Where to Find the Netherite Upgrade Smithing Template in Minecraft

If you've upgraded to Minecraft Java Edition 1.20 or Bedrock Edition's equivalent update, you already know that upgrading gear to Netherite no longer works the old way. The Netherite Upgrade Smithing Template is now a required crafting ingredient — and finding it takes a specific approach. Here's exactly where to look and what affects how easily you'll get your hands on one.

What Is the Netherite Upgrade Smithing Template?

In versions prior to 1.20 (the Trails & Tales update), upgrading a Diamond item to Netherite only required a Smithing Table, a Diamond item, and a Netherite Ingot. The update overhauled that system entirely.

Now, the Smithing Table recipe requires three ingredients:

• A Netherite Upgrade Smithing Template
• The Diamond item you want to upgrade
• A Netherite Ingot

Without the template, you simply cannot perform the upgrade — no workarounds, no substitutions. This was a deliberate design change to make Netherite gear feel more earned and to add deeper progression to late-game play.

Where the Template Spawns 🗺️

The Netherite Upgrade Smithing Template has one natural spawn location: Bastion Remnant chests in the Nether.

Bastions are large, fortress-like structures that generate in four Nether biomes:

• Crimson Forest
• Warped Forest
• Nether Wastes
• Soul Sand Valley

They do not generate in Basalt Deltas.

Which Chests Inside Bastions Contain It?

Not every chest in a Bastion has a chance to contain the template. The template appears specifically in treasure room chests — the heavily guarded central loot area typically protected by a Piglin Brute. The drop rate from these chests is not guaranteed, so you may need to search multiple Bastions.

The four Bastion types — Bridge, Hoglin Stables, Housing Units, and Treasure Room — each have different layouts. The treasure room variant is the one you're specifically hunting.

How to Duplicate the Template Once You Have One

Here's where things get significantly more efficient: Smithing Templates are duplicable.

Once you have a single Netherite Upgrade Smithing Template, you can copy it at a Crafting Table using:

• 1x Netherite Upgrade Smithing Template
• 7x Netherrack
• 1x Netherite Ingot

This produces 2 templates from those materials. The duplication recipe follows the same layout pattern as all Smithing Template duplication — the template in the center, the base material (Netherrack in this case) filling the surrounding slots, and the corresponding "diamond equivalent" material in the remaining slot.

This means finding one template is the hard part. After that, scaling up becomes a crafting cost question rather than an exploration problem.

Factors That Affect How Quickly You Find One 🔍

Not every playthrough leads to the same experience. Several variables determine how straightforward — or frustrating — the search becomes:

World seed and biome distribution. Some seeds generate Nether biomes in patterns that cluster Bastions closer to the spawn point or to each other. Others scatter them far apart. There's no guaranteed proximity.

Bastion type variance. Bastions generate randomly as one of four types. If you're consistently finding Bridge or Stables variants near your spawn, you may need to travel further before encountering a Treasure Room layout. The type isn't visible from the outside.

Looting and difficulty settings. The template's presence in a chest is tied to loot table logic, not difficulty — but difficulty affects how dangerous the retrieval is. Piglin Brutes in treasure rooms are aggressive regardless of whether you're wearing Gold armor, unlike regular Piglins.

Prior looting of the Bastion. In multiplayer or older world saves, Bastion chests may already be looted. Chest contents do not respawn without structure-specific resets, which standard survival gameplay doesn't support.

Navigation approach. Using a Nether pathway (traveling 1 block in the Nether = 8 blocks in the Overworld) makes covering large distances faster. Players who've built or found Nether highways reach more Bastions in less time.

Different Player Situations Lead to Different Strategies

For a solo survival player starting fresh, the typical path is: reach the Nether, locate a Bastion by exploring along Nether ceiling level, identify the type, raid the treasure room, and then duplicate from there.

For a multiplayer server player, the Bastions near spawn may already be cleared. Coordinating with other players or traveling further into unexplored chunks becomes necessary.

For a player using seeds intentionally, tools like Chunkbase allow you to locate Bastion coordinates before entering the Nether — which removes the exploration uncertainty entirely and turns it into a targeted retrieval mission.

For a newer player still building Nether infrastructure, the Piglins and Piglin Brutes in a Bastion represent a significant combat challenge before any loot is accessible. Preparation — armor level, food, fire resistance potions — meaningfully changes how viable a Bastion raid is.

The template itself isn't rare in an absolute sense. It's tied to a specific structure, a specific chest type within that structure, and a loot table that doesn't guarantee it every time. How quickly any individual player reaches one depends heavily on their world's geography, their progression stage, and how they choose to navigate the Nether.