Minecraft: how to start an Ominous Trial

How to start and Ominous Trial in Minecraft as part of the 1.21 Trial Chambers

Ominous Trial Spawner / Mojang

Ominous Trials are the more difficult version of Minecraft’s new Trial Chambers. In them, you’ll face more mobs with tougher armor and effects applied, but you’ll also find greater rewards, as Ominous Vaults have a much better chance of giving you rare loot than their regular variants. Plus, there are some items that you can only get from Ominous Trials.

We’ll explain how to start an Ominous Trial in Minecraft 1.21, so you can dive right in to find all of the best loot on offer.

How to start an Ominous Trial in Minecraft

Ominous Vault / Mojang

First, you need to find a Trial Chamber in Minecraft, which you can learn how to do in our guide at that link. Once you have, you need to enter it while under the effects of a Bad Omen. To get a Bad Omen you either need to kill banner-holding Pillagers that spawn in their raid parties, or drink an Ominous Bottle, which can be looted from vaults in regular Trial Chambers.

When you come in range of a spawner with the Bad Omen active, it will remove your Bad Omen and replace it with the Trial Omen. By default, it lasts for 15 minutes, but it’s multiplied by the level of your Bad Omen, which can go has high as level 5.

While you have a Trial Omen, any Trial Spawner you get in range of will transform into an Ominous Trial Spawner, which spawns more difficult variants on the mobs it would normally spawn, and can shoot out projectiles with negative potion effects. If the spawner is on cooldown, this will automatically be reset when turned Ominous, so it can spawn mobs immediately.

Once defeated, the Trial Spawner will eject it’s loot, which will be better than usual, and among the loot table is the Ominous Vault Key, which can be used to unlock an Ominous Vault in any chamber. You can tell when a vault is ominous as it will have red eyes instead of the normal orange.

Among the possible loot in Ominous Vaults is the rare Heavy Core, which you’ll need to craft a Mace in Minecraft.