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. A Twisted Warden, a boss, stands guard before the frame from the first time a player comes near: beat it or slip past it.
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. Tune five note blocks to different notes and play them one after another. Clicking a note block raises its note by one and plays it, so clicking the same note block five times works too. You can also wire note blocks to a button or a clock: redstone counts.
4. Watch the frame light up. Every note fires a column of coloured light. On the fifth note, the frame fills with a glowing picture of clouds and sky: the portal.
5. Step in. Stand in the portal for 4 seconds (instantly in Creative).
6. Wake a golem. You arrive at an arrival gate set into a mossy mound, guarded by four sleeping echo golems. During Thrive, the Swift’s daytime tide, use one to wake it, and it will follow you and fight for you. At other times they sleep on.
7. Explore. Pick Chimebells to tame blubs, look for a Singer (give it an Echo Shard and it sings a rift open), and stay out of the dark: that’s when the sifters come out. When a message announces the Endure tide, some of them are soul corrupted and much tougher.
8. Go home. Walk back into the arrival gate. It always leads to the portal you came through. Or use a Soul Block to open a rift home. See getting home for every way back.