If you’ve spent weeks mining diamonds, dodging creepers, and farming blaze rods in survival mode, you’re probably itching to reach the End and take on the Ender Dragon. The only thing standing between you and that final boss fight? Figuring out how do you make end portals in Minecraft correctly, because one wrong placement can leave you stuck with a useless frame and no way to access the dimension. I still remember the first time I spent 3 hours hunting blaze rods and endermen only to mess up the portal frame alignment and have no clue why it wouldn’t turn on. I spent another hour breaking and replacing every frame before I realized half of them were facing the wrong direction, so I put together this guide to make sure you don’t waste your hard-earned resources on a broken portal.
Required Materials for Building an End Portal
Before you start building, you need to gather the right supplies, and the exact list changes slightly depending on if you’re playing in Survival or Creative mode. The core components are the same, but Survival players have to do a bit more work to track down portal frames, since they can’t be crafted in standard Survival gameplay. I always recommend gathering extra supplies before you head out to find a stronghold, so you don’t get stuck halfway through activating your portal.
- 12 End Portal Frames (unobtainable via crafting in Survival mode, only found in naturally generated stronghold portal rooms or rare stronghold library chests)
- 12 Eyes of Ender, crafted from 1 blaze powder and 1 ender pearl per eye, with a 20% break chance every time you throw one to locate a stronghold
- Optional: 64 blocks of any type to mark placement positions if you’re building in a flat Creative world to avoid alignment mistakes
Note that in Survival mode, you cannot craft end portal frames, so you’ll have to use an eye of ender to locate a stronghold first, then fix and activate the existing portal frame you find there. Creative mode players can build end portals anywhere they want, as long as they follow the placement rules we’ll cover next. I always bring 14 eyes of ender with me when I hunt for strongholds, just in case a couple break when I’m throwing them to track the location, or the natural portal already has a few eyes inserted.
How Do You Make End Portals in Minecraft: Step-by-Step Build Process
The biggest mistake most new players make is misaligning the end portal frames, so we’ll start with the most important rule first: every single end portal frame has to face directly inward towards the center of the portal. Even one frame facing the wrong direction will stop the portal from activating entirely, no matter how many eyes of ender you insert. The easiest way to get this right every time is to stand in the exact center of where you want your portal to be when you place the frames.
First, clear a flat 5x5 space, and make sure the 3x3 center area is completely empty of all blocks, even torches or flowers. Stand in the middle of that 3x3 space, and place 3 end portal frames on the side directly in front of you. Turn 90 degrees to the right, place another 3 frames, turn 90 degrees again, place another 3, then turn 90 degrees one last time to place the final 3 frames. This method guarantees every frame is facing inward towards the center of the portal, so you don’t have to guess if you got the alignment right.
Once the frame is fully built, right click each frame with an eye of ender to insert it. You don’t have to insert the eyes in any specific order, as long as every frame has one eye inserted. The second you place the 12th eye, the portal will activate immediately, filling the 3x3 center with a dark, starry teleport block that sends you straight to the End when you step in. If you’re building this portal for a multiplayer creative server, you might want to save the exact layout so you don’t have to re-measure placement every time you want to add one to a new base. Many large public servers let players save pre-built structures to share with other community members, and Share Slots is a common feature many servers offer for this exact purpose, letting you upload your correctly aligned end portal so your friends can load the build directly into their own plots without risking misaligned frames.
Common Mistakes That Break End Portals (And How to Fix Them)
Even if you follow the steps above, you might run into issues with your portal not activating, and the fix is almost always one of a few common errors. I’ve seen so many new players spend 20 minutes inserting all their eyes of ender only to realize they placed a single dirt block in the center of the frame, so always double check that space is completely empty before you insert the final eye. That small mistake wastes so much time if you don’t catch it early.
The most frequent issue is misaligned frames. If you inserted all 12 eyes and nothing happened, walk around the frame and check the small raised tab on the top of each end portal frame. Every tab should point towards the center of the portal. If one is pointing outward, that’s your problem. If you find a misaligned frame, you can break it and replace it facing the right direction, then reinsert the eye of ender to fix the issue. You don’t have to break the entire frame to fix one misaligned block.
Another common mistake is trying to build an end portal in the Nether or End dimensions. End portals only activate in the Overworld, so you can build a frame in the Nether, but it will never turn on no matter how correctly you place the frames. Also, remember that natural stronghold portals can generate with up to 2 eyes already inserted, so you might not need all 12 eyes you crafted. It’s still a good idea to bring 12 just in case, but you can save any extra eyes for locating other strongholds later if you want to build more end portals.
End Portal Tips for Survival and Creative Players
Once you have a working end portal, there are a few small tweaks you can make to get more use out of it, depending on what game mode you’re playing. For Survival players, the first thing you should do after activating a portal is light up the entire area around it with torches. Strongholds are full of hostile mobs, and the last thing you want is to get attacked by a creeper right as you’re about to step into the End, or get lost trying to find the portal again when you return from fighting the Ender Dragon. Don’t waste eyes of ender by throwing them unnecessarily when you’re tracking a stronghold. Only throw one every 200-300 blocks to narrow down the location, so you don’t break more than you need to.
For Creative players, end portals make great fast travel points across large custom worlds. All end portals lead to the same spawn point in the End, so you can build multiple end portals across your Overworld, then build matching return portals next to the End spawn that lead to different bases. This cuts down on travel time drastically for large builds, and you don’t have to mess with nether portal coordinate math to make it work. You can also hide end portals in custom adventure maps as secret unlockable areas, or add traps around them for PvP maps to stop enemy players from accessing the End early.
If you’re playing with younger or newer players, you can also build an end portal in a safe, easily accessible area near your spawn base, so they don’t have to navigate dangerous strongholds to reach the End. Just make sure to explain how the portal works before they step in, so they don’t get caught off guard by the Ender Dragon fight when they spawn in.
At the end of the day, figuring out how do you make end portals in Minecraft is a lot simpler than most new players think, as long as you follow the frame alignment rules and double check for common mistakes. Whether you’re gearing up for your first Ender Dragon fight in Survival or building a custom adventure map in Creative, a working end portal is one of the most useful structures you can add to your world. Take your time placing the frames, double check each eye of ender is inserted correctly, and you’ll be exploring the End and collecting elytra in no time.