Tutorials/Speedrun

A speedrun is a play-through of a video game performed with the intention of completing it as fast as possible. Speedruns may cover a whole game or a selected part, such as completing all achievements/advancements, or killing a certain boss. Players attempt speedruns mainly to challenge themselves and to entertain and compete with others. For experienced Minecraft players, speedruns add a new challenge and sometimes ignore or subvert established game principles, such as never digging straight down.
While most games have an end or definite goal, Minecraft is an open-ended game and has no specific goal or end. However, entering the exit portal is a common goal for Minecraft speedruns. Other goals may include killing both major bosses or earning some or all of the advancements/achievements.
== Types ==
In addition to the goal of the speedrun, the rules can vary as well. Some of the most common types of speedruns are as follows:
* Set Seed (level generation) seed: The player enters a known seed before starting the world, presumably exploring the world beforehand to find location of loot, nether fortress, stronghold, etc. Players might run one seed repeatedly trying to reduce the time.
* Random seed: The player begins a new world using a random seed. However, it is not against the rules to start a new world, look around for a village or other useful features and restart with another new, random world if necessary. Speedrunning would be trying to beat Minecraft as fast as possible.
* Filtered Seed: The player is given a 1.16 seed that is guaranteed to have characteristics that make it more likely to lead to a good run. These include a repairable ruined portal close to spawn with a looting sword, a close bastion and fortress in the nether, and a close stronghold in the ocean if the portal back to the overworld is made near the fortress.
* Glitched/Glitchless: The player chooses whether to take advantage of glitches in the game (which is common in speedruns for other games) or not. In Minecraft, the most useful glitches duplicate items or blocks and many of these have been eliminated in recent versions, so speedruns using glitches are less common in newer versions.
* Icarus: Named after an ancient Greek myth, in this category the player is given an elytra and a stack of firework rockets to start with. This can help create faster-paced speedruns, even on seeds where the relevant structures are far away or separated by difficult terrain. 
* Difficulty: The player chooses the world's difficulty setting. Peaceful worlds do not spawn enderman and usually require players to buy ender pearls from cleric villagers and runs in peaceful difficulty are considered a separate category from Any%.
* Version: Minecraft speedruns are divided into four further categories according to the version used for the speedrun:
** Pre 1.9, usually played on 1.7.2 or 1.8.9.
** 1.9 - 1.12, usually played on 1.11.2 or 1.12.2.
**1.13 - 1.15, usually played on 1.15.2.
** 1.16+, usually played on 1.16.1.
There are also other types of speedruns. There are co-op speedruns, which is where multiple players work together to kill the ender dragon, All advancements/achievements speedruns, where the goal is to complete every single achievement or advancement, and category extensions (catexts), which are where the player tries to complete a different goal, usually obtaining an item or getting an advancement. Some category extensions are All Bosses, Obtain All Swords, Arbalistic, and How Did We Get Here?
The goal of the majority of this article is to provide guidance for glitchless speedruns on random seeds with the goal of killing the ender dragon. This is also referred to as Any% RSG.
== General tips ==
Just as golf can be described as a nice walk spoiled by a little white ball, a glitchless speedrun can be a fun challenge spoiled by a little green pearl. Obtaining ender pearls is almost always going to be the most time-consuming part of any speedrun. Therefore, the priority should always be to kill endermen, and it's never too early to get your first ender pearl. After getting a weapon, listen for endermen in any caves you explore. Especially after entering the nether, look around for endermen as you search for the fortress. Ender pearls are considerably easier to obtain in the new 1.16 Nether Update, since Piglin trading has a chance of dropping many at a time. As such, it is also important to craft gold armor and mine any gold you find in the nether. It can be easier to hunt endermen in the nether because there are fewer other mobs to fight, there are frequently a lot of easy places to fight without being hit (such as standing in a 2 block high space), and they can be abundantly found within warped forests. Leaving the nether with your
blaze rods and ender pearls help you start traveling in the direction of a stronghold right away.
Finding a village early in your speedrun provides a fast source of food from the hay bales scattered around, after version 1.14, or the crops, in earlier versions. If you don't see a village right away, increase your render distance and head for higher ground to look around. Villages can also provide easy access to wood and cobblestone, a crafting table, beds for killing the ender dragon quickly, and loot if it has a blacksmith building. For your first few attempts at a speedrun, you may want to keep trying random worlds until you find a well-stocked village, or look up seeds with a village near the spawn area.
If you have plenty of iron ingots, you can craft shears and use them to cut leaves, which can be a fast way to get blocks for pillaring up or otherwise moving around.
Generally, you'll need a flint and steel to enter the nether. However, once you have a flint and steel you can also set mobs on fire before you kill them. This is a fast way to get cooked meat without waiting for a furnace.
While it's commonly called the number one unwritten rule of Minecraft, many players consider it normal to dig straight down during a speedrun, especially early in the run. This can save a lot of time, and you don't die if you are playing set seed and dig somewhere you know is hazard-free. This same idea holds true for other risky decisions. Most speedrunners consider taking risks such as entering the nether with no armor acceptable if it saves a large amount of time. If you die during the speedrun, you can just create a new world and start again. 
