Building Blocks: Trial Chamber

Trial chambers can be found underground, distributed roughly evenly throughout the Overworld. But you don’t need to go digging randomly to find one – there’s a smarter option. Track down a cartographer villager, and after earning their trust with a few early trades, there’s a good chance they’ll be persuaded to sell you a trial explorer map, which points the way to the nearest chamber.

You’ll know you’ve found the chamber when you come across a structure made of tuff and copper. Make your way inside, and you’ll find a collection of rooms, some of which contain trial spawners and vaults. Be wary, and don’t approach until you’re ready for a fight. If you happen to have the Bad Omen effect on you, be extra careful, because it’ll upgrade the spawners to deliver a much harder challenge, albeit one that’ll deliver even better loot.

Speaking of loot, there are all kinds of goodies you’ll find in a trial chamber. The vaults are the main event, spawning rare tools, weapons, and armor. You’ll also come across a scattering of chests, barrels and pots containing resources to top you up between fights.

Trial by combat is a real-world thing. It was used in law, mostly during the Middle Ages in Europe, to settle disputes in situations where neither side would confess and there was no witness available to establish the truth. The two sides would fight, and the winner of the fight was proclaimed to be correct.

If that doesn’t sound like a very good basis for law, you’d be right. The idea is that you need to be willing to stake your life in support of your accusation, but the reality is that the stronger person tends to win, whether they’re right or not. As such, it began to disappear in the 16th century in favour of more modern approaches like neutral judges and juries.

So next time you’re trying to figure out which of your friends lured a creeper into your house while you were out mining, we can’t recommend you rely on trial by combat. Instead, forgive them both and go tackle a trial chamber together. With any luck, facing a collection of dangerous foes might just bring you all closer. Then once it’s cleared out, move your home into the trial chamber instead.