How to make and use a Beacon in Minecraft Pocket Edition (MCPE 1.19)

When Minecraft Pocket Edition updated to version 0.16, one of the coolest features added to the game was the beacon.

This is an item that can bestow special abilities to all players within its vicinity – turning you and a bunch of mates into an uber powerful army of Creeper crushers. The Beacon can boost players by granting them Speed, Jump Boost, Haste, Regeneration, Resistance, or Strength, which can prove extremely useful in some situations.

However, it ain’t exactly a walk in the park building your own Beacon. You’ll need some advanced items and some building know-how to make one. So follow our guide closely if you want to build your own.

How to make a beacon

Step 1 – Get glass

Mine sand from the beach and smelt it in a furnace to make glass. You need five glass blocks.

Step 2 – Get Obsidian

Make a bucket (crafted from three iron ingots) and fill it with water. Then go deep underground until you find lava.

You’re looking for the “lava source”, which doesn’t have a fast-flowing animation. Empty your bucket of water onto a block above the lava source so it drips down, lands on the lava, and cools it.

Scoop up the water to reveal blocks of obsidian. Then pluck them out of the ground using a diamond pick axe. You need three obsidian blocks.

Step 3 – Make a Wither

Enter the Nether and get four blocks of soul sand and three wither skeleton skulls. These are rare drops so you’ll have to kill a lot of skeletons.

Once you have all that, make a T-shaped soul sand sculpture, like above, and place the three skulls on the top row. When you place the final one…

Step 4 – Fight a Wither!

A Wither will appear. This is an extremely dangerous boss monster that is immune to many attacks, can spawn wither skeletons, and will generally ruin your day.

When it finally dies it will explode, and drop a Nether Star.

Step 5 – Craft a Beacon

Right, got all that? Use your glass, obsidian, and Nether star to make a beacon.

Step 6 – Make a pyramid

You’re also going to need at least nine iron blocks, gold blocks, emerald blocks, or diamond blocks. Those are crafted from nine iron ingots, gold bars, emeralds, or diamonds. So yeah, you better be rich.

There’s no functional difference in which mineral you use.

You then need to plop the bricks down and place the beacon on top. The most basic (and least powerful) pyramid is nine blocks with a beacon in the middle, like above.

The most powerful and expensive pyramid is like this: a nine by nine layer, a seven by seven, a five by five, and a three by three layer. 164 blocks, 1,476 minerals. Phew!

Step 7 – Feed the beacon

You can now “feed” the beacon to give it power. Tap on the beacon to open this window. Then place one mineral (either a diamond, an emerald, an iron ingot, or a gold bar) in the slot at the bottom.

Now you can choose a primary power. The wing increases movement speed, the golden pickaxe increases mining speed, the shield decreases incoming damage, the rabbit boosts jump, and the sword increases damage.

You can also set a secondary power. You can either set it to regenerate health, or increase the effectiveness of the primary power.

As you can see, the height of your pyramid dictates which powers you can apply.

Step 8 – Feel the effect

All players standing in the vicinity of the beacon will get the selected power. The range is also based on the height of the pyramid.

The effects of the Beacon

The Beacon has multiple powers, some of which can be considered “primary”, while others “secondary”. Players can choose from these Beacon Powers: 

• Speed
• Haste
• Resistance  – requires a two-level pyramid
• Jump Boost – requires a two-level pyramid
• Strength – requires a three-level pyramid
• Regeneration – requires a four-level pyramid

If you want to get all six effects at once, you will need to build a pyramid as follows:

• layer 1: 99 blocks
• layer 2: 63 blocks
• layer 3: 35 blocks
• layer 4: 15 blocks
• layer 5: 3 blocks in the center

By configuring each Beacon, you can then activate all six effects. 

Beacon Range

Depending on how big the pyramid is, the effects will affect a larger area and will last longer. 

• For a one-level pyramid, the range is 20 blocks and the effect lasts for 11 seconds.
• For a two-level pyramid, the range is 30 blocks and the effect lasts for 13 seconds.
• For a three-level pyramid, the range is 40 blocks and the effect lasts for 15 seconds.
• For a four-level pyramid, the range is 50 blocks and the effect lasts for 17 seconds.

Original article by Mark Brown, updated by Pocket Gamer Staff.