The hardest Minecraft achievements are the ones that require you to spend dozens of hours in the game. While they’re a slog, they’re worth it for the sweet satisfaction you feel when you get that notification informing you that they’re finally complete. We’ve also provided some helpful tips if you still need to grab any of them. Here are the top 10 hardest achievements in Minecraft:
1. Beaconater
How to complete: Create a full Beacon.
A Beacon is a true endgame item in Minecraft. They provide all sorts of attribute boosts to any nearby players, making them extremely powerful to have in your base to help you with raids.
How to Craft A Beacon in Minecraft
To craft a Beacon, you need 5 Glass, 1 Nether Star, and 3 Obsidian. However, you then need to build a pyramid with your Beacons in order to get the full benefit of all the buffs the game can provide. In total, this takes 2196 Iron Ingots, 3 Beacons, and hundreds each of Emerald and Gold.
Just to get this achievement though, you simply need to make a single Beacon.
2. Super Sonic
How to complete: Use the Elytra to fly through a gap of 1 by 1 whilst moving at 40 meters per second.
This is a tricky achievement for most players, but not for the reason you’d think. Sure, flying at high speed through a small gap is hard, but actually getting hold of an Elytra is much harder.
How to Get an Elytra
First, you need to kill the Ender Dragon. That alone will take you dozens of hours because it’s the final boss of the game. Outside of this achievement, of course.
Once the Ender Dragon is down, you’ll need to explore and find and End City. These are rare and near impossible to locate. Be sure to take lots of resources with you if you want to survive the journey.
With the End City located, you need to get inside, and finally uncover the End Ship. In here you’ll get your Elytra, plus a bunch of other loot.
From there it’s a simple case of finding a mountain, flying off of it, figuring out the best place to build your 1 by 1 gap to fly through, and spend three hours attempting to get it all just right.
3. On a Rail
How to complete: Travel at least 500 meters in a single direction from where you started in a Minecart.
In Minecraft, as the name would suggest, you’ll be doing a lot of mining. To make life easier, you could use Minecarts on Rails to bring yourself and resources to and from the top and bottom of the mine. This is particularly helpful if you’re building a traditional mine, with long paths leading off of an even longer main one.
Given that a single Rail accounts for one meter in the game, you’ll need 500 of them in a straight line. That’s not going to be easy unless you have a mineshaft that is, in fact, that long.
My advice would be to start mining in a straight line, not too deep, from your base. This will provide all sorts of resources and help you get this achievement faster. You can go down a couple of layers every now and then, but make sure that your mineshaft is still going in one single direction. After a while, you should have a mineshaft to lay 500 meters of Rail down in. Do it, put a Minecart on it, and ride it all the way to the end.
4. Adventuring Time
How to complete: Discover a total of 17 Biomes.
There are loads of Biomes in Minecraft. You can go from a Desert into a snowy Biome, and then into a Jungle one, all within the space of a few squares. However, this is quite rare because most Biomes are hundreds of Blocks wide.
In order to discover 17 Biomes, you just need to play the game. Focus on exploring the map more than anything else for a while. You’ll find that you come across a lot more than you’d think was out there.
My tip would be to find a Horse and ride it out each day in a new direction. This should help you get most of the way to discover a total of 17 Biomes. Just be sure to know which direction you’ve been in so that you’re not wasting time.
5. Return to Sender
How to complete: Use a Fireball to destroy a Ghast.
This is an achievement for those who have a death wish in Minecraft. You need to kill a Ghast with their own Fireball. Much easier said than done.
As you’ll probably know, Ghasts are found in the Nether. They’re a huge pain and can quickly leave you on fire or dead in an area that you have no way of escaping.
What you might not know is that you can deflect a Ghast’s Fireball with any melee weapon. Just hit it at the fight time, and it will bounce back at the offending Ghast as long as you get the angle right.
To get this achievement, you need to be able to hit that Fireball back at just the right moment and in just the right position. If you don’t, it’ll fly away into the distance of the Nether, and you’ll look like an idiot.
