The Complete Guide to Minecraft 1.17 Speedrunning

If you’re looking to start speedrunning yourself but don’t know any of the strategies or techniques that the top players use to get the best times, then you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to cover everything you need to know about speedrunning on minecraft 1.17 survival servers in this very article.

Let’s begin.

Some background on the game

Though Minecraft is an open-ended sandbox game, killing the Ender Dragon and jumping into the final portal is considered to be the end of the game when it comes to speedrunning. Therefore, if you’re trying to set a time for a glitchless any% random seed speedrun, which is the most common speedrun for Minecraft, then killing the Ender Dragon is your ultimate goal.

To get to the End where the Ender Dragon resides, you’ll need to collect ender pearls and blaze powder so you can craft yourself enough ender eyes to open up a stronghold portal. From 1.16 onwards, the most efficient way to get these items is by piglin bartering and blaze farming respectively. Both of these things can only be done in the Nether, so one of the very first things you need to do when you start your speedrun is make a Nether portal.

Confused? Don’t worry. We’ll now go over everything step by step to help you understand what you need to do in chronological order.

Minecraft 1.17 Speedrunning

Starting out in the Overworld

The first thing to do when you start your speedrun should be to craft some tools and look for a village, as this is where you’ll find a bunch of useful items that’ll help you in your run. Beds are crucial for fighting the Ender Dragon so be sure to raid village houses and collect as many of those as you can (at least 6 or 7), and you’ll also want to kill the village’s iron golem to get a quick source of iron. Playing on the OneBlock server? Set a home by running /sethome <name>

Next, try and find some gravel, as you get flint from digging it up. You’ll be able to combine this with iron to make flint and steel for setting your Nether portal alight down the line. Once you’ve done this, use the rest of your iron to make a bucket and pick up some water as you go on a search for a lava pool. These can sometimes be found at the surface of the overworld, but spawn more regularly underground, so have a look around for one.

If you want to learn the ultimate speedrunning technique for building a portal quickly and efficiently, be sure to check out some videos online that explain it well. This one does a pretty good job of it:

Minecraft Speedrunners Guide to Portal Building

The Search for Piglins

Once you’ve built your portal, lit it, and made your way into the Nether, the next step in your speedrun is finding piglins. The best place to find them is in bastion remnants, so have a search for one of those. Bastion remnants also have plenty of gold stashed around that you can use for bartering, just be careful not to get caught while stealing the gold as you can easily get attacked.

The goal is to keep bartering until you get enough ender pearls to fill a stronghold portal entirely, so at least 12. You'll likely also get some other useful items along the way while bartering like fire resistance potions, for example. They're not 100% necessary to your run but some of them may prove super useful in helping to keep you alive in case something goes wrong.

Blaze Rod Farming

After you’ve got everything that you need from bartering, you’ll now need to source some blaze rods, which you get by killing blazes. You can only find these mobs in nether fortresses, so go for a wander until you spot one. You’ll need at least 6 blaze rods, but there’s no harm getting a few extra just in case.

Back to the Overworld

Once you get back to the overworld, your quest to find a stronghold begins, as you should by now have everything you need. Start by throwing out an eye of ender, which will float up in the direction of the nearest stronghold. Head out in the direction you’ve been shown, and continue to use the eye of ender every so often to see if the direction changes. Eventually, once you've triangulated the stronghold's location, you can dig down to reach it. Have a look around for the portal room once you're inside and fill the frames with the eyes of ender to activate it. You're now just one step away from completing your Minecraft speedrun.

Minecraft Server Ender Dragon Fight

Fighting the Ender Dragon

Once you hop into the stronghold portal, you'll find yourself in the End. The Ender Dragon is the last thing you need to fight, but fortunately, the bed strategy exists, and will help you take it down with ease. Let us talk you through it.

First, you’ll need to wait for the Ender Dragon to come down to the final portal as it occasionally does. In this stage it is vulnerable, so you’re going to take advantage of this. Make sure to stand inside the portal, place a bed down, and place a block next to the bed to block the impending explosion from hitting you. Once the Ender Dragon is close enough to the ground, right-click the bed to trigger the explosion, then place another one and repeat 5-6 more times to deal heavy damage to the dragon. The dragon’s health bar will go down a considerable amount with each explosion, and once it dies, a special animation will trigger alongside the final portal activating. Congratulations on completing your speedrun!

Wrapping up

Speedrunning is never easy, and you may find yourself resetting your game a lot. Don’t fret though, as eventually things are sure to line up nicely for you and you’ll get a good time. Just keep at it using the method outlined above and adapt the order in which you do things as required. Good luck, and thanks for reading!