Ruined Portal structure in Minecraft

Where Ruined Portals appear

All seven variants share a single placement grid: at most one Ruined Portal in each 40 × 40 chunk region, never closer than 15 chunks to the next. The biome then decides which variant you get and how it sits in the terrain:

• Standard (plains, forests, taiga, beaches, rivers, caves and more): on the surface, or buried underground in a pocket of air.
• Desert: half buried in the sand.
• Jungle: on the surface, overgrown with moss and vines.
• Swamp: sunk to the bottom of the water, with vines, in both swamp biomes.
• Mountain (peaks, hills, badlands, windswept savannas, stony shores): on the surface, or embedded deep in the rock.
• Ocean: on the sea floor, heavily covered in moss.
• Nether: in every Nether biome, built with blackstone instead of stone.

Netherrack spreads around every ruin, and most of the 13 building templates also place some lava. On the surface, the red patch is visible from far away. Underground and underwater ruins are harder to spot: you usually find them while caving or swimming.

What you find at a Ruined Portal

Each ruin has one chest, and its loot is mostly gold: randomly enchanted golden tools and armor, golden apples and carrots, gold nuggets, plus the obsidian, flint and steel or fire charge you need to relight the portal. The rarest pulls are an Enchanted Golden Apple, a bell and blocks of gold, while two chests in three also hold a lodestone. Most ruins also have a Block of Gold or two set into the masonry; mine them for gold ingots.

How to repair a Ruined Portal

A working Nether Portal needs a rectangle of obsidian at least 4 blocks wide and 5 high. The corners are optional, so the smallest frame takes 10 blocks. A ruined frame is always incomplete, and part of what remains is often crying obsidian, which the game does not accept in a portal frame.

• Fill the gaps and replace the crying obsidian with regular obsidian. Both blocks need a diamond pickaxe to mine.
• Use what the ruin gives you. The chest can contain obsidian, and many ruins have lava right next to them.
• No diamond pickaxe? Cast obsidian in place: pour water onto a lava source block placed where a frame block is missing.
• Light it with Flint and Steel or a Fire Charge, both regular finds in the chest. The purple Nether Portal fills the frame.

Giant ruins have bigger frames that take more obsidian, but they work the same way. Keep any crying obsidian you remove: six of them and three glowstone craft a Respawn Anchor, the block that sets your respawn point in the Nether.

Piglins and Nether ruins

Ruins in the Nether often stand near Piglins. Wearing at least one piece of golden armor, such as a Golden Helmet, keeps them neutral, but it does not cover everything. Opening a chest or breaking a Block of Gold near Piglins angers them, even if you are wearing gold. Lure them away or deal with them before you loot, or accept the fight.

In the Overworld, there are no Piglins around the ruins, so the chest is safe to open. Once a repaired portal is lit, though, the portal blocks can occasionally spawn Zombified Piglins in the Overworld. They stay neutral unless you hit one.

✓ Checked in Java Edition 26.3 · updated 1 November 2026