Think about the items you need and gather these along the way as many resources can suddenly become rare when you need them. For instance, you need gravel for flint, lava and water to make a nether portal, wool and wood for beds, and snowballs or arrows if you plan to use them to destroy the end crystals. Grab these items or make a note of their location as they can be hard to find when you need them.
If you need to travel in the overworld before making your nether portal, travel east or west to increase your X coordinate. Starting further east or west in the nether can make it faster to find a nether fortress.
Especially when looking for important things, such as water and lava to make a nether portal, blazes or other nether fortress mobs or silverfish to find the end portal, turn your volume up and turn on subtitles. This helps you know when you are close and give you a hint on their direction.
Press F3 on your keyboard to turn on the debug screen and always know exactly where you are. When playing set seed, this also makes it easier to find any specific block or generated structure you found before. More advanced speedrunning tips also rely on the debug screen. 
2 or 3 golden apples can be of great help when fighting the dragon. When chopping down oak/dark oak trees, look for apples and keep an eye out for some gold ores when mining or looting. It's also possible to find golden apples or enchanted golden apples as loot. However, advanced speedrunners are able to kill the ender dragon with nearly no supplies. So, this might be considered a waste of time to some. 
TNT can be a quick way to destroy the cage around the end crystal and the end crystal itself at the same time. Place water on the ground, pillar up to the cage, place the TNT on it, activate it and drop down into the water. TNT can also be used to gather blocks quickly, including things like wood, hay bales, and gold blocks.
== Progression ==
Your time goal affects your choices and your style of play: if your goal is to complete the game in less than 30 minutes you don't have time to gather not strictly necessary resources such as armor, diamonds, etc.
One of your first decisions may be whether or not to mine. The fastest speedruns use lava on or near the surface, a bucket and water to build a nether portal, but this means you must travel through the nether and kill several blazes with minimal equipment. You may want to gather some basic items, then dig down to the lava level or below to find more iron, diamonds, gold, etc. Mining definitely increases your time, but it can also increase your survivability, up to and at the ender dragon. Anecdotal evidence shows that finding a nether fortress isn't affected by the Y level of the overworld portal.
Your first task is to get a full set of stone tools (the sword is optional and the hoe is useful only in 1.16). Get 4 logs from the nearest tree and craft a wooden pickaxe, then get enough cobblestone to craft the stone tools you need.
If you start near a village, hay bales are the best source of food (if you're playing a version after 1.14) as you can craft bread with them. In earlier versions you need cooked meat; if there are chickens, pigs, cows, or sheep in the area, kill some of those, but if you didn't light them on fire first, you may want to wait to cook the meat until you enter the nether or while fighting blazes.
If you're playing a version after 1.14 you might want to kill the iron golem to get some iron (4 ingots are needed to build a nether portal).
Get all the beds as they are useful to kill the ender dragon.
If you haven't spotted any lava and you don't plan to mine, you may want to gather other materials, make food, get flint or complete other necessary tasks while waiting for sunset. Once it starts to get dark, lava pools are much easier to spot from a height. Don't forget a blacksmith building has two lava source blocks if you happen to come across a smaller lava pool.
Make sure you have enough food and materials, then create a nether portal. Even if you have a diamond pickaxe, with some practice you can make a nether portal using a bucket, water and lava more quickly than mining 10 obsidian. Dig out a frame for the nether portal, if necessary, or pillar up 5-6 blocks and place your water source using the bucket. Now scoop up lava and place it next to the water to make obsidian. Keep adding lava until you have the 10 obsidian blocks in place to make the portal. If your lava makes cobblestone next to it instead of turning to obsidian, move the water source block until it's flowing next to the lava.
After you enter the nether you may want to set up a furnace to cook or smelt anything you didn't have time to before. Remember that if you leave a furnace in the overworld it stops smelting shortly after you enter the nether and resumes when you return.
Take note of the coordinates of your portal in case you get lost.
Make sure you thoroughly understand how nether fortresses are generated and search accordingly. You are more likely to find a fortress quickly if you head east or west until X 200/-200 and then search north or south. Listen and keep an eye out for blazes and wither skeletons. Magma cubes also spawn at a higher rate in a fortress, so if you see one it might indicate a fortress nearby. Turn up your render distance, if possible, to see further. Remember to watch and listen for endermen and kill any that you find. Dig a quick tunnel 2 blocks high and 2 blocks back, look at the enderman and kill it from just inside the tunnel. If you must travel far to find the fortress, use torches or overworld blocks, such as cobblestone, dirt, or leaves to mark your path back to the portal.
Once you find a nether fortress, you may want to search the interior first. The potential loot may help you survive the blazes and later parts of the game. A saddle is especially valuable later when you hunt endermen in the overworld. However, ultimately you want to find a blaze spawner. Ideally, you want a blaze spawner surrounded by netherrack so that you don't have to worry about blazes flying up or ghasts shooting at you. If the blaze spawner is out in the open, you may want build a quick roof and walls to keep the blazes in and protect yourself from other mobs. Building a 2 block high pillar near the spawner can also help to block some blaze's fireball attacks while you kill the others. You usually want to leave with 8 blaze rods, more if you plan on making a brewing stand. If so, don't forget to get nether warts before you leave the fortress. While gathering blaze rods, you may want to keep them in your hotbar so you can see how many you have.
Finish exploring the fortress to get any additional loot, if desired, and head back to your portal. Get any items from the furnace and portal back to the overworld.
