How to Make a Compass
Four iron and a pinch of redstone build an instrument that always knows the way to spawn, and, with one trick, the way to anywhere you choose.
The recipe
Four iron ingots in a plus, one redstone dust dead centre.
Grab the exact grid on Astroworld crafting, or look up iron and redstone in the items database.
Where the needle points
A compass has exactly two targets it can chase.
A fresh compass points to the world spawn point, the place new players appear, not your bed. Sleeping never moves it. It works the same wherever you carry it in the Overworld.
Right-click a compass on a lodestone and it re-targets to that block, even across dimensions. It keeps pointing there until you travel out of range or the lodestone is destroyed, then the needle spins uselessly.
Link it to a lodestone
Three steps to make the needle point anywhere you want.
Surround a netherite ingot with eight chiseled stone bricks. One lodestone, one anchor point.
A base entrance, a portal, a mining outpost. The needle will track this exact block.
Hold the compass and use it on the lodestone. It flashes and binds. Now it points home from anywhere in range.
A linked compass survives dimension changes, so it doubles as a Nether-portal homing beacon. Read up on the lodestone for its full block behaviour.
Two more ways to use it
Recovery compassSurround a compass with eight echo shards from ancient cities. It points to where you last died, your fastest route back to dropped gear.
On a mapPut a compass and an empty map on a cartography table and the map gains a marker that tracks your live position as you move across it.
Quick answers
Pair the compass with a clock for the other half of an explorer’s toolkit, look up the recovery compass and echo shards in the items database, or open the crafting recipes for the exact grids.