How to Make a Spyglass in Minecraft [illustrated guide]

Featured Image credit: Mojang.

Before 1.17, if you wanted to see distant objects in Minecraft, you had to install the mod, Optifine, onto your game. 

But Mojang heard the cries of players everywhere, and in the 1.17 update, we finally got the Spyglass, which gives you a magnified view of the beautiful blocky landscape.

Now you can look deep into those skeleton eye sockets from a safe distance!

So let’s have a closer look (pun intended) and see how to make this helpful little tool and best use it to see things hundreds of blocks away!

You might like how to make red glass in Minecraft.

Making the Spyglass

Making the spyglass in Minecraft is easy because it only requires three items. 

It takes two copper ingots and one amethyst shard, and if your heart drops at the mention of amethyst, take a breath. 

I will tell you exactly how to get your hands on the amethyst needed for the spyglass so you can watch your foes from afar.

Minecraft spyglass recipe:

Here’s how to make the spyglass in a few simple steps:

1. Open your crafting menu with the materials needed in your inventory.
2. Place two copper ingots in the crafting table, stacked on one another, as shown in the image below.
   • Tip: If you don’t have cobber ingots, you can either craft some from copper blocks (you get 9 copper ingots from one block of copper) or smelt some raw cobber, copper ore, or deepslate copper ore in a furnace or blast furnace.
3. Put the amethyst shard in the first row on top of the copper ingots in the crafting grid.
4. Take the newly crafted spyglass and pop it into your inventory.

You now have a brand new spyglass! 

Locating Amethyst

While finding raw copper ore in Minecraft is incredibly easy, with it spawning more often than iron, Amethyst crystals can sometimes seem impossible to find.

That is because amethyst geodes are typically no more than 20 blocks wide and spawn underground.

Amethyst shards are dropped by the small clusters sticking off the sides.

If looking for an amethyst geode underground, you can typically find them between bedrock level and Y=70.

Now, you could use a mod like JourneyMap or Xaero’s Minimap to find one, but there is an easy way in Vanilla Minecraft.

While amethyst most commonly spawns deep underground, it can also be found in the ocean scattered along the seabed at the bottom of oceans.

So all you have to do is go on a sea adventure and search for the telltale spherical shape all amethyst geodes are. 

Once you spot one, swim down to it, break your way in, and then plug the hole so you don’t drown while harvesting the amethyst.

Here’s an elaborate amethyst guide to the different growth stages – from bud to amethyst clusters, how to make amethyst blocks or tainted glass blocks, and more.

How to Use the Spyglass

Now that you have the spyglass, it is time to learn how to use it. Follow the steps below to use a spyglass in Minecraft. 

1. Take your newly crafted spyglass and place it in any of your hotbar slots. 
2. Select the hotbar slot you placed it in. 
3. Hold down right-click to zoom in on whatever you are looking at. 

Looking through a spyglass will cause a vignette to appear around the player’s field of view (due to the circular lens), so press F1 to turn that off.

Just remember to hit F1 again after you are done using the spyglass to turn your hotbar back on; otherwise, you may be confused why it has disappeared.

Conclusion

Spyglasses are one of the coolest and most useful tools added to Minecraft in the past few years, allowing you to see things up close. 

If you found this article helpful, check out how to make the most of Efficiency in Minecraft to become wealthy and powerful. Until next time, happy gaming!

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FAQ

How to make a spyglass using the command

Minecraft players playing the Java edition on PC can use the spyglass command (give command) to spawn one.

For this to work, you need to have enabled cheats, which is done, when you create a new world.

It’s easy enough if you follow these step-by-step instructions:

1. From the main menu, click create a new world.
2. Click More World Options
3. Toggle Allow Cheats to On
4. Click Done
5. Click Create New World
6. Once you’re in the new world, open the Minecraft chat window by pressing “T”
7. Type in /give @p spyglass 1

If you play Minecraft on Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, or Pocket Edition game version, simply add a zero to the give command, like this: /give @p spyglass 1 0

If you play Minecraft Bedrock Edition, type /give p spyglass 1 (where p is the player name).

Tadaa, you now have your own spyglass – almost without cheating.

How to create use the spyglass with a night vision potion or with thermal vision (Bedrock edition)

I found this great video by RedstoneKnightX on YouTube on applying the night vision potion or thermal vision (like spectral arrows) to the spyglass.

It’s a nice little trick to know, so I thought I share: