How to make a Minecraft recovery compass and use it

Having a Minecraft Recovery Compass may not seem that important to you at first... Until you respawn and leave all your items behind. If those pesky zombies get the better of you, a Recovery Compass will guide you back to your precious belongings - very handy if you just lost a rare material such as Minecraft Amethyst Shards. As useful as that sounds though, Minecraft Recovery Compasses are difficult to craft.

Here's how to get a Recovery Compass and how to use it in Minecraft.

Minecraft Recovery Compass how to use — (Image credit: Mojang)

What does the Minecraft Recovery Compass do?

The Minecraft Recovery Compass always points to the position of your most recent death. So as long as you keep one in your Minecraft House, ready to grab after any unfortunate incidents, you'll be able to quickly locate and get back to where you just died. Follow the compass' directions and you can then recover all your precious items, whether they include Minecraft Copper, Minecraft Glow Berries, or your best Enchanted Axe, plus some of your hard-earned XP.

However, the Recovery Compass only points to your most recent death provided you are in the same dimension as the one you died in. So for example, if you die in the Overworld and then go into the Nether, your Recovery Compass will just spin wildly until you return to the Overworld.

How to craft a Recovery Compass

To craft yourself a Minecraft Recovery Compass, you’ll need a regular Compass and eight Echo Shards. To loot eight Echo Shards, you'll need to explore the Ancient City found in a Deep Dark biome (you can use one of our best Minecraft seeds to spawn near such a biome). This’ll require lots of exploring and stealth to avoid Wardens, so be careful. Once you’ve got the eight shards, take them and your Compass to a crafting table and arrange the shards in a square around the Compass. Ta-dah! You’ll now be able to locate your lost items after death!

Minecraft Recovery Compass respawn — (Image credit: Mojang)

If you need to get a basic compass first then you can either take a naturally generated one from a structure, such as a Shipwreck, Village, or Ancient City, or you can craft one with:

1 Redstone Dust
4 Iron Ingots

However you get one, just remember to leave the Minecraft Recovery Compass near your respawn point so it's ready to grab when you die. Then you've just got to get all your stuff back...

A Recovery Compass will protect your items, but be sure to protect your base too - a Minecraft Lightning Rod will save wooden houses from incoming lightning strikes.

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Will Sawyer is a Guides Editor at GamesRadar+ with over five years of experience in writing online guides, news, and features, and has a BA (Hons) in Journalism. Starting as a freelancer, Will contributed to startmenu and Game Rant before joining the GamesRadar+ team in August 2021. Since then, he has written hundreds of guides about a huge range of games, with shooters and action games being his areas of expertise. Outside of writing about games, Will hops between multiplayer shooters with friends, such as Darktide and Helldivers 2, and delves into whatever has been on his backlog for far too long. He also tries to get through his never-ending Warhammer pile of shame of grey Tyranids, Aeldari, and Chaos Space Marines.

With contributions from

Marloes Valentina StellaFreelance Writer