With the Caves & Cliffs Update, exciting new features have appeared in Minecraft. During some of your cave explorations, you may have come across spherical areas with a purple block that emits a wondrous chime. These are Amethyst Geodes, a feature of Minecraft’s new cave generation and a structure that provides you with unique blocks. Particularly for creative individuals, seeking out the geodes is highly recommended! The geodes consist of beautiful blocks that you can use for your constructions. Today we will take a closer look at the Amethyst Geodes and provide you with tips for farming Amethyst Shards.
Finding Amethyst Geodes Underground
First, you need to find one of these geodes to make use of the unique blocks. Thankfully, they are not too rare, so you shouldn’t have too much difficulty.
Geodes can be found between Y-Level 30 and -58, which covers almost the entire underground. Every chunk has a probability of just over 4 percent to contain such a structure. They are not confined to any biome, whether above ground or underground. You have the same chances of encountering geodes in every part of your world. They can vary in size, with a diameter ranging from 10 to 20 blocks.
Most Amethyst Geodes have an opening into a neighbouring cave, so you are likely to stumble upon one sooner or later. Only about 5 percent of all geodes are completely enclosed, but they can still connect to a cave. In the following section, we will show you how to easily recognise geodes!
Structure and Components of the Amethyst Geode
The underground structures follow the same pattern and are therefore quite easy to recognise. Even in caves, these unique blocks should stand out to you as they differ greatly from those in the surrounding area.
Smooth Basalt: On the outside, there is a layer of smooth basalt, a block found only in geodes and ancient sites. However, you can also create it yourself by smelting normal basalt from the Nether in a furnace. There are no further recipes, such as slabs or stairs.
Calcite: Following the basalt is a layer of white calcite. This block resembles diorite and can be found in geodes and stony mountain ranges. There are no further recipes for this either, but the block is great for decorations.
Amethyst Block: These purple blocks are likely the main focus of a geode, as they not only look stylish but also emit chiming sounds. Amethyst blocks can only be found here and can be mined with a pickaxe. They are excellent for decorating, especially for floors. Every time you walk over them, they produce a chime.
Budding Amethyst Block: These blocks, which are visually indistinguishable, are essential for Amethyst Shards. Unlike normal amethyst blocks, these cannot be mined (even with Silk Touch) or moved with a piston. Buds grow from the cracks on each side, maturing into Amethyst Clusters which can then be harvested.
- Amethyst Clusters: From the budding amethyst blocks, shards grow on all six sides, maturing through four stages. You can harvest each stage directly with Silk Touch and place them on any block as decoration. However, only the final stage yields Amethyst Shards. You obtain 2 shards with a piston, but directly 4 shards with a pickaxe. With the “Fortune” enchantment, you can increase this up to 16 shards per cluster.
Applications of Amethyst Shards
These shards are what you are after when searching for a geode. From them, you can craft several other blocks and items that will be useful in your Minecraft world.
Amethyst Block: From four shards, you can easily form a block if you don’t necessarily want to mine them from the geode.
Spyglass: From two copper ingots and one shard, you can craft a spyglass. For those who used Optifine in the past, this function will seem familiar. The spyglass zooms to one-tenth of your set field of view, allowing you to see distant blocks. On the PC, you can also hide the HUD with F1 for better visibility.
Tinted Glass: This glass is incredibly practical as it does not let light through. It is useful for monster traps but also for other building projects. Additionally, you can break it directly by hand and without Silk Touch, unlike normal glass.
Calibrated Sculk Sensor: For some Redstone projects, it may be worthwhile to craft this block, which reacts to sounds in its vicinity.
Armour Trim: With smithing templates and a smithing table, you can add some purple accents to your armour using Amethyst Shards!
Allay: Allays are useful little creatures that you can breed with Amethyst Shards. For this, the allays must dance to a jukebox and then split with a shard. The cooldown afterwards is five minutes.
Effective Farming of Amethyst Shards
But how can you collect enough shards? Automatic farms are hard to implement for amethysts since you can’t mine or move the budding blocks. This makes them difficult to arrange properly and incorporate into Redstone projects. Additionally, you receive fewer shards if you automatically break the amethyst clusters with a piston.
Your best option is to find an Amethyst Geode near your base. You might even find several geodes within a certain radius to manually harvest.
An effective farm works as follows:
First, expose all sides of the budding amethyst block so that the buds have room to grow. With each “tick” in the game, a random side is selected for a bud to sprout or grow a stage.
Considering the mentioned ticks, it takes approximately two hours and 16 minutes for all sides of a budding block to fully grow into amethyst clusters. That’s almost seven days in Minecraft.
Once the buds have reached the fourth stage, you should manually harvest them with a pickaxe with “Fortune 3”. This will yield an average of 8–9 Amethyst Shards.
Conclusion on Amethyst Geodes in Minecraft
Amethyst Geodes can be found underground and contain beautiful blocks for decoration. They are the only place where you can farm Amethyst Shards for spyglasses or tinted glass. You can rent your own Minecraft server with us to embark on the search for these underground structures with your friends. It’s worth converting at least one geode into a manual farm and regularly harvesting it. Amethyst blocks are also a fantastic block for your constructions, especially thanks to their lovely soundscape.