Your next two priorities are finding the stronghold and gathering ender pearls. If you have already managed to get an ender pearl, convert your blaze rod to blaze powder and make an eye of ender. Use the eye of ender to get the general direction of the end portal and start heading in the direction, unless you are in a good area for hunting endermen and it's night. Ideally, use a triangulation calculator to minimize the number of pearls needed to find the stronghold. Write down your X and Z coordinates and the direction you are facing when looking at the eye of ender in the air (f). Two eyes of ender thrown from about 500 blocks apart in a radius around the stronghold provides an accurate location.
Remember that a saddle is valuable! The fastest way to hunt endermen is riding a horse in the desert or savannah. Endermen don't spawn in the rain and therefore the lack of rain in the desert and savannah biomes is helpful. These biomes are also fairly flat, making it easier to spot them. You can quickly ride far enough to reset the spawn, meaning you have many more chances for endermen to spawn, riding in a large circle around the biome.
Most speedruns in the 1.9-1.15 category are played in 1.14 to exploit the fact that villagers restock immediately. Ideally you should use the 9 TNT blocks hidden in desert temples to blow up the houses in a savanna village to get about 6 stacks of wood. Then you should craft the wood into sticks and trade them with fletchers, using the emeralds you get from trading with villagers to level up a cleric villager, which has a chance to trade ender pearls.
Once you reach the area of the stronghold, you can start digging, unless it's night and the surrounding area is good for hunting endermen. If not, dig a pit for your horse and head underground. You might want to dig straight down, or dig stairs since you likely want to return to the surface. Turn up your volume and turn on subtitles to help find silverfish, which spawn inside the end portal room. Strongholds can be vast, so keep track of your progress. Open wooden doors are a sign you have already been there, but use your pickaxe to remove iron doors, or else mine down the wall next to it. Use torches or other blocks to mark areas you have explored. Once you find the end portal, place any eyes of ender you already have and figure out how many more you need. Many players bring an extra ender pearl to teleport off the platform in the end, if necessary.
A valuable item is an enchanted book with the looting enchantment. These can be found in a few places, including libraries in a stronghold. If you find one and you have enough iron to make an anvil, this significantly increases the number of ender pearls you can gather.
Once you have found the end portal, return to the surface the way you came or by digging a new set of stairs. Keep hunting endermen until you have enough ender pearls. During the day you can hunt for more loot in the stronghold or the overworld, gather additional resources, such as snowballs, flint to make arrows, food and golden apples.
When you have enough ender pearls to make eyes of ender and complete the end portal frame, get ready to fight the ender dragon. You'll likely need good food, a water bucket, projectiles for the end crystals, blocks for pillaring up and a good weapon or several beds. Removing the end crystals is frequently more dangerous than killing the dragon. Once they are gone, killing the dragon isn't too difficult. Also, if you aren't using beds, remember that a stone axe deals more damage than netherite and diamond swords. (Netherite swords work too, but are rarer due to the fact you need ancient debris, and ancient debris is quite rare, especially when you need 4 of them. You'll also need a diamond sword too, as well as a diamond pickaxe to mine it.) Wait until the ender dragon is perched on the exit end portal and jumping to get critical hits. Critical hits can kill the ender dragon in 3-4 perches.
After the ender dragon is dead, jump through the exit portal and check your time. How did you do?
== Resetting ==
Resetting for good seeds in 2020 used to be a massive chore, as you had to manually quit a world, click "Singleplayer", click "Create new world", change the difficulty to easy, and click "Create world". Today, we have developed tools to allow us to instantly reset seeds that we don't like. This is achieved by using a hotkey and a script, so that we can change the difficulty to easy and create a new world extremely quickly.
To do this, you need some mods for this. You will need Atum and FastReset (both are Fabric mods and it and all other allowed mods for speedrunning can be found in the official Minecraft Java Speedrunning Discord, or Javacord). You will also need the AutoHotKey program, so that the script works for instant resets.
The downloads for all the methods of resetting can be found on Google or Javacord.
=== Single Instance ===
This is the easiest way to start speedrunning. It basically involves running only one instance, and it is easy because it requires the least amount of setup (besides mod downloads). It's therefore much easier to use than multi instance. If you are using Atum (which you should be to get the fast reset to work), you can reset quickly. If you see a world you don't like, you can click on the Save and Quit to Title button in the options menu (which won't save and quit to title but instead will start generating a new world), you can use the Atum hotkey to reset the world (default: F6), or you can use an external script to reset the world. Once you feel like ending your session, press ESC, then go to Options, then click on the button in the bottom left that says Stop Resets and Quit. This will send you to the title screen.
==== Pros ====
* Easy to set up with no third-party tools and help
* Low system requirements: you are running one instance and it is not as demanding on your computer
* Submitting runs to the speedrun.com/mc leaderboard is extremely straightforward
* You do not need to perform extra setup in OBS to record speedruns
==== Cons ====
* You have to wait for the world to load before you can join it and play, or reset
* It's easy to get sucked into a bad seed because it takes so much time to find something good (you will complete more runs but won't be able to do them fast)
* Much less efficient
=== Multi Instance ===
Multi instancing somewhat reduces the need to sit through loading screens and allows you to switch between multiple instances at once. It improves your reset efficiency a lot. When you are finished with a world, you can press a hotkey to reset your current instance and switch to the next one.
