How to Get and Use Echo Shards in Minecraft

Playing Minecraft can be quite frustrating when you suddenly die in some faraway area and drop everything you had in your pockets. You have five minutes to pick ’em up before losing everything, but the hardest part might be to find said place once again. But this can be easier to do as long as you keep some Echo Shards in your chests, a useful item brought into existence to help clumsy players to recover themselves from an ill fate. They can help you track your last death point, so here’s how you can find and use Echo Shards in Minecraft.

How to Get Echo Shards in Minecraft

Echo Shards can be found inside chests found in Ancient Cities. They have around a 30% chance of spawning as loot in those areas, and you can get up to three of them at once in a single chest. 

Finding an Ancient City can be difficult, especially in the early game as they’re hidden beneath the ground in the Deep Dark biomes. Besides getting to the area, you also need to be lucky enough for a City to spawn. And then to find the Chests with the correct loot and get out of there alive. Otherwise, you won’t even be able to use the Shards for their intended purpose.

How to Use Echo Shards in Minecraft

Echo Shards are used to make a Recovery Compass, which can lead you back to where you last died so you can recover your inventory. You need a regular Compass and eight Shards. Go to a Craft Table and put them all together with the Compass in the middle to get the game’s physical representation of Memento Mori.

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A good trick is to always keep one of these next to your respawn point so you can easily track your pre-death inventory back. Just make sure you won’t die a second time on your way back, otherwise all of that effort goes for naught.