You've finally done it. Your inventory is bulging with enchanted books, stacks of diamonds, and that one weird dragon egg you aren't sure where to put yet. Then you fall in lava. Or a creeper drops from a jungle canopy. Everything—hours of grinding—gone. This is exactly why knowing how to make a ender chest in minecraft isn't just a "neat trick" for your crafting recipe book; it is the single most important insurance policy any player can own.
It's basically a magic locker. Put something in one chest in your basement, and you can pull it out of another chest sitting thousands of blocks away in a desert temple. It defies the physics of the game. But honestly, getting the ingredients together is a bit of a nightmare if you aren't prepared for the Nether or the hunt for Endermen.
The Raw Materials You'll Actually Need
Don't just run out into the night swinging a wooden sword. To build this thing, you need two very specific items: 8 Obsidian blocks and 1 Eye of Ender.
Obsidian is the easy part, mostly. You just need a diamond pickaxe (or netherite, if you’re fancy) and a pool of lava. Pour water on the lava, and boom—purple-black rocks. You’ll need eight of these to form the outer shell of the chest. If you try to mine them with an iron pickaxe, you’ll be standing there for a full minute only for the block to vanish into nothingness. Don't be that person.
The Eye of Ender is where things get annoying. You can't just find these lying around in a village chest (usually). You have to craft them by combining one Ender Pearl and one Blaze Powder. This means you’ve got to kill an Enderman—those tall, creepy guys who hate being looked at—and hunt down Blazes in a Nether Fortress. It's a cross-dimensional shopping trip.
Tracking Down the Blaze Powder
You have to go to the Nether. There’s no way around it unless you get incredibly lucky with a ruined portal chest. Find a fortress, locate a Blaze spawner, and start swinging. Blazes drop Blaze Rods. When you put a Blaze Rod into your crafting grid, it turns into two Blaze Powders. You only need one for the chest, but honestly, grab a dozen while you’re there. You’ll need them for brewing later anyway.
Dealing with Endermen
Endermen are fickle. Sometimes they spawn everywhere; sometimes they’re nowhere to be found. If you’re struggling, head to a desert biome at night. It’s flat, easy to see, and they tend to pop up there frequently. Pro tip: stand in a 2-block high space. Endermen are 3 blocks tall, so they can’t reach you while you whittle their health down. Once you have that pearl and your powder, combine them in your inventory to get the Eye of Ender.
📖 Related: God of War Ragnarok Shields: Why Your Defense Strategy is Probably Wrong
The Crafting Process: Putting It Together
Open your crafting table. It’s a classic "O" shape. Place the Eye of Ender right in the center slot. Surround it entirely with your 8 Obsidian blocks.
That’s it. You’ve officially mastered how to make a ender chest in minecraft.
But wait. There is a massive catch that ruins a lot of players' days. If you place that chest on the ground and then realize you want to move it, do not just break it with a regular pickaxe. If you do, the chest won't drop as an item. It will shatter into 8 pieces of obsidian, and your precious Eye of Ender will be gone forever. To move a placed Ender Chest, your pickaxe must have the Silk Touch enchantment. If you don't have Silk Touch yet, leave the chest where it is.
Why This Item Breaks the Game (In a Good Way)
The Ender Chest isn't just a box. It’s a shared inventory space. Every Ender Chest in the world links to the same private "cloud" storage for that specific player.
Imagine you’re exploring a 1.20 trail ruin or a massive cave system. Your inventory is full. You place your Ender Chest, dump your gold and rare smithing templates inside, and then break the chest (with Silk Touch!). Those items are now safely tucked away in a void dimension. Even if you die later that day, those items stay in the "Ender Cloud." When you get back to your base and open your other Ender Chest, everything is right there waiting for you.
- Privacy on Servers: On a multiplayer server, no one else can see what’s in your Ender Chest. If your friend opens the chest you placed, they see their items, not yours. It’s the only truly 100% grief-proof storage in the game.
- The Shulker Box Trick: This is the pro-level move. If you fill a Shulker Box with items and then put that Shulker Box inside an Ender Chest, you’ve essentially expanded your inventory by hundreds of slots. It’s how people build massive megabases without spending ten hours walking back and forth for materials.
Common Mistakes and Frustrations
I’ve seen people try to use hoppers with Ender Chests. It doesn't work. You can’t automate them. Because the inventory is tied to the specific player who opens it, the game’s AI doesn't know "who" the hopper is supposed to be pulling for. It’s a manual-only system.
Another thing: you can't make a "Double Ender Chest." Placing two next to each other doesn't create a large chest like it does with wood. It just stays as two separate blocks that both lead to the same small inventory. You get 27 slots. That’s the limit. This is why the Shulker Box strategy mentioned above is so vital for late-game play.
Practical Steps for Your World
If you’re sitting on a pile of diamonds but still running back to base every time your pockets are full, stop. It’s time to upgrade.
- Check your tools. Ensure you have a Diamond Pickaxe and, ideally, one with Silk Touch. If you don't have Silk Touch, start trading with Librarians or fishing until you find a book.
- Go to the Nether. Get those Blaze Rods. Don't overthink it—just jump in, find a fortress, and get out.
- Night Hunt. Spend one night in a desert or plain biome specifically hunting Endermen.
- Craft Two. Don't just make one. Make two. Keep one at your main base and keep the other in your inventory at all times.
Once you start using this system, you’ll realize that the "old way" of playing—cluttering your inventory with dirt and cobblestone while trying to save room for emeralds—was basically playing on hard mode for no reason. Secure your loot, build the chest, and stop worrying about losing your hard-earned gear to a random lava pit.