==== Pros ====
* Bypasses world loading, which gives you faster reset efficiency
* Customizable CPU load, you can run any number of instances (2-4 is recommended for this method) depending on your hardware
* Less overhead than wall or instance moving
==== Cons ====
* More CPU intensive than single instance
* More overhead than single instance
* You still have to join a world to see if it's good or not
* More setup required per session (open all instances and run macro)
=== The Wall ===
The Wall is a version a multi instancing which is much more efficient. It will take 6+ instances and will display all of the instances to you at the same time, and it will allow you to reset a world without ever having to enter the instance. It also allows you to reset as many instances (even all) as you like and allows you to lock some instances so you can save them while playing others. The number of instances you can use for the wall depends on your hardware.
==== Pros ====
* Extremely fast reset efficiency
* You can reset multiple or all instances
* You can see the worlds before they finish loading and without entering the instances, which allows you to skip it entirely
==== Cons ====
* Requires a powerful computer
* Most amount of overhead for the first time
* Takes a good amount of time to set up every session
* With many instances, it is difficult to make sure that all of the instances and the mods are up to date and keep all the settings synced
=== Instance Moving ===
Instance moving is a version of the Wall and the highest level of resetting where you run 9+ instances, resetting them in small groups in a focus grid (most do 4-6 in a group). Instance moving identifies which worlds are done loading (or which one have the most progress) and puts them on your focus grid. It's only marginally faster than generic wall and it's only helpful for top runners or runners using 12 or 15+ instances as it focuses on instances you can play and ignores the ones you can't/
==== Pros ====
* Slightly faster than base wall if running 9+ instances (to see the best results, use 12-15+ instances)
* Allows you to only focus on instances you can join (quickly)
* Can slightly reduce CPU overhead since you don't reset all instances at once
==== Cons ====
* Requires more setup
* Not beneficial for less than 9 instances
* Visually and mentally confusing for new runners
* Requires extremely powerful hardware
==Advanced progression strategies==
===Pre 1.9===
====Tower strategy====
This strategy is used to gather ender pearls quickly. It is based on the fact that mobs despawn if no player is within 128 blocks and that the player, upon death, is teleported to their spawn point.
First, find a flat area in a desert, then gather some sand, at least 2 and a half stack of leaves, ladders, a chest, a lava bucket, a bed and 12 wooden slab. Then build this structure, sleep in the bed to set your spawn point but leave it immediately.
Now drop off the tower, stop your fall with the ladders you placed and place all your items in the chest. At last, kill yourself with the lava you placed.
Once you respawn, drop off the tower again and look for endermen, if no one is in sight kill yourself, if you can see one look at it and enter your structure to avoid being hit by the mobs, then take your sword from the chest and kill any enderman you looked at, then place the sword in the chest and kill yourself again. Repeat the process and get all the pearls the endermen dropped.
==== Trading strategy ====
This is the other main but underused meta in pre-1.9 RSG speedrunning. It revolves around the concept that before 1.9, players could obtain eyes of ender from cleric villagers, which meant they did not have to kill endermen or blazes during the run, or even go to the Nether. This trade has since been patched by the developers of Minecraft, but it is still possible to roll back versions and play this strategy.
The main benefit of this strategy is that, unlike the tower strategy, this strategy is not pace locked, meaning that runs can go on extremely fast paces that are not possible on the tower strategy. However, it is an extremely luck-dependent strategy; so many things have to go right for a run to succeed.
Eliotex is the person who implemented this strategy into Any% RSG from Peaceful%, so check out his channel.
A good spawn for trading runs involves finding a village and a desert temple, preferably both close by. Loot the desert temple (its gold and rotten flesh, which is useful later, and if it doesn't, reset), then check the village. If it has a blacksmith, use the resources in it to your advantage. If it doesn't, find a nearby cave or ravine to mine and smelt iron in. You need three iron for a bucket, one iron for a flint and steel, two iron for shears, and up to three more iron for an axe. You need some form of high tier axe, so if you don't have diamonds or enough spare gold, you can use these iron ingots for your axe. You can gather more iron gear, such as a pickaxe or a sword, although they are not necessary.
Locate a librarian and a cleric, and trap both of them in a trading space (if you don't have either of these or are missing one, reset) . Trade any bookshelves you find in the village to the librarian, and trade your gold and rotten flesh one-by-one to the cleric for a 100% chance of unlocking the eye of ender trade.
Clerics sell an eye for 7-11 emeralds, 7 being perfect luck and 11 being extremely bad luck. Most runners watch for eye trades that require 7-9 emeralds and reset the run if the villager offers more than 9 emeralds. Librarians sell an emerald for 8-10 books.
The village and the temple will offer just enough resources to unlock the eye of ender trade and buy a singular eye. Buy only one eye, as you will get the rest of the eyes later.
