Your first trip

A step-by-step guide to your first visit to the Swift.

1. Find an ancient city. Ancient cities are deep underground in the Deep Dark. At the centre of each one stands a huge frame of reinforced deepslate: that’s the Deep Dark portal. Watch out for the Warden. Sneak, and stay away from sculk shriekers.
2. Bring note blocks. Craft them from planks and redstone dust. Place one or more within about 12 blocks of the frame.
3. Play five different notes within 12 seconds. Clicking a note block raises its note by one and plays it, so clicking the same note block five times gives you five different notes. Punching a note block plays it without changing the note. Friends can play along, but note blocks played by redstone don’t count.
4. Watch the frame light up. Every note fires a column of coloured light. On the fifth note, the frame fills with a shimmering portal.
5. Step in. Stand in the portal for 4 seconds (instantly in Creative).
6. Wake a golem. You arrive at an arrival gate on a plaza of polished swiftstone, guarded by four sleeping echo golems. Use one to wake it, and it will follow you and fight for you.
7. Explore. Pick Chimebells to tame blubs, look for a Singer to give an Echo Shard to, and stay out of the dark: that’s when the swiftlings come out. When a message announces the Undertow, some of them are soul-warped and much tougher.
8. Go home. Walk back into the arrival gate. It always leads to the portal you came through.