How to Find an Ancient City in Minecraft

If you stumble upon a Deep Dark biome in Minecraft, there’s a slim chance you’ll come across the ruins of Ancient Cities, too. They’re these large, sprawling areas containing chests (with sweet loot) and dangerous foes. The problem is finding an Ancient City is difficult, but totally worth it for the sweet loot. To avoid death as much as possible, we’ll teach you how to find an Ancient City in Minecraft.

Best Way to Locate an Ancient City in Minecraft

The Ancient City generally spawns in Deep Dark biomes, a biome unique to cave systems under mountainous areas, below Y-0 coordinates. In fact, you’ll have the most luck below Y-40, so start your strip mining there if and when a Deep Dark biome appears.

Naturally, you’ll want to practice caution when mining for Ancient Cities in Minecraft. Elytra is nice to have just in case you’re suddenly falling to your death. It’s also worth having a Potion of Night vision as these biomes are naturally very dark.

How to Use Cheats to Find Ancient Cities

If you don’t mind using cheats, you can also use the /locate cheat to find Ancient City coordinates. All you need to do is enter the following cheats in the chat box:

• Minecraft Java Edition Ancient City Location Cheat: /locate structure minecraft:ancient_city
• Minecraft Bedrock Edition Ancient City Location Cheat: /locate ancientcity
• Afterwards, use /tp@ cheat command, along with the coordinates, to teleport.

Just like that, you’ll immediately appear at an Ancient City, free for you to explore and pillage.

Best Ancient City Seeds in Minecraft

Finally, if you want to cut out even more work of finding and reaching an Ancient City, there are a couple of seeds you can use for both the Bedrock and Java editions of the game that will put you directly above or near one of these underground locations:

• -3583656773070355489 (Java; Dig down from spawn)
• 5146159088207717555 (Java; Found at -728, -44, -168)
• -7969402200478764570 (Bedrock; Dig down from spawn)
• -2193811972289072796 (Bedrock; 19 Ancient Cities near spawn)

All Ancient City Mobs in Minecraft

Sculk Shriekers and Sculk Sensors

When you’re exploring every nook and cranny of an Ancient City, you need to be careful where you’re walking. You might just trigger a Sculk Shrieker or Sculk Sensor. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal up in the Deep Dark biome, but at Ancient Cities, these little devils can summon a Warden!

It goes like this: if you get a Shrieker or Sensor to go off four times, a Warden is summoned. The problem is, it’s a cumulative count, meaning it can be the same mobs or four completely different Shriekers and Sensors.

The Warden

These blind, incredibly creepy creatures love the Deep Dark biome and of course will even appear in Ancient City, as we’ve just established. They might walk like a cuddly Iron Golem, but friendly is not in their job description.

Not only are Wardens incredibly healthy (250 Hearts), they excel at melee, ranged combat, and superb hearing. They’re so hard to beat, you’re better off running, but there is a cheeky way to beat Wardens in Minecraft if you live life dangerously.

All Items Found in Ancient City Chests

Every Ancient City contains at least one chest with any of the following items in Minecraft 1.20. More importantly, they’ll come in stacks between five and 10. You can also come across the Ice Box, which is mostly food items, coming in stacks between four and 10.

• Amethyst Shard
• Baked Potato (Ice Box only)
• Bone
• Book
• Bottle o’ Enchanting
• Candle
• Coal
• Compass
• Damaged Enchanted Diamond Hoe
• Diamond Horse Armor
• Disc Fragment
• Echo Shard
• Enchanted Book (any kind of enchantment)
• Enchanted Book (Mending; Java Edition only)
• Enchanted Book (Swift Sneak)
• Enchanted Diamond Leggings
• Enchanted Golden Apple
• Enchanted Iron Leggings
• Glow Berries
• Golden Carrot (Ice Box only)
• Lead
• Music Disc 13
• Music Disc Cat
• Music Disc Otherside
• Name Tag
• Packed Ice (Ice Box only)
• Potion of Regeneration
• Saddle
• Sculk
• Sculk Catalyst
• Sculk Sensor
• Silence Armor Trim Smithing Template
• Snowball (Ice Box only)
• Soul Torch
• Suspicious Stew (Ice Box only)
• Ward Armor Trim Smithing Template

That’s everything you need to know on how to find Ancient City in Minecraft. Be sure to check out more of our guides for Minecraft, like how to find Trial Chambers!