Using the one eye you have obtained from trading, start triangulating the position of the stronghold (a stronghold calculator called ContariaCalc can help with this). Once you have done so, dig down into the portal room and insert the one eye you have gotten into the portal. Now look for the library rooms in the stronghold; they are big, rectangular rooms that contain bookshelves and string. Once you have found them, start mining the bookshelves. This is where the axe(s) come in handy; you must mine a lot of bookshelves for the trading phase of the run. To deduce the amount of bookshelves you need to break to get all the books, recall the amount of eyes you need to fill the portal, multiply that by the number of emeralds you need for one eye, multiply the result of that by the number of books needed per emerald, then divide all of this by three (bookshelves drop three books upon breaking). This can be represented by the equation peb/3, where:
* p stands for the number of eyes needed to complete the rest of the portal.
* e stands for the number of emeralds needed to buy one eye from the cleric.
* b stands for the number of books needed to buy one emerald from the librarian.
Once you have all the books, head back to the portal room to build a nether portal from the lava. Once you have done so, you can perform a method called instant-travel (invented by Eliotex), which lets you travel instantly back to the village and cover a large amount of distance at once. Ignite a piece of TNT as you enter the portal, wait a second in the Nether, then go back into the portal. With any luck, the portal should take you near the village. Don't wait too long to light the TNT, as once you enter the Nether, everything in the Overworld will be unloaded after a few seconds. This means that the TNT may not explode in time and going through the portal will take you back to the stronghold (and kill you from the TNT).
Now, begin the process of preparing for the end fight. Trade all the books with the librarian for emeralds, and trade all the emeralds with the cleric for eyes of ender. If you happen to have spare emeralds, trade them with other villagers in the village for useful items. For example, a bow from a fletcher is useful for blowing up crystals in the end fight. (Refer to this chart to know what items are useful and what aren't: https://web.archive.org/web/20220904231334/https://i.imgur.com/BVB8Eby.png.) During the periods in which you are not trading with villagers, shear sheep for wool for beds (it's wisest to have at least 6-7 beds for the dragon fight); kill chicken for feathers, mine wood for sticks, mine gravel for flint, and use the feathers, sticks, and flint to make arrows; craft a bow; and kill animals for food by lighting them on fire with a flint and steel and then killing them.
Now, it is time to head back to the stronghold. Head back to the nether portal near the village, then ignite a TNT as you walk into the portal. Again, don't wait too long to ignite the TNT or it won't explode and the strategy won't work. Then, wait a second in the Nether, and head back into the portal. With any luck, you should end up in or near the stronghold, and possibly even in the portal room where you made your first nether portal. Place the eyes of ender into the frame and hop into the End.
End fights in 1.7.10/1.8.9 are completely different to End fights in 1.15.2/1.16.1. For starters, the fountain that is in the center of the island in later versions does not appear in earlier versions; they only appear when the Ender Dragon is defeated, and spawns when and where the Ender Dragon dies. Also, the dragon's attack routine is very different and does not include perching (as there is no middle fountain), which makes one-cycling under normal circumstances impossible. Instead, runners use beds to blow up the dragon when it dives. There is also the strategy of using crystals to kill the dragon; however, this strategy is extremely risky in non-peaceful runs, and peaceful runs are a different category to pre-1.9 any% RSG, so peaceful mode is not allowed. Here is a tutorial on how to do pre-1.9 End fights.
You spawn either in an endstone cage or in the middle of the Void. The dragon charges at you upon entering the End. The endstone cage is dangerous because you often have no way to tell if the dragon is attacking you, but the Void is even more so because the dragon can knock you off the platform, instantly killing your run. If you are in an endstone cage, wait for the dragon to charge, then dig up. If you are above the Void and you see the dragon charging at you, shoot at it with your bow and arrows to make it go away. Then bridge or pearl for the island.
Even if you are running the same seed every time, the End is always different per world. Every End (even on a set seed) has a randomized amount of crystal pillars that are a random height and width. They are always a randomized distance from the center of the island and are always randomly positioned in the island at a random distance from two other pillars. Given the randomness of pre-1.9 Ends, it can sometimes be impossible to shoot all the crystals. Try your best to shoot all the crystals; if you can't, that just means that the dragon takes more time between attacks.
Wait for the dragon to charge at you. To make it more often to do so, shoot at the crystals it locks on to, and shoot the dragon directly. If it dives toward you at a steep angle, shoot at it or hit it to make it go away. If it comes at a good angle, place a block and a bed in front of you (the block reduces most of the damage you take from the bed) and right click the bed as the dragon's head comes above it. (Make sure to stand behind a block or stand in front of the bed at eye level when exploding it. Minecraft renders most explosion damage at feet level, meaning if you are standing near or on the bed, you will die or lose a lot of your health). If timed perfectly, the bed deals a massive amount of damage to the dragon, clearing a quarter to close to a third of its health bar at best. Keep doing this until the dragon is dead or you don't have beds (in which case shoot the dragon and hit it when it dives or use crystals if you know how). When you kill the dragon, locate the position of the fountain, then jump into it.
Congratulations! You speedran Minecraft with one of the most RNG-dependent strategies to exist in Minecraft speedrunning history!
=== 1.9-1.12 ===
1.9-1.12 speedruns are similar to tower runs done in 1.7, but are still extremely different. The tower in 1.9-1.12 speedruns are different that the one in 1.7, and this is because of the difficult enderman AI in 1.8+. 1.9-1.12 runs are much longer than pre 1.9 runs for this reason. If you want to study 1.9-1.12 tower splits, you can do so by searching up runs on YouTube, as the new tower isn't easy to explain. Other than the tower, 1.7 runs and 1.9-1.12 runs are extremely similar.
