Igloo structure in Minecraft

How to find an igloo

The game tries to place one igloo in each 32 × 32 chunk region of the Overworld, at least 8 chunks from the next, and only builds it in a snowy biome: Snowy Plains, Snowy Taiga or Snowy Slopes. White on white, igloos are easy to miss. Look for a round dome of Snow Blocks with two small ice windows and a short entrance tunnel. The /locate command above or the seed map save you a long walk in the cold.

The room on the surface

The dome holds a single room with a red bed, a furnace, a crafting table and a redstone torch for light. It's a ready-made shelter: sleep in the bed to set your respawn point, cook what you caught on the way and craft what you're missing. The floor is covered with white and light gray carpet, and that's where the real secret lies.

How to open the hidden basement

Break the carpets near the middle of the room. If the igloo has a basement, one of them hides an Oak Trapdoor. Open it and a ladder takes you straight down a stone brick shaft, whose depth changes from one igloo to the next. If there is no trapdoor under the carpets, this igloo has no basement: about half of them don't.

Before you start digging around down there, know that a few of the walls and floor blocks are Infested Stone Bricks. They look like normal stone bricks but release a silverfish when you mine them, and a hurt silverfish wakes up others hiding in nearby infested blocks.

What's in the basement

The basement is a small stone brick laboratory. At the far end, two cells closed with iron bars: one holds a villager, the other a zombie villager, both clerics. A sign between them points left and right. Against the walls stand a Brewing Stand holding a Splash Potion of Weakness, a cauldron of water and a chest. The chest always contains a Golden Apple, next to apples, coal, wheat, gold nuggets and, rarely, an emerald.

The zombie villager can't reach you through the bars, and down here it never sees the sun, so it stays in its cell until you decide what to do with it.

How to cure the zombie villager

The basement contains exactly what you need. Take the Splash Potion of Weakness from the brewing stand and throw it at the zombie villager, through the bars if you like. Once it has the Weakness effect, use the Golden Apple from the chest on it. It starts to shake and turns back into a villager after a few minutes. Cured villagers give the player who cured them lower prices, so this is a cheap way to get a discount cleric.

• Missed the throw? Use the brewing stand: a Water Bottle with a Fermented Spider Eye gives a Potion of Weakness, and gunpowder turns it into a splash potion.
• Stay close. Keep the chunk loaded while the cure runs, otherwise it pauses.
• Bring them home. Dig a staircase from the basement to the surface and lead both villagers out, or move them with a boat or a minecart. Two villagers, a bed each and food are enough to start your own village.

✓ Checked in Java Edition 26.3 · updated 1 November 2026