My advice is to practice hitting these Fireballs back. Get into the Nether and try to fight a single Ghast to fight one on one. Keep on hitting Fireballs back at it, even if you get killed a few times. Eventually, you will get the knack of it, and this achievement as well.
6. Master Trader
How to complete: Earn 1000 Emeralds from trades.
For this achievement, you might want to check in on our guide for the best Villager jobs for trading for Emeralds. This is by far the biggest grind in Minecraft and is so long that many players don’t bother with it.
To get the achievement, you need to earn 1000 Emeralds through your trades with Villagers. This doesn’t count any Emeralds you trade back, only the ones you earn from trades.
The only advice I have is to use our guide, find those Villager jobs that trade for the most Emeralds, and maximize your output on those.
7. Cheating Death
How to complete: Cheat death using a Totem of Undying.
This achievement isn’t as difficult as some of the others on this list of the hardest Minecraft achievements. Once you’ve got the Totem of Undying, it’s a simple case of heading to a place where zombies will spawn at night and allowing yourself to get killed. Getting that Totem is a pain, though.
How to Get a Totem of Undying
You can’t craft this item, which is what makes it so hard to obtain. There are two main ways to get one if you’re looking. The first is to locate a Woodland Temple. These are extremely rare, and some players go tens of hours without ever seeing one.
Once inside the Woodland Temple, you’ll find an Evoker. This is the enemy that drops the Totem of Undying. Grab it before it disappears if you do manage to find one.
The second method of getting this item is to kill an Evoker during a raid. This is extremely rare, though, and might be something you never come across.
The best advice I have is to just keep on playing and exploring. There are certain things you can do to provoke more raids, such as attacking Illager populations around the map. The other thing to do would be to explore every Dark Forest Biome thoroughly you come across in the hopes of finding a Woodland Temple.
8. Rainbow Collection
How to complete: Collect all 16 colors of wool.
This is a very chilled achievement after that last one. All you need to do is gather every color of wool. Simple right? Well, sort of.
Some Sheep will spawn with a random color of Wool, which is definitely the easiest way to get some of the colors. However, a more efficient way is to search for items that allow you to make dyes in the world.
You’ll find all the plants you need around the world as you explore. Just collect every plant so that you can grow them back at your base, and then you can figure out how to craft all the dyes later.
9. Sleep With the Fishes
How to complete: Spend one entire day underwater.
This achievement is way less gross than it sounds. Rather than romancing the underwater wildlife in Minecraft, you just need to hold your breath and spend an entire day beneath the waves.
Obviously, this is quite a difficult achievement for one very good reason; you can’t hold your breath all day. However, there are ways to get around this little inconvenience.
The first way to make this easier is by using potions. A Potion of Water Breathing will allow you to breathe underwater for about 8 minutes. You might need a few, but this should get you through an entire day.
The second way to get this achievement is to build an underwater base. Simply pick a spot, and build one. At some point, you’ll spend an entire day underwater, and that will net you this achievement.
10. The End
How to complete: Kill an Ender Dragon.
The reason this is at the bottom of our hardest Minecraft achievements list is that, technically, it is the easiest. All you need to do is kill the hardest enemy in the game.
Getting to The End, the area the Ender Dragon occupies isn’t all that easy though. You’ll need multiple Eyes of Ender, from Endermen, and then you’ll have to build a portal.
After all of that, you’ve got to fight the Ender Dragon, something that many players can never beat. This enemy is extremely tough, and should only be taken on with the best weapons, armor, and healing items available.
The only advice I have is to keep persevering. If you can’t beat the Ender Dragon straight away, build up your resources, and come back later. The boss won’t be going anywhere, but it will when you come backpacking some serious heat.
Conclusion
Those are the top 10 hardest achievements in Minecraft. None of these are easy, and each one will probably require you to get towards the endgame area of Minecraft. You can’t rush any of these out, and some may still allude you until you’ve started 10 or so worlds.
If there’s an achievement that you think is worthy of this list, let us know what it is in the comments.
