With a yellow-tinted name, echo shards are as mysterious as items in Minecraft can get. However, what do they do, and what can players who find them expect? Today, we answer that and more in our Minecraft echo shard guide.

Where to Find Echo Shards

One to three echo shards have a 29% chance of appearing as loot within the chests of ancient cities, vast underground structures containing many buildings covered by skulk. Those in search ancient cities will want to find deep dark biomes, which most commonly generate under mountain biomes around layer -52. They are easily identified by their abundance of sculk blocks, which are dark in color with greenish glows. If skulk sounds unfamiliar, it is the block type that summons the warden when too many skulk censors are set off. As such, it is best to move quietly and slowly through ancient cities while going through chests to find and loot echo shards.

Echo Shard Recipes

As of writing this guide, a Minecraft echo shard only has one use, which is for crafting recovery compasses. A nifty tool that points toward the last location where the wielder died to help recover loot. The recipe for a recovery compass is eight echo shards surrounding one regular compass on a crafting table. If a regular compass is not yet in hand, it requires only four iron ingots and one redstone, making the recovery compass an overall cheap investment for something so useful. Additionally, while this is merely an assumption on our part, we expect echo shards to see further use in future updates, especially when it comes to the unused portal frame at the center of ancient cities. So, don’t go tossing echo shards away just yet!

How to Use Recovery Compasses

Upon dying, picking up a recovery compass will cause it to point to the last location where the wielder died. For this reason, it is an item best left in storage near a respawn point. Hardcore players may have already realized that this item is sadly useless for them, as one death and a hardcore world is done. However, those who play Minecraft with the game rule “keepInventory on” may still occasionally find the recovery compass useful. An example of this being returning to the location of an accidental death while exploring.