Minecraft trail ruins guide: Location, loot, and more

Minecraft's trail ruins arrived in the game in the 1.20 Trails & Tales update, and serve as an intriguing location to explore and perform a little archeology. They can appear in various in-game biomes, and the suspicious gravel they contain can be brushed for a plethora of different loot items. They're also not a bad spot to mine naturally generated terracotta, glazed terracotta, and blocks of coal.

While they're far from the most lucrative structures when it comes to loot, Minecraft trail ruins can still be fun to explore and provide some extra items and resources for players to make use of however they see fit. Since this is the case, players should familiarize themselves with these structures just in case they happen upon one.

Everything About Minecraft Trail Ruins

Where do trail ruins generate?

A partially excavated trail ruin in Minecraft's old growth birch forest biome (Image via Mojang)

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Minecraft's trail ruins are programmed to generate in taiga, snowy taiga, old growth taiga, old growth birch forest, and jungle biomes. Typically, they generate mostly underground, but the towers that are part of these structures often poke through the surface of the ground and can be spotted by looking for small clusters of terracotta, glazed terracotta, mud bricks, or gravel.

Since terracotta is usually found plentifully in badlands biomes and comes in many different colors, these blocks should be relatively easy to spot in the environment considering they don't naturally generate in the biomes where trail ruins are found.

What is the layout of trail ruins?

Trail ruin layouts vary, but they share common characteristics in Minecraft (Image via u/Felineferocious/Reddit)

Like many generated structures in Minecraft, trail ruins have varying layouts each time one generates in the game world. However, most trail ruins follow certain conventions and have features that players can recognize between individual ruins, including:

A main road built from cobblestone, stone, and stone brick blocks.
Smaller buildings connected to the main road.
A central tower comprised of terracotta and glazed terracotta blocks, the tip of the tower can often be found above ground.
Small rooms/buildings composed of terracotta and mud bricks can sometimes appear near the tower.
Much of the entire structure will be buried in dirt, gravel, coarse dirt, and suspicious gravel blocks.

Check out - How to do archeology in Minecraft

Loot that can be found in trail ruins

Loot is obtained in trail ruins by using a brush on suspicious gravel blocks (Image via Mojang)

In contrast to many other Minecraft structures, trail ruins are looted by conducting archeology. Specifically, players will need to use a brush and search for suspicious gravel blocks. When these blocks are brushed, they'll dispense loot based on the trail ruin's loot table which will vary between the Java and Bedrock Editions.

Moreover, some suspicious gravel blocks are connected to the standard loot table, while others are connected to a rare loot table that will dispense higher-quality items. Below, Minecraft players can find the loot tables for trail ruins:

Standard Loot (Java Edition)

Item	Quantity	Appearance Chance
Blue Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Clay	1	4.4%
Dead Bush	1	2.2%
Light Blue Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Magenta Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Oak Hanging Sign	1	2.2%
Pink Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Purple Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Red Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Spruce Hanging Sign	1	2.2%
Yellow Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Beetroot Seeds	1	2.2%
Blue Dye	1	4.4%
Brick	1	4.4%
Brown Candle	1	4.4%
Coal	1	2.2%
Emerald	1	4.4%
Flower Pot	1	2.2%
Gold Nugget	1	2.2%
Green Candle	1	4.4%
Lead	1	2.2%
Light Blue Dye	1	4.4%
Orange Dye	1	4.4%
Purple Candle	1	4.4%
Red Candle	1	4.4%
String	1	2.2%
Wheat Seeds	1	2.2%
Wheat	1	4.4%
White Dye	1	4.4%
Wooden Hoe	1	4.4%
Yellow Dye	1	4.4%

Standard Loot (Bedrock Edition)

Item	Quantity	Appearance Chance
Blue Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Dead Bush	1	2.2%
Light Blue Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Magenta Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Oak Hanging Sign	1	2.2%
Pink Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Purple Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Red Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Spruce Hanging Sign	1	2.2%
Yellow Stained Glass Pane	1	2.2%
Beetroot Seeds	1	2.2%
Blue Dye	1	4.3%
Brick	1	8.7%
Brown Candle	1	4.3%
Clay Ball	1	4.3%
Emerald	1	4.3%
Flower Pot	1	2.2%
Gold Nugget	1	2.2%
Green Candle	1	4.3%
Lead	1	2.2%
Light Blue Dye	1	4.3%
Orange Dye	1	4.3%
Purple Candle	1	4.3%
Red Candle	1	4.3%
String	1	2.2%
Wheat Seeds	1	2.2%
Wheat	1	4.3%
White Dye	1	4.3%
Wooden Hoe	1	4.3%
Yellow Dye	1	4.3%

Suspicious gravel compared to standard gravel (Image via Mojang)

Rare Loot (Java & Bedrock Edition)

Item	Quantity	Appearance Chance
Burn Pottery Sherd	1	8.3%
Danger Pottery Sherd	1	8.3%
Friend Pottery Sherd	1	8.3%
Heart Pottery Sherd	1	8.3%
Heartbreak Pottery Sherd	1	8.3%
Host Armor Trim Smithing Template	1	8.3%
Howl Pottery Sherd	1	8.3%
Music Disc (Relic)	1	8.3%
Raiser Armor Trim Smithing Template	1	8.3%
Shaper Armor Trim Smithing Template	1	8.3%
Sheaf Pottery Sherd	1	8.3%
Wayfinder Armor Trim Smithing Template	1	8.3%

It should be noted that suspicious gravel blocks carrying standard loot and those carrying rare loot look exactly the same, so the only way players will be able to know the difference between them is to brush them and find out.

The Bottom Line

While trail ruins aren't chock full of diamonds or other extremely precious resources, they help expand the world of archeology and are one of the lone sources of pottery sherds alongside structures that carry suspicious sand. Moreover, they're the only place players can find the Relic music disc and the Host, Raiser, Shaper, and Wayfinder armor trim templates in Survival Mode.

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Edited by Ashmita Bhatt