How to Find Buried Treasure in Minecraft (2026 Guide for Java & Bedrock)

Buried treasure in Minecraft is a chest of guaranteed loot hidden under beach biomes, and the only place in survival where you can pick up a Heart of the Sea. The system has been in the game since Update Aquatic (1.13) in 2018 and still works the same way in the current 1.21 release as of 2026 — the catch is that the “X marks the spot” on your map covers a much larger area than most tutorials admit, so you need to know how to narrow it to the exact chunk.

This guide covers both Java and Bedrock Edition, because the tools you have to pinpoint the chest are very different between the two.

Step 1: Get a Buried Treasure Map

You cannot craft a buried treasure map. It only spawns as loot in two underwater structures.

Shipwrecks (the reliable source)

Shipwrecks generate in all ocean biomes and sometimes partially buried on beaches or frozen into ice. Each shipwreck has up to three chests: a supply chest near the bow, a treasure chest near the stern, and a map chest in the lower portion of the hull. The map chest contains a buried treasure map 100% of the time, so once you find the right room you are guaranteed a map.

If the wreck is flipped or broken, the “lower” section may be sideways or on top — check every interior room before giving up.

Ocean Ruins (the slow source)

Ocean ruins are small stone or sandstone structures scattered across the ocean floor. A large cold ocean ruin chest has roughly a 41.7% chance of containing a buried treasure map, and warm ruin chests are lower. Because you often have to loot several ruins to get a single map, most players prefer shipwrecks.

Step 2: Read the Map

Place the map in your hotbar and hold it. You will see a white dot (you) and a red X (the chest). The map is always oriented with north at the top.

Keep two things in mind before you start swimming:

The map only reveals surrounding terrain as you walk into it. If the map looks blank, you are too far from the marked area — walk in any direction and the terrain will fill in.
The X is drawn at a resolution of one pixel per chunk, so it can easily be off by 15 blocks or more. You will always need to narrow down the exact chunk once you arrive.

Step 3: Pinpoint the Exact Chunk

The chest is always buried at local coordinates X=9, Z=9 inside the marked chunk, roughly 2–7 blocks below the surface. Finding that chunk is the part where Java and Bedrock players diverge.

On Java Edition

Press F3 to open the debug screen. The right column shows your current chunk in the “Chunk” row.
Press F3 + G to toggle chunk borders. Yellow lines appear outlining every chunk.
Walk onto the chunk that lines up with the X on your map.
Watch the debug screen for “Block: X Y Z” — move until the last two digits of X and Z both read 9 (for example, 249 and −71 both end in 9). You are now standing on block 9,9 of that chunk.
Dig straight down. The chest is usually within seven blocks of the surface.

On Bedrock Edition

Bedrock has no F3 screen and no chunk-border keybind, so you have to calculate the chunk center manually.

Go to Settings → Game → “Show Coordinates” and turn it on. Your XYZ position will show at the top of the screen.
Chunks are 16 blocks wide and aligned to multiples of 16. To find the chunk center, take your current X, divide by 16, round down to the nearest whole number, then multiply by 16 and add 9. Do the same for Z.
Example: if your X is 247, the chunk starts at 240 (240/16 = 15), so the center is X = 249. If your Z is −84, the chunk starts at −96, so the center is Z = −87.
Walk to that exact (X, 9) by (Z, 9) position and dig down.

Bedrock players who own the Marketplace “Toolbox” or a recent version with educational debug overlays can sometimes see chunk info, but for pure vanilla Bedrock, the math above is the reliable method.

Step 4: Dig and Loot

A buried treasure chest is a single chest (never a double chest) surrounded by sand, gravel, or dirt depending on biome. Loot in a current-version chest always includes one Heart of the Sea, plus a randomized roll of iron ingots, gold ingots, cooked cod or salmon, an occasional diamond or emerald, potions of water breathing, and TNT. The Heart of the Sea is the key ingredient for crafting a Conduit, which is the real reason most players hunt buried treasure.

Useful Gear Before You Go

Potion of Water Breathing or a turtle shell helmet — essential for long underwater runs to shipwrecks and ocean ruins.
Potion of Night Vision — underwater visibility is poor without it, especially in deep ocean biomes.
Depth Strider III enchanted boots — dramatically speeds up walking along the ocean floor.
Spyglass — lets you scan the horizon for shipwreck masts without swimming out to every dark shape.
Magma blocks or a bucket of air — placing a magma block on the ocean floor creates a bubble column you can breathe in, and mining the block fills the gap instantly if you need to escape.

Troubleshooting: I Dug at the X and Found Nothing

This is by far the most common buried treasure problem. Run through the checks in this order:

Wrong chunk. The X on the map is low-resolution. You almost certainly need to move 8–15 blocks in one direction to line up with chunk center 9,9. Re-check with F3+G (Java) or coordinate math (Bedrock).
You dug at the X visually, not the chunk center. These are not the same. The chest is always at local 9,9 of the marked chunk, not at the exact pixel the X is drawn on.
Wrong biome. Buried treasure only generates in beach, snowy beach, and stony shore biomes. If your X lands in open ocean or jungle, the chunk system is off — verify the chunk with the debug screen and look for the nearest beach tile.
Treasure above you, not below. On snowy beaches and stony shores, the chest can spawn at Y levels higher than you expect. Mine in a 3×3 column up and down, not just down.
Server anti-cheat. On some multiplayer servers, buried treasure is disabled or relocated. Ask the server admin or check the server’s documentation before spending hours on a single map.

Finding Treasure Without a Map

It is possible but slow. Every beach biome chunk has roughly a 1% chance of containing buried treasure, and there is no visual surface indicator — contrary to what some older guides claim, the suspicious sand and suspicious gravel blocks added in 1.20 are for the archaeology system and brushes, not for buried treasure. Buried treasure chests are hidden under ordinary sand or gravel.

If you really want to find treasure without a map, walk along long stretches of beach while using a Fortune-enchanted shovel or Minecraft’s “locate” command (/locate structure buried_treasure) if you have cheats enabled on a single-player world. The command returns the exact coordinates of the nearest chest, which is the fastest method overall.

One More Trick: Stack Maps Before You Dig

If you collect two or three buried treasure maps from different shipwrecks before you start digging, open each in your hotbar and compare them. Maps for chests that are close to each other often reveal overlapping terrain, letting you plan a loop that hits three chests in one expedition. This is the most efficient way to farm Hearts of the Sea for a conduit build in survival.

Once you understand that the red X is a chunk marker and not a pixel-perfect spot, buried treasure becomes one of the most reliable sources of mid-game loot in Minecraft — including the only path to a conduit in legitimate survival play.