What is an echo shard in Minecraft?

An echo shard is a common item in Minecraft that is the primary material used to craft a recovery compass.

Recovery compasses have the ability to find the location of the player’s last death point. This item only works in the same dimension, meaning if you die in a different dimension, the compass will spin randomly as it cannot detect your location. It will also drop like a normal item unless the player has the game rule Keepinventory on True. This also means this item has no use on hardcore worlds, as the player loses the world once they die, making these shards completely useless to hardcore players.

How do I craft a recovery compass?

Recovery compasses are quite simple to craft and only require two parts.

Echo shards

Echo shards can be obtained in a very specific way; you can refer below to the only method of obtaining this item in Minecraft.

Compass

Crafting a compass is quite simple and just requires 4 iron ingots and 1 redstone dust. You can get a crafting table, place the redstone dust in the center, and place the iron in the slots to make a “+” formation. Then that will get you a compass.

Crafting Recipe

Once you get your shards and compass, you simply need to place the compass in the center of a crafting table and surround it with echo shards.

When were echo shards added to Minecraft?

Echo shards were added to the game in version 22w14a in Java Edition and beta 1.19.0.24 in Bedrock Edition.

Where can I find echo shards?

Echo shards can be found as chest loot in ancient cities. The ancient city is a new biome for some Minecraft players that can be found in deep dark biomes. You can typically find deep dark biomes under giant mountains, but they can also be found randomly while caving. While the ancient city chests do hold echo shards, they also hold other amazing loot, which is quite important for players.

In order to find echo shards, they will be inside the loot chest inside the city. They have 29.8% to spawn in every chest, and there can be 1-3 per spawn. Below are ways for players to navigate the city and check the chests safely so that they may find echo shards.

How do I handle an ancient city?

In order to get through an ancient city safely, you’ll have to avoid the warden. Warden’s spawn whenever they are called by a sculking shrierkers four times. These are activated by the player being detected by sculk sensors or by stepping on the shrieker itself.

You can avoid activating either by crouching. Opening chests without alerting the sensors is tricky. You can surround the shriekers in wool to prevent them from activating. Wool prevents sound from reaching the senors and shriekers from any source, which means you won’t summon a warden. Placing blocks outside of wool will cause sensors to detect sounds, however.

Even if you summon a warden, it doesn’t mean instant death. You can avoid a warden by sneaking, as they can generally only detect you by the sounds you make. Once you’re far enough from the warden, feel free to make a quick escape. It is not recommended to fight a warden unless you are a fully itemized player with enchanted netherite armor.

If you wish to make your experience in Anicnet City easier, you can use the swift sneak enchantment on your leggings. This will allow you to sneak faster, which is very helpful. You can also find this enchantment in the ancient city’s loot.