With the Caves & Cliffs Update, exciting new features have emerged 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. Especially for creative players, seeking out these geodes is highly recommended! They consist of truly beautiful blocks that you can use for your constructions. Today, we’ll take a closer look at Amethyst Geodes and provide 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. Fortunately, they are not too rare, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble.
Geodes can be found between Y-Level 30 and -58, which means they can be almost anywhere underground. Each chunk has a slightly over 4 percent chance of containing such a structure. They are not confined to any specific biome, either above or below ground. This means you have the same chance of encountering geodes in every section of your world. They can, however, vary in size, ranging between a diameter of 10 to 20 blocks.
Most Amethyst Geodes have an opening into a neighboring cave, so you are likely to stumble upon one eventually. Only about 5 percent of all geodes are completely enclosed, yet they may still connect to a cave. In the following section, we’ll show you how to easily recognize geodes!
Structure and Components of the Amethyst Geode
Underground structures always follow the same pattern and are therefore quite easy to recognize. Even in caves, these unique blocks should stand out, as they differ significantly from those surrounding them.
Smooth Basalt: On the outside is a layer of smooth basalt, a block that occurs only in geodes and ancient sites. You can also create it yourself by smelting regular basalt from the Nether in a furnace. There are no additional recipes like slabs or stairs.
Calcite: Following the basalt is a layer of white calcite. This block is somewhat reminiscent of diorite and is found in geodes and stony mountain ranges. There are no further recipes for it 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 chic but also emit chime sounds. Amethyst blocks can only be found here and must be mined with a pickaxe. They are excellent for decorating, especially for floors. Every time you walk over them, they chime.
Budding Amethyst Block: Visually, these budding blocks are almost indistinguishable, but they are essential for Amethyst Shards. Unlike regular 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 clusters that 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 as decorations on any block. However, only the final stage yields Amethyst Shards. You get 2 shards using a piston but directly 4 shards with a pickaxe. With the Fortune enchantment, you can increase this to up to 16 shards per cluster.
Applications of Amethyst Shards
These shards are what you want to obtain when searching for a geode. They can be used to craft various other blocks and items that will be useful in your Minecraft world.
Amethyst Block: With four shards, you can easily form a block, if you don’t want to mine them directly from the geode.
Spyglass: With two copper ingots and a shard, you can craft a spyglass. For those who have used Optifine in the past, this function may seem familiar. The spyglass zooms in to one-tenth of your set field of view, allowing you to identify even distant blocks. On PC, you can press F1 to hide the HUD for a clearer view.
Tinted Glass: This glass is incredibly practical as it blocks light. It’s useful for mob traps and other building projects. Additionally, you can break it by hand without Silk Touch, unlike regular glass.
Calibrated Sculk Sensor: For some Redstone projects, it might be worth crafting this block, which reacts to sounds in its vicinity.
Armor Trim: With smithing templates and a smithing table, you can add some purple accents to your armor using Amethyst Shards!
Allay (Helper Spirit): Helper spirits are useful little creatures that you can multiply with Amethyst Shards. They need to dance to a jukebox and will split by using a shard. The cooldown period after that is five minutes.
Effective Farming of Amethyst Shards
So, how can you gather enough shards? Automatic farms are challenging to set up for amethysts since you cannot mine or move the budding blocks. This makes it difficult to organize them properly and incorporate them into Redstone projects. Moreover, you receive fewer shards if you use a piston to automatically harvest the amethyst clusters.
Your best option is to find an Amethyst Geode near your base. You might even find several geodes within a certain radius to manually mine.
An effective farm works as follows:
First, clear all sides of the budding amethyst blocks so that the buds have space to grow. With every “tick” in the game, a random side is selected for a bud to sprout or grow a stage.
Considering these ticks, it takes approximately two hours and 16 minutes for all sides of a budding block to fully mature into amethyst clusters. That’s nearly seven days in Minecraft.
Once the buds reach the fourth stage, you should manually harvest them with a pickaxe enchanted 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 search for these underground structures with your friends. It’s worth transforming at least one geode into a manual farm and regularly harvesting it. Amethyst blocks are also a fantastic building material, especially thanks to their lovely soundscape.