===1.13-1.15===
====Classic strategies====
This is the 1.14 strategy for obtaining enough pearls to locate and fill in the end portal. It utilizes a phenomenon in this version that lets you trade infinitely with villagers. It is risky because there's about a 30% chance for the villager not offering the pearl trade. However, if you are going for a record pace, it is extremely fast, faster than killing endermen, and is worth the risk. It is also the most common strategy among speedrunners. Use 1.14.4 for this, as other versions have bugs that can easily ruin your run.
First, you'll want to get into the habit of resetting for a good world. A good world for this strategy would include:
A desert (even better if you can find a desert pyramid nearby)
One of these: a savannah/frozen plains village, dark oak forest, or a jungle.
Any village, including the same savannah village.
If you find all 3, you have a great world! First, locate and enter the desert temple. Break the pressure plate so you don't set off the TNT, and then carefully mine and gather all 9 TNT. The chests often have good loot. Next, go into the nether and obtain enough blaze rods. You can also save time by mining a lot of gravel at the start, then mine it by the spawner when there aren't any blazes nearby. Get one more than you usually would. This is so you can make a brewing stand. Finally, exit the portal and head to the savannah village, dark oak forest, or jungle. Empty or remove enough items in your inventory (about 7-12 slots, depending on what you have), and then use the TNT to blow up the trees or village. If you are in a village, head to the houses with the most wood. Blow them up by placing a block in the center of the house, placing the TNT on top of it, and then blowing it up with a button so that the villagers don't connect the destruction to you and consequently offer worse trades. Gather the logs, stripped logs, and planks, and throw out anything from the houses you don't need. It is a good idea also to collect beds from the village, as beds decrease the time the end fight takes by an extreme amount.
If you use a dark oak forest or jungle, place the TNT closer to the top of the trees. The top area generally is more crowded with logs, letting more logs be blown up instead of dirt and grass. Collect at least 6 stacks of logs, which is about 24 stacks of planks, or 48 stacks of sticks. Once you have enough, head to the village, and then, if you are not on the second day yet, sleep in a bed. Find an unemployed (brown coat with no decorations) villager. Craft a fletching table, with 4 wood and 2 flints, and place it by that villager. When he becomes a fletcher, see if he has the sticks trade (32 sticks -> 1 emerald). If he does not, break the table, wait for it to become unemployed, and then place it again. Do this until he offers the stick to emerald trade.
When he does, empty some more slots in your inventory. If you do it right, this process is quick, so you do not have to worry about your items despawning. Turn a few logs into planks, then craft them into sticks. Trade with the villager quickly by holding the shift key, and spamming the spacebar and left-click. Do this over the slot where the villager sells the emeralds. This quickly trades your sticks for wood. Once you run out, craft more sticks and repeat. You probably have a few emeralds to spare. The best choices are arrows and bows — while you can make do without either, having at least half a stack of arrows and one bow is great. This helps to attack the dragon and shoot at the end crystals.
Next, find another unemployed villager. Craft a brewing stand with the extra blaze rod you got, and place it next to him. This turns him into a cleric, and must level him up by trading with him until he reaches the pearl trade. Be careful doing this, as you don't have enough emeralds to just blindly trade. First, buy 20 redstone from him (buy it 10 times). You don't need these, so discard them. Wait for pink particles to appear around him, then open his interface again. Next, buy 12 lapis lazuli. You don't need these either, so discard them. Wait for pink particles, then trade with him again. Buy 10 glowstone, and hope RNG is on your side. The villager has a 2/3, or about 67%, chance of unlocking their pearl trade at this point. Scroll down the trades. If he unlocked the bottles and scute trades, then you must do the entire process again. If you are going for WR pace, the run is dead, and you must restart. However, he most likely offers pearls. It is best to buy at least 10, and smartest to buy at least 12 because there is a good chance the eyes of ender can break on the way to the stronghold, and also, there is a high chance for the portal to be missing some pearls.
When you get to the end, always be sure to have at least 7 beds in your hotbar. Wait for the dragon to perch in the middle, and then place a block in front of its head, and behind it, place a bed. Blow up the beds (and possibly wait for the dragon to re-perch) and then stand in the end portal. If the dragon is flying around, shoot at it, or the end crystal it is using to heal itself. If it takes too long, you may want to (painfully) reset.
 
If you completed this process correctly, the TNT process should take about 3-5 minutes, and the trading process should take 2-4 minutes. Overall, this is an excellent choice for 1.14.4, because it should take about 5-9 minutes total.
====Insomniac strategy====
This strategy is the most optimal way to play 1.15. Before you start the run, you want an island spawn with a shipwreck and an ocean monument nearby. First, you must break 3 logs with your fist. After breaking the logs, you need to craft the 3 logs into 12 wooden planks. Then, make a crafting table and 8 sticks. You should now have 4 wooden planks, which you use to make a wooden axe. After making the axe, break 3-9 more logs, and craft them into 12-36 planks. Use 5 of the planks to make a boat, and use 6 more to make 3 doors.
