Minecraft has plenty of melee weapons, but the mace feels different from the usual sword-or-axe routine. It rewards timing, height, and a little bit of risk, which makes it one of the most satisfying weapons to land properly.
Before you can start smashing mobs from above, though, you need to know where the mace comes from and why its materials are harder to get by than a normal crafting recipe.
In this guide, we’ll walk through what you will need, where to find each part, how to master this iconic Minecraft weapon, and a few mods that improve maces, heavy weapons, and make the hunt for Trial Chambers easier.
What You Need to Craft a Mace
We all have to start somewhere. When it comes to getting a mace, you will need:
- 1 Breeze Rod – dropped by breezes, the new hostile mobs that spawn inside Trial Chamber rooms. Breezes shoot wind charge projectiles and bounce around the room, but they're not especially tough to kill once you understand their movement. One kill drops 1 to 2 breeze rods on average.
- 1 Heavy Core – this is the rare ingredient. Heavy cores only come from Ominous Vaults inside Trial Chambers, not standard vaults. You need an Ominous Trial Key to open them, which in turn requires triggering the Ominous Trial variant.
The recipe to craft a mace is as follows: place the heavy core in the top center slot and the breeze rod directly below it, making a vertical two-item pattern with the mace head above the handle.
How to Find a Trial Chamber
Trial Chambers generate underground in the deepslate layer, so you need to search deep below the surface. They look like large copper-and-tuff structures with connected rooms, trial spawners, vaults, traps, and hostile mob encounters.
If you're having trouble locating one, you can use a trial explorer map from a cartographer villager, or use the "/locate" command with commands/cheats enabled.
How to Get an Ominous Trial Key
Triggering the Ominous variant of a Trial Chamber starts with the Bad Omen effect. Drink an Ominous Bottle to get Bad Omen – these can drop from raid captains or be looted from vaults. When you enter a Trial Chamber and approach a trial spawner, Bad Omen turns into Trial Omen, and nearby trial spawners can become Ominous Trial Spawners.
After you complete an Ominous Trial Spawner encounter and the spawner goes into cooldown, it has a chance to reward you with an Ominous Trial Key. Use that key on an Ominous Vault – the darker vault found in Trial Chambers – for a chance at scoring rare loot, including heavy core.
What Makes the Mace Useful
The smash damage mechanic rewards aerial combat. At minimum, the mace deals base damage like other weapons, but the moment you start falling before the swing, its damage starts scaling based on the fall distance.
This pairs naturally with Wind Burst – a mace-exclusive enchantment that launches you upward after a successful smash, letting you set up another falling hit. Wind Burst is especially rare because it comes from Ominous Vault rewards rather than the regular enchanting table.
Other mace-exclusive enchantments include Density, which increases smash damage based on fall distance, and Breach, which helps the mace punch through armor. Density and Breach are the main damage-direction choices, while Wind Burst is the mobility-focused option that launches you upward after a successful smash attack.
The mace has 500 durability and is repaired with breeze rods at an anvil. It accepts Unbreaking, Mending, and Fire Aspect alongside the mace-specific enchantments.
Best Mace Enchantments in Minecraft
For general survival, we recommend applying Density V, Wind Burst III, Unbreaking III, Mending, and Fire Aspect II. Here’s why:
- Density boosts the mace's fall-based smash damage.
- Wind Burst launches you upward after a successful smash so you can chain another hit.
- Unbreaking and Mending help with durability.
- Fire Aspect adds extra burn damage.
For PvP or heavily armored targets, swap Density V for Breach IV. Breach reduces how much armor protects the target, but you should treat it as a different build path from Density rather than trying to stack both. Density is better for most PvE and big drop attacks, while Breach is better when armor is the main problem.
Note: the Looting enchantment is not compatible with a vanilla mace. The mace can use combat and utility enchantments like Density, Breach, Wind Burst, Fire Aspect, Mending, and Unbreaking, but Looting is not part of the standard vanilla mace enchantment set.
Mods That Work Well With Maces and Heavy Weapons
Vanilla gives the mace a very specific role: a heavy weapon built around falling smash attacks, Trial Chambers, heavy cores, and breeze rods. Mods can put a different spin on that idea – from backporting the 1.21 mace to older versions to adding throwable maces, craftable heavy weapons, halberds, modular weapon systems, and tools that make Trial Chambers easier to find.
Explorer's Compass
“Explorer's Compass” adds a craftable compass that can locate structures anywhere in the world, including vanilla and modded structures. Right-clicking the compass opens a GUI where you can choose the structure you want to search for, and the HUD displays information about the current search. Since the vanilla mace grind starts in Trial Chambers, this can cut down the time spent digging around or waiting until you get a trial explorer map.
You can also adjust search settings in the configuration file, including search radius, maximum samples, and blacklisted structures. The crafting recipe uses a compass in the center, cobwebs in the four corners, and stone-brick-style blocks in the remaining side slots.
