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There are many hostile environments in Minecraft, one of the most unforgiving is being stuck underwater. Luckily there are ways to mitigate the harsh environment of being underwater. There are multiple different ways you can increase the amount of time you can spend underwater in Minecraft. Some are more permanent than others. This guide will show you all the methods you can use to breathe underwater in Minecraft.
In a Nutshell:
There are 3 ways that you can spend more time underwater. The first method is by using potions to be able to stay underwater for the length of your potion effect. The second is to build a conduit with a heart of the sea and nautilus shells. You will have to power the conduit with prismarine blocks, so it will have to be after you conquer an ocean monument. Finally, you can craft a turtle shell out of the turtle scutes that drop from baby turtles maturing.
There are 3 methods that can help you breathe underwater. You can use potions to gain a buff that lasts 3/8 minutes; wear a turtle shell that grants you water breathing; finally, you can build a conduit to breathe underwater indefinitely as long as you are within range.
There is a potion that you can use to breathe underwater for 3 minutes or 8 minutes if you enhance the potion. You can make water-breathing potions with a brewing stand, pufferfish, blaze powder, nether wart, and water bottles. First fish up the primary ingredient for water-breathing potions. If you have fished before you probably have pufferfish, it does not take that long to find them.
Remember to place some sand in a furnace to make glass bottles. Every 3 pieces of glass will make 3 glass bottles.
Now that you have your sand cooking and your pufferfish caught you will need to travel to the nether in order to get blaze rods, blaze powder, and nether wart. Build a nether portal and start tracking down your fortress.
Once you have found a fortress look around for blazes or a blaze spawner.
Kill some blaze enemies until you have a few blaze rods. Travel around your fortress until you come across a room with red fungus and a staircase.
Harvest some nether wart and head back to the surface. Now you have every ingredient to make a potion of swiftness. Start by making a brewing stand by combining three pieces of cobblestone and ablaze rod in a crafting table.
Gather your glass out of the furnace and turn them into glass bottles. Place them in a “V” shape in the crafting menu of a crafting table to make glass bottles. While you are here make some sugar out of sugarcane by placing sugarcane in your crafting menu.
With your glass bottles right-click on any water source to fill them up with water. Place your brewing stand and right-click on the stand to open its UI. Fill the bottom three slots with your water bottles. You will need to put blaze powder in the top left slot to fuel your brewing stand. Turn some blaze rods into blaze powder and put them into your brewing stand.
To make potions of water breathing you will need to brew awkward potions first. Place a nether wart in the ingredient slot of your brewing stand and wait for it to finish cooking.
This will turn your water bottles into awkward potions. Now all that is left is to place your pufferfish into the ingredient slot and wait for it to finish brewing. It will take about twenty seconds.
That’s all you need to make water-breathing potions! If you want to enhance the potions of water breathing, place a Redstone dust above the potions to extend the duration from 3 minutes to 8 minutes.
A conduit is closer to endgame materials, but you can build one as soon as you find a heart of the sea and manage to gather enough prismarine blocks. First, you will need to track down a shipwreck. Swim around in ocean biomes until you come across a sunken ship. You can also feed dolphins some raw fish and they may escort you to a nearby shipwreck.
Not every shipwreck will contain a treasure map. Keep moving and looking for another shipwreck in this case. Look through every chest that you find until you come across a treasure map.
When you first open the map it should show an incomplete map in the chunk you are already in.
Take a note of the “X” you find on the map. Swim towards that shore and ensure you are standing near the “X” before you start digging. My map took me to a nearby sandy shore.
This part can be frustrating especially if the game overrides the chest during world generation. The only way to find out is to start digging. I had to dig quite deep in a large radius in order to find my treasure chest.
Mine spawned five blocks below the surface and right below where the “X” is on the map. Every treasure chest should spawn a Heart of the Sea.
Now that you have acquired your heart, start hunting some drowned. Especially the ones holding a nautilus shell.
Any drowned can drop a nautilus shell but the ones that are holding one will always drop the one they are holding. Gather up eight shells and head to a crafting table. Place the Heart of the Sea in the middle slot and surround it with nautilus shells.
Congratulations! You now have a beacon-like entity that can help you conquer the ocean. To build the frame for the conduit, When you are constructing the grid around a conduit, you will need a minimum of sixteen blocks, and the conduit can be powered up to a maximum with forty-two blocks of prismarine or sea lanterns. The conduit itself has to be in the middle of 3x3x3 water blocks. Start by building a “+” on the ground with some prismarine built up on the edges of the plus.
Next place a ring of prismarine around the top layer of the edges of the plus.
