Minecraft wiki entry for Advancement_guide, associated text: However, when you place a beacon by itself on the ground, it will not do anything. You need a pyramid of certain blocks, which include blocks of iron, gold, diamonds, emeralds, and/or netherite. When activated, beacons can give you special powers if you are a certain number of blocks from the beacon. Placing a beacon on top of the center of mineral blocks on a 3 x 3 layout will give the beacon a power level of 1. If you place mineral blocks in a 5 x 5 manner with the 3 x 3 layout and a beacon on top of that, the beacon with have a power level of 2. You can continue adding bigger pyramid layers up to level 4, of which the beacon and pyramid should look like this: