We all know the frustration of needing to find your first End City in Minecraft. Precariously bridging over giant voids, one misstep away from certain doom, it would be much easier with an elytra, but alas you need to do this to get that elytra in the first place! Some players have very disheartening stories of traveling thousands of blocks in a straight line in search of an End City, but never finding one. So how can you avoid this fate and find one sooner?

End cities generate on a grid

Well, one important thing to know about how end cities generate is that they actually generate on a grid. This means that if you don't know if you are aligned with that grid, traveling in a straight line in search of an End City is actually a really bad idea!

Imagine a grid in your Minecraft world's End dimension, aligned with the block grid, but with its lines being 20 chunks (or 320 blocks) apart. The End Cities will only generate at the corners of this grid, plus an offset of 0 to 8 chunks (or 0 to 128 blocks).

For example, this means if you walk in a straight line with your X or Z co-ordinate being between 0 and 128 or between 320 and 448, you will come across an end city! However, if you walk in a straight line with your X or Z co-ordinates being between 128 and 320 you will literally never come across an End City.

Although keep in mind that while the game will try to generate End Cities at these locations, it may fail to do so if the terrain is not suitable, so be sure to keep walking along the grid lines.

What if I have my co-ordinates turned off?

Some of you might not want to play with co-ordinates, which is perfectly valid as it can be considered to be cheating. So what can you do to increase your chances of finding an end city in this case?

Well, since we have established that walking in a straight line is a bad idea if you don't know where the grid is, try instead exploring in a snaking pattern! Here's a tip, try bringing an empty map to the end, and some paper to zoom it out in a cartography table or crafting table once you open it. Instead of walking blindly in a straight line, try filling out the map! This will greatly increase the chances that you will find an End City, as you will be searching more thoroughly. This also has the additional benefit over walking in a straight line that you will end up finding one that is closer to your starting point, which means less backtracking after you loot it!

I found an End City, but it doesn't have a ship/elytra :(

While this can be annoying, it is important to not fret and stay determined! Since we know that End Cities generate on a grid, and you are at an End City, you can make use of this and simply travel in a straight line along the block grid. Since you are aligned with the grid that end cities generate on, you are guaranteed to find more end cities if you keep walking along this line!