How to open Minecraft’s secret Ancient City Redstone door

Get an in-game Redstone lesson

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Minecraft’s Ancient Cities are a dark, mysterious structure made up of extensive hallways and secret rooms. One secret Ancient City room, though, is particularly well-hidden, tucked behind a Redstone door.

In order to get access to the room, you’ll need to figure out where and how to trigger the Redstone mechanism. Of course, Minecraft’s Ancient Cities are made up of mostly Deepslate variants, so you can just mine your way into the secret room. But where’s the fun in that?

Where is the secret Ancient City Redstone room?

While there are a number of secret rooms hidden around Ancient Cities, like the pressure-plate triggered Ice Box, this one is hidden right in the center of the city, beneath the giant Warden-shaped frame and Soul Sand flames. Once there, you’ll be able to locate the secret Redstone door at the front as it should be set back from the rest of the wall. If not, it could be hidden by blocks, but there should be a wooden bridge – or remnants of a wooden bridge – that will also give away the location of the door.

Once there, you’ll need to locate the trigger for the door, which should be above it. So far, we’ve found that it could be one of two different triggers, having checked a fair few cities. There could be some we’ve not come across, though, or more could be added. Do let us know if you’ve found an Ancient City Redstone door that doesn’t open with one of the following puzzles.

How to open the Ancient City Redstone room

The Loot Chest

One of the Redstone contraptions that you could be looking at involves a Wooden Chest, located above the Redstone door, and in front of the City Center Warden frame. If you see a chest here, you’ll know this is the method you need to use. If not, read on for the other Redstone trigger.

Upon locating the chest, open it, and remove the single item within. It will either be a Golden Apple or a Golden Carrot. Don’t worry, it’s a normal chest, not a Trapped Chest, so nothing will happen yet.

Standing in front of the chest, try munching on your carrot or apple. You’ll notice that you don’t consume the item as normal, but you should hear Pistons activating, and the door beneath you should open. There are a few different places you can stand for this, including right up against the hidden door itself, but our guess is that you are supposed to be standing directly in front of the chest. If the door doesn’t open, you might not be close enough to the Sculk Sensor within the Redstone circuit, so try moving around. As the food item won’t be consumed, you can try multiple times.

The Chiseled Deepslate

If there is no Wooden Chest above your Redstone door, you’ll instead need to look for a single Chiseled Deepslate block. This can be in a different place each time, but should still be somewhere on the small landing in front of the Warden head monument. Chiseled Deepslate looks a little like a Dispenser or Observer, or a Minecraft mob face, as you can see in the middle of the image below.

Once you find it, you’ll need to trigger the Sculk Sensor that will be directly beneath it. To do this, simply walk over the Chiseled Deepslate, and you’ll hear pistons activating and opening the door beneath you.

Inside the Ancient City secret Redstone room

Once you’ve triggered the door to the secret Redstone room, you can head inside and check out the Redstone lesson within! Now, there is no loot inside this room as such, though there are a lot of Redstone components you can grab before you leave. The real purpose of this room isn’t hugely clear at this point, and could be changed before the full Wild Update release, but if nothing else, you can take a look round a handful of Redstone circuits.

The main Redstone circuit

The main Redstone circuit you’ll find, which should be on your left as you enter the room, is the circuit that open the doors. You can take a look at just how that worked – whether it’s the 24 items in the furnace to determine the signal strength required, or the wool and water smothered Sculk sensor, determining the exact location in which you needed to be.

The target block

From there, you’ll find a target block circuit, which you can trigger by shooting the target block with an arrow. More appropriately for the Ancient City, you can also trigger a target block with another projectile – a snowball! If you don’t have a snowball or a bow and arrow on you, no bother, it doesn’t do anything (again – yet), it’s just a demonstration of the Redstone signal given by hitting a target block.

The lectern

The next circuit you’ll find involves a lectern. For this, you’ll need a Book and Quill, which you’ll unlikely be carrying around with you. When a Book and Quill or Written Book is placed on a lectern, it gives off a Redstone signal. However, as you probably won’t have one, and you can’t get a Book and Quill from Ancient City chest loot, you might not be able to trigger this circuit. Another reason we think a further use for this room is yet to be revealed.

The non-solid block

Finally, there is a demonstration of how a Redstone signal passes through a solid block, but does not pass through a non-solid block, such as the Glass Block seen in the circuit. This one doesn’t have any interactivity – apart from stealing the components and running away.

So there you have it! The secrets behind the secret Ancient City Redstone door are revealed. We’ll update this if any changes are made to the room or if any other door triggers are found, so do let us know in the comments if you come across one we haven’t! And, if you wound up here by mistake and aren’t sure what the hell we’re talking about, here’s a guide to everything you need to know about Minecraft’s Ancient Cities.

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