How to Get the Mace in Minecraft: Heavy Core, Ominous Trials and the Full Recipe

The mace turns every fall into a finishing blow. Here's how to start an Ominous Trial, earn an ominous trial key and pull a Heavy Core from an ominous vault.

The mace is the most satisfying weapon Minecraft has ever added. Swing it on flat ground and it's a slow club. Swing it while falling and it hits harder the farther you dropped, and the fall damage you were about to take simply disappears. Jump off a pillar onto a Warden or a raid captain and the fight can be over in one blow.

The catch: you can't find a mace lying around. You have to craft it, and one of its two parts, the Heavy Core, comes from just one place in the game. This guide walks you through the whole chain, from finding Trial Chambers to the final crafting step. It applies to both Java and Bedrock in the current version, since the Tricky Trials systems behind it haven't changed.

What you need

Because the Heavy Core is a 7.5% roll, most players need several ominous vaults before one drops. Expect a bit of a grind rather than a single lucky trip.

Step-by-step: how to get the mace

1. Find a Trial Chamber. These copper-and-tuff structures generate underground in every Overworld biome except the Deep Dark. The starting room sits between Y -40 and -20, and most of the rooms are between Y -20 and 0. The easiest way to find one is a trial chambers map, sold by journeyman cartographer villagers (12 emeralds and a compass). Without a map, explore large caves at that depth and watch for tuff bricks and copper.
2. Clear it once normally. On your first visit, fight the regular trial spawners. You'll collect Breeze Rods from Breezes along the way, and ordinary trial keys open the normal vaults, which can contain Ominous Bottles. Note where the ominous vault is. The one you can count on sits above the grand staircase in the central atrium.
3. Get an Ominous Bottle. If the vaults didn't give you one, kill a raid captain, a pillager carrying a banner. Patrols and pillager outposts are the usual places to find them.
4. Drink the bottle near the Trial Chamber. This gives you Bad Omen. Don't drink it next to a village, because Bad Omen near villagers starts a raid instead.
5. Walk up to a trial spawner. When a trial spawner detects you, your Bad Omen turns into Trial Omen and the spawner becomes ominous. Trial Omen lasts 15 minutes for each level of Bad Omen you had, so a level III bottle gives you 45 minutes. Any other spawner that sees you during that time also turns ominous.
6. Beat the ominous spawners. Ominous mobs carry better weapons and enchanted armor, and the spawner keeps dropping projectiles and lingering potions on you every few seconds. When a spawner's wave is defeated it ejects better loot than normal, and each one has a 30% chance to drop an ominous trial key. Work through as many spawners as you can while Trial Omen lasts.
7. Open the ominous vault. Go back to the ominous vault while you still have Trial Omen and use the key on it. The key is consumed and the vault spits out its rewards. If you're lucky, one of them is the Heavy Core.
8. Find another vault if you missed. Each player can open a given ominous vault only once, so a failed roll means heading to another Trial Chamber. In multiplayer, every player in your group can open the same vault with their own key, which is a quick way to get more rolls.
9. Craft the mace. At a crafting table, put the Heavy Core directly above the Breeze Rod in the same column. Leave the other slots empty.

How the mace works

A normal hit deals 6 damage (3 hearts), and in Java Edition the mace has a slow attack speed. The real power is the smash attack, which triggers when you hit something after falling at least 1.5 blocks:

• First 3 blocks fallen: +4 damage per block
• Next 5 blocks: +2 damage per block
• Every block after that: +1 damage per block

Critical hits add 50% on top, and a successful smash cancels the fall damage you'd built up. Fall damage starts adding up again from the point of the hit, so keep chaining hits or land safely.

A few rules can catch you out. Slow Falling stops smash attacks completely. In Java Edition you can't smash while gliding with Elytra, so you need to take them off first. Bedrock does let you smash mid-glide.

The mace has 500 durability in Java (501 in Bedrock). You can repair it with Breeze Rods on an anvil, so keep a few spare.

Enchantments to aim for

The mace has three enchantments of its own:

• Density (max V) adds more smash damage the farther you fall.
• Breach (max IV) cuts through armor, which is great against players and armored mobs.
• Wind Burst (max III) bounces you back into the air after a smash, so you can chain hits. Wind Burst books come from ominous vaults.

Add Unbreaking and Mending, and the mace becomes a weapon you'll carry for the rest of your world.

Tips and common mistakes

• Bring wind charges. One Breeze Rod crafts into four wind charges, and they're the fastest way to launch yourself into the air for a smash in the middle of a fight.
• Don't let Trial Omen run out. Ominous vaults only accept the key while you have Trial Omen. Clear spawners close to the atrium first and open the vault before the timer ends.
• Don't waste the bottle. Drinking an Ominous Bottle near a village starts a raid, and bottles aren't easy to farm early on.
• Bring a shield and good armor. Ominous waves hit much harder than normal ones, and lingering potions such as Weaving or Oozing can turn a fight around quickly.

Once you've got your mace, find something tall to jump off. Nothing else in Minecraft feels quite like landing a full-height smash.

This article was written by AI (Claude) and checked against the sources above. Games are updated regularly, so details may change.