Ruined Portals: Loot, Obsidian and Giant Portals

What's in the chest, counted

Ruined portals use one chest loot table no matter which variant you find: desert, jungle, ocean, mountain, buried or giant. So instead of guessing, we scanned 8,000 × 8,000 blocks on ten seeds (0, 123456789, 8675309123456789, −1234567890123, 2441302901, 7965134851, 42, 1, 2 and 3) and had the engine roll every chest on Java 26.3. That's 1,554 portals, one chest each.

Two things jump out. The chest almost never leaves you without a way to light the portal: 1,129 of the 1,554 had flint and steel or a fire charge. And the golden armour is honestly useful. One gold piece keeps piglins calm, so a single chest can cover both your entry and your bartering trip.

What the chest is bad at is obsidian. Fewer than half had any, and when they did it was usually one, two or three blocks. That's the real job of a ruined portal: it's a frame that's already mostly built.

Finishing the frame

A working portal needs at least 10 obsidian (a 4 wide, 5 tall frame, corners optional). A ruined portal is missing some of those blocks, and some of the ones that are there are crying obsidian, which looks the part but can't be used in a frame. Swap every crying block for real obsidian or the portal won't light.

1. Walk around the frame and count the gaps plus the crying obsidian. That's what you need.
2. Open the chest. If it has enough obsidian, you're done; place it and light it.
3. If not, look at the lava. Most portals sit in a patch of netherrack and magma with lava nearby. Pour a water bucket next to a still lava source and it turns into obsidian. Mine it with a diamond pickaxe.
4. No diamond pickaxe yet? Use the bucket trick in place: build a mold where the missing frame block goes, pour lava in, then water on top. It's fiddly but it works with an iron pickaxe and two buckets.

Buried and giant portals

Not every ruined portal sits on the surface. Out of our 1,554, 443 (29%) were placed underground in an air pocket. Ever walked right over the coordinates and seen nothing but grass? That's one of these. Dig down a few blocks near the marker and you'll usually hit netherrack first.

Giant portals are the rare ones: 76 of 1,554, about one in 20. They're huge broken frames that look amazing in screenshots. They roll the same chest table as the small ones, though, and the closest giant portal to spawn on our ten seeds was never under 980 blocks away. Seed 0's nearest giant is at −1056, −416, 1,105 blocks from spawn, and its chest held a golden sword, two flint and 15 iron nuggets. Pretty to look at, not worth the walk for loot.

Seed 3 has the most dramatic one we found: a giant portal at 640, 752 that is also buried, 987 blocks from spawn. Its chest had a golden apple, a golden chestplate, two golden pickaxes, a golden helmet, golden horse armour and three flint.

Nether ruined portals copy the Overworld

This one surprised us. Ruined portals also generate in the Nether, and since 1.18 they share one placement grid with the Overworld ones. On seeds 0, 123456789, 7965134851 and 42 we listed every portal in a 6,000 × 6,000 square in both dimensions on Java 26.3, and every single Nether portal sat on the same X and Z as an Overworld portal (91 of 91, 86 of 86, 87 of 87, 89 of 89).

Note that's the same raw coordinates, not the 1:8 scaled ones. The Nether portal at 64, 144 on seed 7965134851 is a different build at a different spot from where your Overworld portal at 64, 144 would link. If you want the linking maths, the nether portal linking guide covers it.

Older worlds work differently. On 1.17 the same four seeds had about 225 Nether portals in that square instead of around 88, and almost none lined up with the Overworld. Bedrock doesn't line up either: seed 7965134851 on Bedrock 26.3 has 100 Nether portals and 41 Overworld ones in a 4,000 × 4,000 square, with no shared positions.

One catch with Nether portals: the chest isn't guaranteed. When we checked 20 of them against the official Java server, 6 had no chest at all, most likely because lava swallowed it. When the chest was there, it matched the prediction item for item.

Finding a good one near spawn

Ruined portals are common. Each seed in our scan had 153 to 158 of them in the 8,000 × 8,000 square, and every one had at least one within 500 blocks of spawn. The closest ranged from 93 blocks (seed −1234567890123) to 494 blocks (seed 123456789).

Seed 7965134851 is a nice example. Spawn is at 0, 0 and there's a surface portal in plains at 64, 144, 158 blocks out. The chest is at 61, 146 and has a golden pickaxe, two golden axes, a golden sword, a fire charge, four flint, two lodestone and two obsidian. That's a light source, piglin-proof gear and a head start on the frame.

1. Open the ruined portal finder, enter your seed and pick your exact version.
2. Use the Nearest list to sort portals by distance from spawn or from your base.
3. Click a few. On Java 1.18+ the popup shows the chest contents, so pick the one with obsidian or the loot you want, not just the closest.
4. Skip portals flagged underground unless you don't mind digging, and skip ocean ones unless you have a boat and some patience.

Want a notch apple out of it? About one portal chest in 77 has one. The enchanted golden apple finder only marks those, and the notch apple guide has the numbers.

Version matters for the loot

Portal positions have been stable since 1.18, but the chest contents haven't. 26.3 changed the random salt for every ruined portal chest, so the same portal on the same seed holds a completely different chest in a 26.2 or 1.21 world. If the chest you open doesn't match the map, set the version box to the one your world was created in before you blame anything else.

On Bedrock the finder shows portal positions, and they're exact, but there's no loot prediction. Bedrock rolls its chests with a different random generator.