The recovery compass is a new item in Minecraft.
Mojang
In Minecraft, the recovery compass item helps you find the last spot you died at.
The recovery compass is an incredibly useful tool for finding the items you drop after dying.
To craft a recovery compass, combine a compass with nine echo shards.
Even if you’re not playing on Hardcore mode, dying in Minecraft can be a big setback. Aside from getting teleported to the last place you slept, dying also makes you drop all the items in your inventory, including your armor.
Usually this means saying goodbye to all your items. But if you have a recovery compass, a new item introduced in the Wild Update, you can easily find exactly where you died — and everything you dropped.
Minecraft’s recovery compass tracks where you’ve died
Unlike a normal compass that always points north, the recovery compass always points to the last spot your character died in. This means that you can use the recovery compass to track down where you died and recover any items you dropped.
The blue needle points toward the last spot you died.
Mojang; William Antonelli/Insider
The recovery compass will work no matter how far away you currently are from the spot you died in. But you do need to be in the same dimension (the Overworld, the Nether, or the End), otherwise the needle will just spin randomly.
Quick tip: The recovery compass can tell you where across the world your death spot is, but not how far underground or high up into the air it is. If you get to a spot and your compass needle starts responding wildly to very small movements, that’s a sign that you’re at the right spot and should start digging or climbing.
If you travel far away from your spawn point a lot, the recovery compass is a useful tool. But unfortunately, it’s also harder to craft than the normal compass.
How to make a recovery compass in Minecraft
To make a recovery compass, you’ll need one normal compass and eight echo shards.
To make a normal compass, combine one unit of redstone dust with four iron ingots. You can mine redstone and iron ore underground, but you’ll need to smelt the iron ore to turn it into ingots.
The crafting recipe for a compass in Minecraft.
Mojang; William Antonelli/Insider
Echo shards are a new item, also introduced in the Wild Update. You can find them in Ancient Cities, massive structures located deep underground at Y coordinate -51. They’ll be hidden away in treasure chests, but there’s only a ~30% chance that they’ll spawn in any given chest.
Once you’ve got a compass and eight echo shards, go to a crafting table. Place the compass in the crafting table’s middle slot and surround it with echo shards.
You’ll need to fill all nine slots on your crafting table.
Mojang; William Antonelli/Insider
You’ve now got a recovery compass, ready to find your last death spot. Put the compass in your character’s hotbar, take it out, and follow the needle.
Quick tip: The items you drop after dying don’t last forever. As soon as you enter the chunk that you died in, you’ve got five minutes to pick your stuff back up before it disappears.