Couriway's Minecraft WR is likely still out of reach

On November 3rd, 2020, twitch streamer and Minecraft speedrunner, Couriway, broke the sub-15 minute barrier and gained the 1.16 world record.

It's hard to understate this achievement as it's most likely to never be beaten. Minecraft random seed speedruns such as this, have a lot of luck involved, and from that speedrunners can go through many many resets while playing.

Couriway's seed and route took an exemplary amount of luck and skill, but it all worked out for a stunning world record, unlikely to be beat.

The fastest to beat Minecraft in 1.16

Couriway's run can be split into three sections, the overworld, the nether, and the end battle, with each split being under five minutes. For players who are looking to practice speedrunning routes and strategies, the seed for this world is -8910686594073260835

The Overworld

At the beginning of the run, Couriway finds himself spawning in very close to a village with a blacksmith and many chests with bread. These two things are important to speedruns solely for time saves, shortening the run by removing the need to farm for iron ingots past the iron golem, and also by removing the necessity of breaking hay blocks.

After gathering enough items from the village, Couriway begins to search around the double negative coordinate region, stating that he'd rather be in the double positive. This of course is referencing the players XYZ coordinate location which can be found by pressing F3 to bring up the debug menu.

He makes his way further into the desert and across some water to a lava pit which he uses to place him into a perfect nether position at just 4:48 in-game-time.

The most incredible Nether spawn

Inside Minecraft's nether dimension, the most dangerous of the three, players can find two very important structures, bastion remnants and nether fortresses. Couriway's portal puts him just a few blocks away from a bastion remnant, which he utilizes for piglin trading to gather enough ender pearls for the journey ahead.

Travelling not even a hundred blocks further brings Couriway straight into a nether fortress where he begins collect blaze rods necessary for crafting eyes of ender, items that when used in the overworld will bring players to the location of the stronghold, and once inside, those same eyes can be used to complete the end portal, which is exactly what Couriway did.

The End

The last trick that's somewhat out of the ordinary is what Couriway calls the 4-4 trick. In the image above, once in Minecraft's debug screen, on the left side of the screen in the second paragraph, line three begins with "Chunk: 4 0 4".

This information can be used for a lot of technical things, but most importantly, it can be used to help find the origin staircase inside of the stronghold. Once the player situates themselves on 4-4 as seen in the image above, they'll be directly above the main staircase of the stronghold, perfectly leading players inside.

While Minecraft speedruns rely heavily on luck, especially those runs taking place on the 1.16+ update, Couriway's skills shone through and he was able to secure the world record. With a seed this incredible, and a player this skilled, it's hard to say if his record will ever be beaten inside of Minecraft 1.16, however with the 1.17 Caves & Cliffs update just around the corner, who knows what new competitors could take the record.

For more on Minecraft speedrunning world records, read The top 5 speedrunners who can take home the world record in 1.17