Minecraft Beacon Guide

In the world of Minecraft, few items stand out as both functional and visually striking as the Minecraft Beacon. This powerful block not only serves as a glowing landmark but also grants players useful status effects, making it a prized addition to any well-established base. However, building a beacon requires effort, from battling tough enemies to gathering rare resources.

In this guide, we will walk you through everything you need to know about crafting, using, and maximizing the potential of your Minecraft Beacon.

What is a Minecraft Beacon and how is it useful

A Minecraft Beacon is a special block that provides powerful boosts to players within its range. Once activated, it can grant abilities like increased speed, mining speed, strength, or regeneration. Beacons are also great as location markers since their bright beam of light can be seen from far away.

While beacons are useful, crafting and activating one can be challenging, as it requires rare materials and a special setup. However, once built, a beacon can greatly improve your gameplay experience, especially in areas where you spend a lot of time.

How to make a Beacon in Minecraft

Like we mentioned above crafting the Minecraft Beacon is not easy as it requires a few items that are difficult to get. To craft the Beacon you will need the following items:

• Obsidian - 3
• Glass - 5
• Nether Star - 1

Getting 5 pieces of glass and 3 obsidian is pretty simple. For the glass, just smelt 5 pieces of sand in a furnace, which you can easily find along beaches or deserts. As for the obsidian, you will need a diamond pickaxe to mine it. Obsidian forms when water meets lava, so either find a natural source or create your own by pouring water over lava. These materials are easy to collect, especially compared to the challenge of obtaining the Nether Star!

How to make a Beacon in Minecraft

Getting a Minecraft Nether Star might be one of the trickiest items to obtain in the game, especially if you are new to Minecraft. The first step is to make a Nether Portal and then walk into it. After you arrive in the Nether, we recommend you to firstly gather 4 pieces of Soul Sand as you will need it later on.

After that work on locating a Nether Fortress, once you locate the Fortress you will need to find as many Wither Skeletons as you can because you will need to gather 3 Wither Skeleton Skulls. The drop rate for these Skulls is 2.5%. Each level of looting on your sword increases the drop rate by 1% per level of looting, for a maximum of 5.5% with Looting III.



Once you have collected all 3 Wither Skeleton Skulls we recommend you to go back to your Portal and head back into the Overworld, head down into a cave or preferably a stripmine so you can run back so you do not get blown up when the Wither charges. Before summoning the Wither we recommend you to gather at least full enchanted Diamond armor, strength and regeneration potions and a good sword preferably with the Smite enchantment.

To learn which enchantment is better, Smite or Sharpness, we recommend you to check out one of our articles on that topic. Also, we recommend you to check out the following video to learn about different ways to kill the Minecraft Wither.





After summoning and killing the Minecraft Wither you will have one Minecraft Nether Star which is enough to make one Minecraft Beacon. If you are new to Minecraft and you are struggling with remembering all the crafting recipes we recommend you to check out Badlion Client and use our Just Enough Items mod. This mod has all Minecraft crafting recipes 2 clicks away from you!

How to activate a Beacon in Minecraft

To activate a Minecraft Beacon you need to build a Pyramid Base, you will need blocks made of either iron, gold, emerald, diamond, or netherite. The pyramid can be 1 to 4 layers tall. The larger the pyramid, the stronger the beacon’s effect and the wider its range.

• 1 Layer: 9 blocks (3x3) grants basic effects.
• 2 Layers: 34 blocks (5x5 and 3x3).
• 3 Layers: 83 blocks (7x7, 5x5, and 3x3).
• 4 Layers: 164 blocks (9x9, 7x7, 5x5, and 3x3) grants the strongest effects.

This is a 4 Layer Beacon Pyramid with the strongest effects, the building block you use for the Pyramid does not matter. All of them will give the same results whether you are using Iron blocks or Diamond. And to finally activate the Beacon and get your effects you only need to place one ore in the Beacon and select the effect you want to have.

Minecraft Beacon Effects

The bigger the pyramid, the stronger the effect and the wider the range of the beacon. A fully powered beacon with a 4-layer pyramid covers a wide area and gives stronger effects.

• 1 Layer pyramid (3x3 base): Provides a 20-block radius from the beacon.
• 2 Layer pyramid (5x5 base): Increases the range to a 30-block radius.
• 3 Layer pyramid (7x7 base): Expands the range to a 40-block radius.
• 4 Layer pyramid (9x9 base): Gives the maximum range of a 50-block radius.

Now let’s cover the effects you get from a Minecraft Beacon:

• 1 Layer pyramid, you can choose between Speed or Haste.
• 2 Layer pyramid, you unlock Resistance and Jump Boost.
• 3 Layer pyramid, Strength becomes available.
• 4 Layer pyramid, you can also add Regeneration to one of the previous effects.

The first effects you get on the first 3 Layers are called the Primary Power, the effect you unlock on the 4th Layer is called the Secondary Power.



Additionally

If you place colored stained glass on top of the Minecraft Beacon beam you can change its colors. This can be useful for some special builds and effects. You can make one beam in many different colors, you just have to play around with it and see what suits you the best!



In conclusion, the Minecraft Beacon is a game-changing tool for enhancing your gameplay with powerful effects. To further optimize your experience, check out the Badlion Client. It boosts performance, enhances visuals, and offers useful mods to elevate your Minecraft adventures.