how dream (and a lot of other speedrunners!!) finds the end portal, a thread (with diagrams):

basic info: the stronghold(s) spawn in a ring around spawn (that’s what he’s talking ab when he says at least 1500 blocks from spawn), the eye is leading the the entrance stair case (the only staircase which lead to a stone wall)

when the eye is thrown for the first time the path it takes is noted (whether by remembering or by blocks) and you start running. after a bit you mark your location and run off your path to the side and throw another eye. if the eye goes only slightly towards the path it means

the strong hold is still far away and you go back to your path and keep running for a bit again. (aka not much curve on the eye, show in diagram)

after a bit of following the original path again you throw another eye. this time the eye should curve more towards the path as you are closer to it.

you repeat this process until it basically goes straight sideways into your original path. you find the crossing point of these two lines made and dig down. you should (in theory) dig into the stronghold (not necessarily the entrance staircase)

the portal room spawns a minimum of 5 rooms away from the entrance staircase so if you can find it, it’s a good marker point (like i said before it’s the only staircase that leads to stone/stone equivalent (andesite etc))

hallways which end in stone brick aren’t the end of the stronghold and you should dig through them (there’ll likely be another room on the other side, sometimes it’s the portal room!) the end of the hallway is sometimes a cave, sometimes stone (the stronghold can stretch over

a ravine/cave though) if you see the staircase structure below and the walls don’t have a door but are stone brick, you can break through those too and there might be more stronghold behind them too.

running around rooms is usually the first thing to do, try clearing out floors one by one rather than going down the first staircase you see.

UNDERWATER STRONGHOLDS

sometimes the stronghold will be in the ocean! if you’re boating whilst looking for it, go in F5 (so you can see the back of your character) and lower your view until you get the right angle so the water becomes “invisible” and you can see the ocean floor

& therefore the stronghold. look for a room that has iron bars & light, this will be the portal room!

i think that covers everything i can think of ??? i’m not an expert in speedrunning but this is what i’ve picked up over the past few months from various streams/posts about speedrunning. there could be some inaccuracies but i think the main points are pretty solid

i did this entirely from memory, mc pictures are from google, drawn diagrams by me :) i really love game mechanics and stuff like this so this was a very fun thread to make :D

BETTER QUALITY SPAWN DIAGRAM !!!

all of the above tweets apply to java (there is probably cross over but i’ve no idea) but this is a lil bit on bedrock: https://twitter.com/eyesofender/status/1312822226794827776

it’s something that can take a while to wrap your head around and the more you practise, the more it will make sense!