Minecraft 5 things players don't know about nether wart

Nether wart is a classic Minecraft component. A remnant of a simpler time while simultaneously being one of the game’s first forays into complexity with potion crafting.

While most of the ins and outs of nether wart have not changed over the years, there have been some key changes, general changes, and additions to the nether that have impacted nether wart.

These changes, which, in the grand scheme of Minecraft, are relatively minor, might have gone unnoticed by players primarily if they do not often farm nether wart for potion crafting.

Five things players might not know about Minecraft’s nether wart

5) Can be traded for emeralds

Villager trading is one of the most powerful features players have access to. The variety and tier of items that players can easily access using this system is unparalleled anywhere else in Minecraft, with mending books, diamond armor, and limitless food.

One of the trades players have access to is nether wart for emeralds. While this may seem like a good deal on the surface, it takes a whopping 22 nether warts to get a single emerald, and this is from a master level cleric. This trade is almost identical to the potato and carrot trades that farmer villagers offer on their first tier.

Due to the high-level skill of a specific kind of villager being needed even to see the trade, it is entirely possible that players might not even know the trade exists.

4) Can grow in any dimension

An example of an overworld nether wart farm (Image via Minecraft)

This one might only be surprising to veteran players. When nether wart was originally introduced as part of the game’s 1.0 release, it could only be found and farmed within nether fortresses and using soul sand in the nether, respectively.

However, in the 1.3.1 update, released only two years after the game was officially released, a few key things were changed. The biggest being that nether wart no longer had to be farmed within the nether.

As long as the player takes soul sand into the overworld and uses it to create a farm plot, nether wart is entirely capable of growing in the overworld.

3) Can be placed on soul sand but not soul soil

Soul soil vs soul sand found in the nether (Image via Minecraft)

Soul soil is one of the many changes and additions from the 1.16 nether overhaul.

Being almost identical to soul sand in terms of appearance and placement, it would be easy to assume that the blocks share nearly identical functions within Minecraft.

However, the nether wart cannot be grown on soul soil, only on soul sand. This is a very strange difference between the two, but one player must keep it in mind when setting up a potion farm.

2) Is affected by the fortune enchantment

Nether wart is one of only a handful of crops affected by fortune enchantment in any meaningful way.

For example, while fortune does affect wheat, it only increases the number of seeds dropped, not the wheat itself. Another example of a meaningless fortune crop is melons.

Fortune does increase the number of slices that melons drop, but melons cannot drop nine slices, which are needed to make a full melon, whereas silk touch drops the whole melon.

However, breaking with this tradition, nether wart is very useful for players looking to buff themselves with potions, as without nether wart, potion crafting is impossible. Fortune does increase the number of warts dropped by the plant, up to a maximum of seven at fortune three.

1) Has a one-way block recipe

A beacon made of several of the game's different craftable blocks (Image via playstationtrophies.org)

Nether wart is one of a handful of blocks with a block form that the item can be turned into.

Other examples of items that have block-form crating recipes are gold ingots into blocks, iron ingots into blocks, diamonds into blocks, lapis lazuli into blocks, emerald into blocks, redstone into blocks, melon into blocks, etc.

All these example recipes function in two directions. This means that the item can be turned into a block and vice versa. Nether wart is unique, unfortunately so, in that this block recipe is one way. Once a nether wart block has been created, it can never be turned back into nether wart.