How to get turtle shells in Minecraft: Pocket Edition

Often used as a helmet in Minecraft, turtle shells provide solid armor and don't require any form of metal ingots the way that many other helmets do, giving players incentive to search for them.

Since they're not built like conventional helmets, players will need to do some breeding of turtles in order to make a turtle shell for their armor loadout. In addition to their armor usage, turtle shells can be used to brew the Potion of the Turtle Master. When equipped, turtle shells also provide an extra ten seconds of Water Breathing, allowing longer dives into oceans, lakes, and rivers.

To make turtle shells, players will need a material known as scute.

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Minecraft: Acquiring scute for turtle shells

Image via Mojang

Dropped by baby turtles in Minecraft as they mature into adults, scute is used to create turtle shells and can also be used to repair existing ones. On top of being useful for turtle shells, scute can also be traded with villagers for Emeralds at higher villager levels. In order to get scute in a sizable number, players will want to breed a significant number of turtles.

Found in beach biomes, Minecraft's turtles alternate between their home beaches and oceans. When fed seagrass, which is commonly found growing in ocean biomes, turtles enter breeding mode and find a mate. After mating, the turtles return to their home beach and lay eggs with a maximum of four eggs each time. After cracking thrice, the eggs will hatch and spawn baby turtles.

Baby turtles are incredibly small and vulnerable, and players aiming to get scute should speed the process. Fortunately, by using seagrass, baby turtles' aging can be sped up. Once grown into a full adult, a baby turtle will drop one scute piece. Five scute pieces will be needed to craft one turtle shell, so the more turtles players breed and raise, the more capable they will be at crafting turtle shells efficiently.

This method of acquiring scute in Survival Mode is uniform across Minecraft: Pocket Edition, Java Edition and Bedrock Edition. Creative Mode players may simply pluck the scute needed or create a turtle shell from the Creative Inventory screen in addition to breeding and raising turtles. In the quest for scute and turtle shells, players will be bringing more turtles into their Minecraft world, which is certainly a plus.

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