Minecraft Nether Star – How To Find It & What It Does

A Nether Star is one of Minecraft’s most precious materials. No, you can’t make overpowered tools like you can with Diamonds or Netherite. But it does allow you to build a Beacon, which offers all sorts of powerful buffs.

That said, a Nether Star can be much more difficult to obtain than most items. That’s because you’re going to have to take down the Wither to get one. Akin to the Ender Dragon, the Wither is one of Minecraft’s toughest bosses, but we assure you the effort is worth the reward.

Related: How to make Glass in Minecraft

How To Summon The Wither

In order to obtain a Nether Star, players will need to defeat a Wither boss. One of these bosses can be summoned by using soul sand and wither skeleton skulls.

Both of these items can be found in the Nether. Wither Skeletons are found at Nether Fortresses, and each one that is slain has a very small chance to drop a Wither Skeleton Skull. You will need three skulls to summon the Wither. Soul Sand is pretty easy to find, just make sure you dont use Soul Soil. You will need four pieces of Soul Sand.

Place the Sould Sand blocks in the shape of a upper-case T, one on the ground and three across the top. Then place each of the Wither Skeleton Skulls on top of the T. Once the third one is placed, the Wither will automatically spawn. If there is anything touching the sides of the Soul Sand, it will not work.

How To Get A Nether Star

A Nether Star is dropped by the corpse of the Wither Boss. Use and Elytra, sword, and bow if fighting a Wither out in the open. However, there are many ways players can cheese this fight, whether that be using the portal in the End or building a contraption underground. My preffered method is spawning a bunch of Iron Golems to do the dirty work.

If a player is playing in Java Edition of Minecraft, Nether Stars that are dropped by the enemy mob will despawn after 10 minutes, so be sure to pick it up. If playing in Bedrock Edition, the item will never despawn, even when an explosion happens around it.

Related: How to summon The Wither in Minecraft

As stated above, Nether Stars can only be used to craft one item, Beacons. To craft one, players will also need 5 glass blocks, 1 nether star, and 3 obsidian blocks. After placing all these materials into the crafting table grid, it will make a beacon. That’s everything to know about getting and using Nether Stars in Minecraft.