To make an ender chest in Minecraft, place 8 obsidian around the outside of a crafting table and 1 eye of ender in the center. The result is one of the most useful blocks in the game: a chest whose contents follow you everywhere, even across dimensions.
The ender chest is our favorite block in all of Minecraft. We liked it so much we named the whole site after it! Here is everything you need to know about crafting one, how it actually works, and the smartest ways to use it. Everything is current as of Minecraft 26.2.
How Do You Make an Ender Chest?
You will need two ingredients: 8 obsidian and 1 eye of ender. The obsidian is the easy part. Pour water over lava source blocks and mine the obsidian with a diamond or netherite pickaxe.
The eye of ender takes more work, because you have to craft it from an ender pearl and blaze powder:
- Get an ender pearl. Endermen drop these when killed. They spawn at night in the overworld and are everywhere in the warped forest in the nether.
- Get blaze powder. First build a nether portal, find a nether fortress, and defeat blazes for blaze rods. One blaze rod crafts into two blaze powder.
- Combine one ender pearl with one blaze powder in your crafting grid to make an eye of ender.
Then place the 8 obsidian around the edge of the crafting table with the eye of ender in the middle slot, and out comes your ender chest. Because of these ingredients, the ender chest is usually a mid-to-late game block. You will probably craft your first one around the same time you start hunting for a stronghold, since eyes of ender are also how you find one.
How Does an Ender Chest Work?
An ender chest is personal cloud storage. All ender chests in the world share one inventory, and that inventory is yours alone. Put a diamond in an ender chest at your base, walk a thousand blocks, place another ender chest, and the diamond is right there waiting for you. It works across dimensions too: items stored in the overworld can be taken out in the nether or the End.
On a multiplayer server, every player sees only their own items when they open an ender chest. Even if another player opens the exact same chest block, they see their inventory, not yours. This makes the ender chest the only truly theft-proof storage in the game. No lock plugins required!
The chest gives you 27 slots, the same as a regular single chest. That may not sound like much, but there is a famous trick to multiply it: fill shulker boxes with items and store the shulker boxes inside the ender chest. That turns 27 slots into 27 full boxes of portable, private storage.
You Need Silk Touch to Move It
Here is the mistake every player makes exactly once: breaking an ender chest with a normal pickaxe. Do that and the chest drops 8 obsidian, and the eye of ender is gone forever. To pick up the actual ender chest, you must mine it with a pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch.
The good news is your items are never lost either way. The shared inventory is not stored “inside” the block, so even if your ender chest is destroyed, everything is still there when you place or craft a new one. See our best Minecraft enchantments guide for how to get Silk Touch on your pickaxe.
Ender Chest vs Shulker Box
These two storage blocks get compared all the time, and the honest answer is that they are better together. Here is how they differ:
| Ender Chest | Shulker Box | |
|---|---|---|
| Contents when broken | Stay in the shared inventory | Stay inside the dropped box |
| Access from anywhere | Yes, from any ender chest | No, you must carry the box |
| Private on servers | Yes, per-player inventory | No, anyone can open it |
| Can others steal from it | Never | Yes, if they find it |
| How you get it | Crafted (obsidian + eye of ender) | Shulker shells from End cities |
| Can you store them inside each other | Holds shulker boxes | Cannot hold ender chests or other shulker boxes |
The winning combo, as mentioned above: shulker boxes inside an ender chest. The shulkers give you capacity, and the ender chest makes them accessible anywhere and safe from everyone.
The Best Items to Keep in Your Ender Chest
Since space is limited to 27 slots, use them for things that are painful to lose:
- Valuables: Diamonds, netherite, emeralds, and enchanted books stay safe here no matter how you die.
- A backup kit: A spare pickaxe, weapon, armor piece, food, and some torches can save a disaster run.
- Your best gear in transit: Carrying god armor to a far-away base? Put it in the ender chest and walk without fear.
- Potions and golden apples: Emergency supplies you want available in every dimension.
- Shulker boxes: As covered above, this is how you turn 27 slots into a whole warehouse.
A nice habit for the end game: keep one ender chest at your base near your storage room, one at each outpost, and carry one in your inventory with a Silk Touch pickaxe. You will never be more than a few seconds from your valuables.
A Few More Ender Chest Facts
- Piglins get angry when you open or mine an ender chest near them, just like with regular chests. Watch your back in the nether!
- Ender chests give off a light level of 7, so they glow faintly in the dark.
- They cannot be moved by pistons, and hoppers cannot put items in or take items out. Your storage stays manual (and private).
- Unlike regular chests, two ender chests placed side by side stay separate instead of forming a double chest.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you make an ender chest in Minecraft?
Combine 8 obsidian and 1 eye of ender in a crafting table, with the eye of ender in the center slot. The eye of ender is crafted from one ender pearl and one blaze powder.
Do items stay in an ender chest if it is destroyed?
Yes. The shared inventory is never lost, even if every ender chest you own is destroyed. Place or craft a new ender chest and all your items will be right there.
Can other players take items from my ender chest?
No. Every player has their own separate ender chest inventory, so other players see only their own items when they open the same chest. It is the safest storage in multiplayer.
Do you need Silk Touch to get an ender chest back?
Yes, to retrieve the chest block itself. Without Silk Touch, mining an ender chest drops only 8 obsidian and the eye of ender is lost. Your stored items are safe either way.
How many slots does an ender chest have?
27 slots, the same as a single chest. Store filled shulker boxes inside it to massively expand the space.
That concludes our complete guide to the ender chest in Minecraft! It is the block this site is named after, so we had to do it justice. What do you keep in yours? Leave a comment below!