Spartan Weaponry
“Spartan Weaponry” adds a large arsenal of craftable weapon types that vanilla does not normally offer, including maces, halberds, spears, pikes, lances, warhammers, throwing knives, javelins, longbows, heavy crossbows, and more. Most weapons can be made from vanilla tool materials, and many use a Handle or Pole as part of the recipe, which keeps the mod tied to normal survival crafting rather than dungeon loot.
The mace in “Spartan Weaponry” gives players a simpler craftable mace option with different combat behavior from the vanilla mace. It is slightly slow, deals average damage, and does bonus damage to undead mobs. The halberd is also worth mentioning for heavy-weapon fans: it has extended reach, high damage, and the Shield Breach trait, which can make an enemy shield unusable for a short time.
Tetra
“Tetra” turns weapons and tools into modular items that can be changed, improved, and upgraded over time. After crafting a mallet, you can use it on a vanilla crafting table to create a Tetra Workbench, then place compatible weapons, tools, shields, or bows into the bench to start changing their parts.
This mod works best for players who want a custom weapon-building system rather than a single fixed mace recipe. Different modules, materials, and improvements change the finished item's stats, and the Holosphere helps preview those changes before you commit. Stronger parts and schematics are found through exploration, trading, and ancient ruins, so weapon progression feels more like something you build up over time instead of something you craft once and forget.
Mace Port
“Mace Port” backports the vanilla 1.21 mace to older Minecraft versions, keeping the main idea of the official weapon: the farther you fall before landing a hit, the more damage the mace can deal. It also includes fall damage canceling when the smash connects, so it is aimed at players who want the Tricky Trials mace experience in pre-1.21 worlds or modpacks.
“Mace Port” also adds the mace enchantments from the 1.21 update, including Density, Breach, and Wind Burst. The mod uses a different recipe from vanilla, with a block of iron, string, and a blaze rod, and it repairs the mace with an iron block. It also includes normal and balanced editions, two advancements, and mace tags for cross-mod compatibility.
Hurl
“Hurl” expands the vanilla mace by making it throwable. Thrown maces deal more damage based on how far they fall, and after falling far enough, they can trigger a mace smash when they hit the ground. Unlike tridents or arrows, thrown maces bounce off walls and ceilings instead of sticking into blocks, which gives the weapon a heavier, blunt projectile feel.
“Hurl” also adds new behavior to several vanilla mace and trident enchantments. Density increases thrown mace damage based on fall distance but slows the throw at higher levels, Breach applies armor-piercing behavior to thrown maces and can also be used on tridents, and Loyalty lets thrown maces return like tridents.
Wind Burst, Channeling, and Fire Aspect also gain special throw-based effects, making this a good option for players who already like the 1.21 mace and want a more chaotic ranged version of it.
How to Install Minecraft Mods
You can install the above mods automatically using the CurseForge app or manually by placing the mod files within your game's mods folder. Both methods allow you to easily add custom features and enhancements into your Minecraft experience.
If you want to learn more, you can read our detailed guide on how to install Minecraft mods.
Common Issues and Quick Fixes
I can't seem to find a Trial Chamber
Trial Chambers are in the deepslate layer, which starts at around "Y=0" and goes down to bedrock. If you've been mining near the surface or in the stone layer and haven't found one, go deeper. Cartographer villagers sell trial explorer maps that point directly to the nearest one, which is the most reliable method if you've exhausted your local area.
Still no Heavy Core despite opening many Ominous Vaults
Heavy cores are rare Ominous Vault rewards, so you might need to open several vaults before seeing one. Make sure you're opening Ominous Vaults specifically – these are darker-textured than standard Vaults and require an Ominous Trial Key and not a regular trial key.
An Ominous Trial Key isn't dropping from the spawner
The Ominous Trial Spawner needs to finish its encounter and enter a cooldown before it has a chance to reward you with an Ominous Trial Key. Also, not every run gives a key.
Make sure you are triggering Ominous Trials by using an Ominous Bottle, getting Bad Omen, and turning it into Trial Omen inside the chamber. Otherwise, you are just running standard trials, which reward standard trial keys instead.
The mace doesn't seem to deal smash damage
The smash damage bonus only activates when you are falling at the moment the hit connects. A standing swing will not trigger it, and a badly timed jump may miss the falling window. You need to be descending when the attack lands. The damage scales with fall distance, and your fall damage is only negated if the mace hit actually connects.
Spartan Weaponry weapons are not showing recipes
Use “JEI” or “REI” in your instance to browse recipes – the mod integrates well with both recipe viewers. Without one installed, the recipes aren't visible in the vanilla crafting book. The weapons all use standard vanilla materials in their recipes with the handle or pole as a crafting prerequisite, so once you can see the recipes through a viewer, they're straightforward to follow.
My game crashes after adding a mod
A crash after installing a mod usually points to a version mismatch, loader mismatch, or missing dependency. Check that the mod file matches your Minecraft version and loader, then check the mod page for required libraries or APIs.
If you added several mods at once, remove the newest ones and add them back one at a time. That makes it much easier to find the culprit instead of being in the dark.