Your conduit should be active, but it is not at its maximum yet. Raise another few blocks of prismarine and you can complete the build how you began it.
This little cage you construct will be exactly the forty-two blocks needed to maximize the strength of the conduit. You can arrange the cage however you would like as long as it is within the 5x5x5 of the conduit and the conduit has 3x3x3 of water surrounding it.
Conduits will help you breathe underwater, see further, kill hostile mobs around you, and play a heart-beating sound. It can be a nice decorative piece in the center of an aquatic build. With one conduit, you can have a safe corner of the ocean. With multiple in a perimeter, you can build a castle in the sea.
Lastly, is the method that you can obtain earliest in the game. This method does take a while to accomplish, especially if you are unlucky. In order to get a turtle helmet, you will need to wait for 5 baby sea turtles to fully mature into adult sea turtles. To get baby sea turtles, you will need to feed seagrass to two adult sea turtles and wait for them to lay eggs.
Turtles will wander aimlessly and can swim indefinitely underwater. Classic to turtle behavior, they will move slowly on land but can swim quickly. You cannot use a lead on turtles to transport them, but you can get their attention with seagrass. Turtles will generally prefer to be in the water and only move towards beaches to spawn eggs. Keep any turtles you want to own fenced in and blocked off as many mobs will target baby turtles and attempt to trample their eggs.
Turtles will remember the block they hatched on and treat that block as their home. No matter how far a turtle travels it will always attempt to return to its home beach to lay eggs. If you move a turtle egg with silk touch to a new location, the resulting baby turtle will treat the block you placed it on as its new home beach.
To breed turtles you will need to feed them seagrass. To find seagrass dive into a non-frozen ocean biome and use shears to gather some seagrass.
You can have turtles follow you by holding a block of seagrass in your hands, but an easier way to ensure you have turtles that will return to where you want is to gather the eggs yourself and place them where you want them. Feed two turtles seagrass and they will make sea turtle eggs.
After they come out of love mode one of the turtles will seem a little larger than the other. After a few seconds, it will dig in the sand to lay its eggs.
When it is done digging in the sand it will lay its egg after a few moments.
You can retrieve this egg with a silk touch tool. Before the egg hatches, it will appear to be cracked. This means it has advanced a stage in hatching a baby turtle. Turtles are more likely to hatch at nighttime. You do not have to obtain the sea turtle eggs to get the scutes necessary, it can help if you want to keep them somewhere safe.
Once the eggs hatch and you find the baby sea turtles, you can use seagrass to speed up their growth by 10%. Once they are fully mature they will drop a scute. You will need 5 scutes in order to get the turtle shell.
Once you collect 5 scutes, you can head to a crafting table to make the turtle shell. It is made just like any other helmet in the game with an “n” shape in the crafting menu.
Equip the turtle shell to get a water-breathing effect that lasts for 10 seconds. You can refresh the timer by spending time outside of the water. It provides 1 armor point and you can enchant it with respiration to increase the amount of time you can spend underwater to 70 seconds.
There is one achievement you can obtain by staying underwater long enough. The “Free Diver” achievement is unlocked by staying underwater for longer than 2 minutes. In order to accomplish this, you will need one of the methods listed above. For your best chances, you will want a conduit or a water-breathing potion.
Unfortunately, the turtle shell with respiration III does not provide you with enough time to clear the achievement requirement.
You will need a minimum of 21 blocks to power the conduit and a maximum of 42 blocks for the max range that a conduit can provide. This can be any of the prismarine blocks including sea lanterns, so your conduit frame can have a little bit of flexibility in that regard.
You will need to see a baby sea turtle mature and pick up the scute that drops when it does fully grow up. This is easily accomplished by breeding sea turtles, waiting for the eggs to hatch, and feeding the turtles seagrass. After you gather 5 scutes, you can craft the turtle shell at a crafting table.
To make water breathing potion, the primary ingredient is a pufferfish. You will need to make awkward potions first, so use some nether wart in a brewing stand with water bottles to get the base ingredient. Afterward, you can use the pufferfish to make the water-breathing potions. Once you do so, you can use Redstone to extend the length of the potions from 3 minutes to 8 minutes total.
Congratulations, you now know the different ways you can stay underwater in Minecraft. Being underwater can be exciting, but not when you have to constantly manage your breath meter. Once you find a way to stay underwater long enough, you can spend time in this environment without it being so hostile. The most beneficial way to stay underwater or have an underwater base is to build a conduit as this effect lasts indefinitely as long as you are within range of the conduit. Nevertheless, consider what best fits your needs when you need to spend a lot of time underwater.
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