After you have finished crafting, go to a shipwreck to get iron. You need at least 11-14 iron and 2 emeralds. If you don't get those resources from the shipwreck, you must reset. After getting the resources, place down one of your doors for air, along with your crafting table. You can now craft an iron pickaxe, an iron axe, and an iron shovel with 7 of the iron. Next, craft 1-2 buckets with 3-6 iron. You should now have at least one iron left. If you have enough iron, you should craft a bit of iron armor, or a shield. Now, go to the ocean floor, place a door there, and mine some gravel for 3 flint. After you get the flint, craft a flint and steel. Break and collect your doors now if you haven't. Now, look for an ocean monument. When you see the monument, set your render distance to 2 chunks. That way, it's less likely for an elder guardian to inflict Mining Fatigue. Go to the back of the monument (the part of the monument with the small arches). Once you have gotten to the back of the monument, you use your doors to look for the area of the monument with the gold blocks. Once you have located it, break the gold blocks.
After getting the gold blocks, look for a village. Once you have found one, place down your crafting table and craft 2 fletching tables for trading. You also need to craft your gold blocks into 72 gold ingots. Use 60 of them for trading, and use the other 12 gold ingots from the monument to craft 4 golden axes. Now locate a forest and break 128 logs. Craft all of them into planks, and then craft them into 16 stacks of sticks. After reentering the village, you place down the fletching tables to turn 2 of the villagers into fletchers. If they do not sell you sticks, break the fletching table and then replace it. When the fletchers sell you sticks, trade 8 stacks of sticks to each fletcher, as the fletchers' stick trades can be used only 16 times per restock. Now, you should have at least 34 emeralds. You must now find a cleric. After finding the cleric, trade 10 of the 34 emeralds for redstone. Then, trade 24 of the gold to the cleric to level it up to Journeyman. The gold trade can be used only 12 times per restock. After the cleric restocks, trade the other 36 gold to it. The reason why you need to trade only 2 gold per emerald for the first restock and 3 per emerald for the second is because when a villager restocks, its price discounts go away. Now, the cleric should be Expert level. Trade your remaining emeralds to the cleric for ender pearls. There is only a 2/3 chance that the cleric sells ender pearls. If it doesn't, you must reset. Your IGT, or in game time, should be at around 6-8 minutes.
Now leave the village and locate an ocean ravine with magma in it. You then need to locate an upside-down L formation with the magma. To make the portal, you first need to break the bottom right block in the upside-down L. If the block below the magma turns into obsidian, place a door on it. If the block below doesn't turn into obsidian, reset. Now, place a block above the top left block of the upside-down L. Place 1 door to one side of the L and a block to the other side. You now need to break the top right block. Grab lava from inside the ravine, and make it into a nether portal shape. After finishing the nether portal, enter it. You should now grab some lava with your second bucket (if you have one). Now use the pie chart (Shift+F3) to locate a fortress. After you enter the fortress, look for a blaze spawner. Grab 6 blaze rods by killing blazes. After you finish grabbing the rods, re-enter the overworld through your previous portal. The rest of the run is similar to a 1.16 run.
===1.16+===
====Bartering strategy====
This strategy was shown to be extremely efficient, however it is heavily RNG dependent. This is practically the only way to get a good speedrun in the 1.16 update because villagers barely reset their trades in 1.15+. With extreme luck you can get enough blaze rods and enough pearls within a few minutes. One runner, Korbanoes, got enough pearls from just 5 gold, and set an extremely hard to beat record of 14 minutes and 56.8 seconds.
First, you want to obtain enough gold. If you found some in a shipwreck, desert temple, or other structure, you're on the right track. You don't need any gold from the overworld, however. Gold ore is found in the nether in 1.16, and you can also find gold ingots in nether fortresses and bastion remnants. All you have to do is find an adult piglin, and interact with gold in your hand or drop gold in front of it. If you are going for WR, you should drop a bunch of gold by the piglin, then kill blazes while it barters. Also, you should give it single digits of gold bars if you are going for pearls, unless you already have a lot. Trying to mine lots of gold consumes too much time. If you aren't going for WR, it is best to kill enough blazes, then barter. This is heavily based on RNG, so the amount of gold you need could range anywhere from 2 ingots to over a stack, or even more! It is best to mine gold as it barters and check on it periodically. You don't want to spend all your time mining half a stack of gold if he ends up giving you enough pearls in just a few gold. Don't just stand and wait either, because it goes both ways- you don't want to just stand there looking at the piglin, because then if he ends up taking a while to give you pearls, you could've saved time by mining some while he bartered.
Finally, even though this works in all versions, do this in 1.16.1. In other 1.16 versions, the loot tables are different, and it take almost forever to get gold.
This method isn't hard to mess up, and if you get lucky, you'll be in and out of the nether within 3-6 minutes with all of the items you'll need to get to the stronghold. Try to get beds on the way there, which shortens your end fight.
==== Hypermodern strategy ====
While the bartering strategy is simple and easy to understand, the hypermodern strategy overcomplicates every aspect of the run. However, it is necessary to learn because it is now the meta of 1.16+ speedruns; almost every speedrun has a costal spawn with either a shipwreck, ruined portal, or buried treasure. Runner k4yfour has a good video on hypermodern runs: https://youtu.be/gAHMJfsrHe4.
The hypermodern strategy relies on an ocean with a shipwreck and a magma ravine, preferably having both close by and near each other.
Loot the chests in the wreck. One chest should have carrots and other foods, which sets you up for the option to make golden carrots later in the run. Another chest should have the seven iron you need to complete the run, plus a few other valuables. If it doesn't, the third chest contains a buried treasure map, and it should have the rest of the iron and decent food. Next, turn on hitboxes (F3 + B) to spot faraway kelp (this can indicate a magma ravine). Once you have found a magma ravine, create a ravine portal and enter the Nether that way (you can search up tutorials on ravine portals on YouTube).
TheTalkingMime has invented another strategy for hypermodern runs called "mapless buried treasure". The strategy relies on using a pie chart to show the (possible) location of a buried treasure without a map (hence the name). It is a complicated strategy in the way it works, but if done and understood properly, it can be extremely fast and efficient. To learn how to do this, watch his video: https://youtu.be/mes_PPlOJao.
The Nether is probably the hardest part of the run to get used to if you practice classic bartering strategies and warped forest strategies excessively, but it goes extremely fast if you can do it properly. There are also advanced techniques to finding structures (such as E-ray and pie-ray), which you can search the tutorials for on YouTube.
First, find a bastion. Bastions have a lot of piglins (depending on the type of bastion) and a lot of gold. There are four types of bastions: treasure bastions, bridge bastions, housing bastions, and stables bastions. This is important to know because knowing what type of bastion you have can help you plan your route accordingly. Couriway has a great video on bastions: https://youtu.be/5QIMHxpfUkg.
In a bastion, you generally want to aim for: at least 16 ender pearls (for the end portal and travelling), 21 obsidian (for blind travel and travelling in the Nether and for the one cycle), at least 48 string (to make beds), fire resistance potions (for the blaze fight), and crying obsidian and glowstone (to make respawn anchors if you don't get enough string). If you don't have enough of these items after bartering all of your gold, find chests and loot them. Once you have all the needed items, leave the bastion. The bastion process is quick; while the average player can do it in at most three minutes, skilled runners can do it under even two minutes.
When you find a fortress, drink/splash your fire resistance, then pearl to the spawner. Once you have finished your blaze fight, head to the Overworld by building a portal. You can now do educated travel; throw an eye of ender, take note of its angle, run 17.5 blocks perpendicular of that angle, throw another eye, take note of your angle, then note the angle difference. 1000 divided by the difference of these two angles gives you a rough estimate of where your stronghold is. This process can be quicker with the Ninjabrain Bot, as it tells you the exact position of the stronghold using trigonometry. (You can find all of these tutorials on YouTube.) Now, travel your distance divided by eight in the Nether (travelling in the Nether is eight times more efficient), although if you don't have enough obsidian you can still travel by Overworld if the distance to clear is less than 600 blocks. With a little luck, you may end up in, on, or near the stronghold. If not, do some more triangulation.
The end of the run is nothing different; find the portal room, fill it, hop in, and one cycle the ender dragon.
==== Warped forest strategy ====
This strategy is not recommended stand-alone if you are going for a world record or are bad at PvE. This ties in with the Looting strategy, however, it is not required to have Looting for this. It can be helpful if you want to get more pearls while the piglin barters.
First, look for a warped forest. It is easy to spot, with giant aquamarine trees and unnatural green foliage. When you arrive, look for and kill endermen, until you have the desired amount of pearls. If you are bad at PvE, you can pillar 2-3 blocks and then look at them to anger them, and if you are being chased by one and are low on health, you can try and jump up into a Twisting Vine to escape it. You can also tower up three blocks, as the enderman cannot reach that high, even if they are three blocks tall. A common strategy for killing Enderman is to trap one in a boat before killing it. This can be achieved either by placing a boat next to an enderman and having it run into the boat or by placing the boat one block higher than the surrounding area and anger them with the boat in between you and the enderman. 
This can take anywhere from under 3 to over 5-6 minutes, depending on spawn luck, pearl drops, skill at PvE, and whether or not you have looting on your weapons.
==== Monument strategy ====
This strategy is useful for optimal sub 20, sub 17, and sub 15 times. However, it is not a reliable strategy for world record pace, especially taking into consideration that a really good seed is needed for the run.
This strategy guarantees a bastion's worth of gold in the first five minutes of the run, which is useful for the run. The monument allows an easy steal of eight gold blocks, which is hopefully enough for the ender pearls, string, and obsidian. After the nether entry, the rest of the run is pretty much a normal hypermodern run.
You need an ocean magma ravine, a shipwreck, and a monument. First, loot the shipwreck, and hope for seven iron for all the equipment, and up to 5 more for an axe, a shovel, and a shield. Then, you need to frontload wood (mine the wood at the shipwreck) and craft the equipment.
Upon approaching the ocean monument, go to your video settings and set your render distance down to two chunks. This stop the elder guardians from loading in (elder guardians inflict Mining Fatigue III, which makes it harder to mine). If you don't want to lower your render distance, you can try and bring a bucket of milk or a cow with you. Head to the part of the monument with arches, and mine into each one until you enter the gold room (a big room with guardians and a cube in the middle). Mine into the cube and gather your eight gold blocks, then head out of the monument. Locate the magma ravine and create a ravine portal at the bottom.
The monument strategy completely eliminates the need for a bastion later in the run, but monuments are even rarer than bastions, which is why they are not reliable for world record pace, so it is better to stick with bastions instead.
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