Where is my End Portal?
I'm working towards beating the Ender Dragon on hardcore vanilla Minecraft. I've gotten myself all the way up to locating the stronghold, however the End Portal is nowhere to be seen. I had 10 Eyes of Ender, and used up all but one of them to find the exact coordinates of where the eye ends up:
This is where the eye floats to when you're near the portal, meaning it triangulates on the Y axis as well. Thinking that it has to be nearby, I exploded a small stack of TNT to open the place up a bit:
It floats in the exact same spot, but there's still no portal nearby. It does not matter if I'm above or below that spot, it always floats to that exact location. Looking at the wiki, it says the PC version of Minecraft Eyes of Ender go to the exact coordinates of the End Portal, however I've dug all the way down to bedrock without any luck.
I seem to have exhausted all methods to locate the End Portal here. Is there a way I can still salvage this game without having to resort to cheating?
Edit: Here's my coordinates and seed as requested.
Solution 1:
This is an issue of multiple flukes combined into one giant mess.
The map was originally generated prior to 1.7.10, however the chunks containing the stronghold were generated after an update. Because of this, the End Portal was in a different location than what the Eyes of Ender reported.
To resolve this, I took the seed, -4365712075075430210, created a new world in Creative Mode, and navigated to the above coordinates. When I used an Eye of Ender, it proceeded into a different direction about 100 meters away. Upon digging down, sure enough there was the End Portal in my creative world in a completely isolated section of the stronghold. Writing down the coordinates, I went to them in my hardcore world, and the portal was there as well.
In short, if you create a world in a previous version of Minecraft, upgrade to a later version, then explore the chunks containing the stronghold, there's a solid chance that the End Portal is going to be in a slightly different location than what the Eyes of Ender report. You could generally find it just by navigating the stronghold, however I was not able to locate my specific End Portal because it was isolated and walled off all by itself in my specific seed.
Solution 2:
Try using the tactic called X-Ray.
See this link for more info.
It will be ease to spot since under the portal is a 3 x 3 pool of lava which gives off light.
Just in case the video is deleted, In the video the user digs 3 blocks down, then jumps and places a wooden fences. After this, the user jumps once again, but this time he places a piece of glowstone on top of the fence. Tada, you can now see all the caves and openings around you.
Solution 3:
It's possible that ravine generation destroyed the portal or didn't allow it to generate. Without cheating, you don't have many options other than to keep combing through it as much as you can.
Solution 4:
"Is there a way I can still salvage this game without having to resort to cheating?"
Yes, there are two options here:
Keep looking, but ignore the Eye of Ender tracking. Using @Jonoco98's method may help you, and you can use TNT blocks and pistons instead of wooden fences (Caution: This takes advantage of in game quirk; some people still consider this cheating). The pistons push the TNT blocks into you (if they push into a wall) and allow you to 'see' through the world. Be careful not to blow yourself up. Since you're in hardcore, it may be better to do the glowstone/fence method. Do this a couple times around the area - in a place with lots of blocks - as air blocks will obstruct your vision.
There should be 2 more strongholds in your world that you could locate instead. According to this wiki, each stronghold will be 120 degrees away from each other relative to 0,0 - between 640 to 1152 blocks from the original spawn point.
The easiest way to get to a new stronghold is to move away from the current stronghold throwing Eyes of Ender until they change direction. If you want to conserve the eyes, and you trust in my math skills, start looking at coordinates x:-531, y:358. This should be 120 degrees relative to 0,0 according to your current position and 640 blocks diagonally from 0,0. This definitely isn't exact - but should get you in the right ballpark.