Both the Ominous Trial Keys and Trial Chambers introduced in Minecraft 1.21 are another side activity you can check out for some really sweet loot, like fishing. However, Trial Chambers are much more combat-focused, so we highly recommend bringing your best gear. In return, you can get your hands on blocks of diamond, enchanted books, and the Flow Armor Trim Smithing Template. Before that, you’ll need an Ominous Trial Key, which can be found in Minecraft’s Trial Chambers.
Where To Get Ominous Trial Keys
But first, why bother even getting Ominous Trial Keys in Minecraft? What are they even for? You use Ominous Trial Keys to unlock an Ominous Vault, obviously! Oh, that sounds valuable! If you were to open an Ominous Vault, you can get any of these items:
- Arrow of Slowness IV
- Block of Diamond
- Block of Emerald
- Block of Iron
- Diamond
- Emerald
- Enchanted Book
- Enchanted Crossbow
- Enchanted Diamond Axe
- Enchanted Diamond Chestplate
- Enchanted Golden Apple
- Flow Armor Trim Smithing Template
- Flow Banner Pattern
- Golden Apple
- Heavy Core
- Music Disc (Creator)
- Ominous Battle III – V
- Wind Charge
That’s a pretty good list of rewards, one of which is the Heavy Core. You’ll need that if you want to craft your very own mace and the template for cool-as-ice armor trimming. Of course, you’ll need to first find a Trial Chamber, right?
Where To Find Trial Chambers
In Minecraft, Trial Chambers act as combat trials—hence, the reason you should always bring your best gear. There are two types of Trial Chambers: your normal ones, the Trial Chamber, and an “Ominous” Trial Chamber.
You want to complete an Ominous Trial Chamber if you want the Ominous Trial Keys. The normal, default Trial Chambers can be completed without turning them ominous, but the rewards won’t be as great. Makes sense, right?
Now, here’s the bad news: Trial Chambers are a randomly generated structure, just like cave systems or broken Nether portals. General consensus seems to be that they generate between Y = -40 and -20 or Y = -20 and 0. In other words: we hope the RNG is good to you.
If you don’t mind cheating a little, you can use console commands or something less drastic and go with Chunkbase. Plug in your world seed into the tool, and it’ll generate your map from the data. From there, you can find points of interest, such as Trial Chambers.
But wait… there’s more!
In order to convert a Trial Chamber into an Ominous Trial Chamber, you need to get near the trial spawner “block” while you’re under the influence of Bad Omen. You don’t get that from killing Pillagers anymore because the 1.21 Update changed it to a consumable they drop that you can choose to drink. Breath!
Did you get all that? Here’s a quick list of the steps:
- Kill Pillagers for Ominous Bottles (and their structures).
- Find a Trial Chamber and find the trial spawner block.
- Drink the Ominous Bottle when you’re close to it.
- Complete the Trial Chamber combat challenge.
- Loot the Ominous Trial Key from the trial spawner.
- Loot the Ominous Vault.
Well, when it’s said like that, it doesn’t seem that complicated. It’s tedious, but once you do it the first time, it’ll totally click!
