People Miss
The core of the issue is the block data. Every Ender Portal Frame block has a specific orientation. While it looks almost symmetrical, there are tiny green tabs—pixels, really—that need to point toward the inside of the portal. If you’re building this in Survival, you aren't "making" the frame from scratch; you're finding it. But in Creative? You have to be the architect.
Stand in a 3x3 hole. Don't move.
Seriously, stay right there in the middle. From that central point, place the three blocks in front of you, turn 90 degrees, place the next three, and repeat until the square is finished. This ensures every block "faces" you. If you build it while standing outside the ring, the blocks face outward. A portal facing outward is just a collection of weirdly decorative rocks. It will never, ever activate.
Gathering the Eyes of Ender
You can't do any of this without the fuel. You need Eyes of Ender. To get those, you’re looking at two very different grinds. First, you need Ender Pearls. Endermen are tall, creepy, and hit like a truck, but they’re your only source. Or, if you're feeling lazy (or efficient), you can trade gold ingots with Piglins in the Nether. It’s a gamble, though. You might get fire resistance potions; you might get iron nuggets. Eventually, they’ll toss you the pearls.
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Then comes the Blaze Powder.
You have to go to a Nether Fortress. There is no shortcut here. Find a Blaze spawner, dodge the fireballs, and collect the rods. When you craft a Blaze Rod, it breaks down into two powders. Combine one powder with one pearl. Boom. Eye of Ender. You need at least twelve to fill a standard portal, but honestly? Bring twenty. They break. When you throw them to find a Stronghold in Survival mode, they have a 20% chance of shattering into nothingness. Nothing feels worse than being three blocks away from a Stronghold and running out of eyes.
Locating the Stronghold in Survival
In a standard Survival world, you aren't building the frame. You're searching for a pre-generated one. This is where the math gets real. When you throw an Eye of Ender, it floats toward the nearest Stronghold. You follow it. You walk a few hundred blocks, throw another.
Professional speedrunners like Dream or Illumina use a method called "triangulation." They throw one eye, check their coordinates (F3 menu is your best friend here), move a few hundred blocks horizontally, and throw another. Where those two lines intersect on the map is where the portal room is. It saves a lot of eyes.
Once you’re in the Stronghold, it’s a maze. You’ll see iron doors, libraries full of cobwebs, and far too many silverfish. You are looking for a room with a staircase leading up to a stone brick platform suspended over a pool of lava. That’s the spot.
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Dealing with the Silverfish Spawner
Before you even touch the portal, break the spawner. It’s sitting right there at the foot of the stairs. Silverfish are small, but they call their friends. If you're trying to carefully place eyes and a swarm of silverfish knocks you into the lava, your run is over. Just mine it. Don't try to be a hero and save it for an XP farm unless you really know what you’re doing with soul sand and water elevators.
Why Your Portal Might Be Broken
Sometimes, even in a naturally generated Stronghold, the portal won't work. This is rare, but it happens during world generation. A ravine might cut through the room. A mineshaft might have spawned right on top of it, deleting a frame block.
If a single frame block is missing, you can’t fix it in Survival. You’re done. You have to travel thousands of blocks away to find the next Stronghold. Minecraft worlds usually have 128 of them, so there’s always another one, but it’s a trek.
In Creative mode, if it's not lighting, check these three things:
- The Corners: The 3x3 portal space should have empty corners. Do not put frame blocks in the corners. It’s a 12-block total investment, not 16.
- The Lava: While the natural portals have lava underneath, the game doesn't actually require it to activate. You can have dirt, air, or diamond blocks under there. It doesn't matter.
- The "Inner" Pixels: Look at the top of the frame. There are two "side" bits and a "middle" bit. The patterns must be uniform.
Entering the End
Once the twelve eyes are in, the center turns into a black, starry abyss. This is a one-way trip until you either kill the Dragon or die trying. Before you jump in, make sure you have a carved pumpkin. Wearing it on your head makes you invisible to Endermen. It messes up your vision—you’ll have a black pumpkin overlay on your screen—but it’s better than being swarmed by fifty teleporting giants because you accidentally looked at their knees.
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Bring beds. If you're on the Bedrock edition, this is riskier, but on Java, "bed bombing" is the fastest way to deplete the Dragon’s health. Since you can’t sleep in the End, the beds explode with more force than TNT.
Actionable Steps for a Successful Activation
To ensure you don't waste resources or time, follow this specific sequence:
- Stand in the center of your 3x3 area before placing a single block if you are in Creative. This is the #1 reason for failure.
- Check your "hitboxes" by pressing F3+B (on Java). This helps you see exactly where the blocks are looking.
- Carry a Water Bucket. If you're playing in Survival, the lava under the portal is a death trap. One misplaced step while placing an Eye of Ender and you're cooked. Cover the lava with obsidian or cobblestone first to make a safe workspace.
- Always bring a Pickaxe with Silk Touch if you’re planning on decorating the area. You can't move the frame blocks, but you can save the surrounding infested stone without spawning more silverfish.
The Ender Portal is the gateway to the "end-game" content—Elytra, Shulker boxes, and the outer islands. Getting the build right the first time saves you the headache of debugging a stone circle while a dragon waits on the other side. Check your orientation, secure your perimeter, and keep your eyes on the center.
Once the portal is active, jump in the middle. Don't worry about the lava underneath once the black texture appears; the portal takes priority over the heat. You'll teleport instantly to the obsidian platform in the End. From there, the fight begins. Good luck.