The underwater world of Minecraft has always been a fascinating place. You can find all kinds of unique mobs, blocks and even structures on the ocean side Minecraft biomes. Common underwater structures include ocean ruins, home to drowned trident wielders Minecraft mobs And sniffing eggsbut also shipwrecks, sunken boats with useful treasures and the occasional coast armor decoration. Apart from that, you will come across a huge deep ocean structure called the ocean monument. This building is one of the coolest and houses laser-shooting guards that give you a mining fatigue status effect. There is one more special feature about this structure, and that is the fact that you can get unique and groundbreaking sponge blocks here.
In this guide, we’ll look at how to get, dry, and use sponges in Minecraft. So, without further ado, let’s jump right in!
What is a sponge?
Sponge is a block that only appears in ocean monuments. There are two types of sponges and they are dry and wet sponges. Sometimes you will find a room in the monument filled with wet sponge blocks and your job is to dry them first. You can then place them in your world and remove water from a large area. Stick around until the last part of this article, where we will explain how to use this special block.
Where can you find sponges in Minecraft?
You can only get sponges from an ocean monument. They are naturally attached to the ceiling so-called sponge chambers, which appear randomly in the tree. Sponges cannot be created in any way, so make sure you are prepared for the underwater battle with the ugly looking fish mobs. We’ve covered everything you need to know how to find and loot an ocean monument, so you will find all the necessary details here. Also keep in mind that not every ocean monument will contain a sponge chamber.
However, one sponge block is a guaranteed drop from an older guard crowd and there are three at each monument. So if you can defeat all three older guards, you will definitely get three sponges.
Nevertheless, these blocks are most useful if you have a number of them. Therefore, finding and looting at least two sponge rooms should be enough in a regular Minecraft world, as one room usually yields about 30 sponges. You can mine a wet or dry sponge block by hand or with a hoe, which is the best tool for breaking it. No Minecraft Enchantments are needed to break and obtain these hollow blocks.
How to dry sponges in Minecraft
Since you will always encounter naturally generated wet sponges, you must dry them first before you can use them. Fortunately, the process of drying a sponge is simple. You can choose from two different methods as below:
Method 1: Dry a wet sponge in an oven
By a wet sponge in one oven and if you add some fuel you can smell it and completely remove the water from it. Once the arrow is full, the wet sponge turns into a dry sponge.
Method 2: Place a wet sponge in the nether regions
Nether is considered hell in Minecraft, so the climate is said to be extremely hot. The developers have stuck with that and made it possible to dry sponges by placing them anywhere in this dimension. It doesn’t have to be near lava or in a specific biome.
You can even dry sponges in your Nether hub and that is recommended so that no random ghast can blow up your rare blocks. This method is much faster and only requires you to collect a few obsidian And create a Nether portal. If you plan on beating Minecraft, you should do this anyway.
Using Sponges in Minecraft
The main purpose of a sponge block is to to absorb water in Minecraft. So if you put down a sponge, flowing or regular water blocks up to 7 blocks away from the sponge will immediately turn into air blocks. However, this is only possible if there is water on it same Y level like the sponge.
A single sponge cannot absorb an entire 7 x 7 x 7 block of water at once, but a maximum of 65 blocks of water. This is due to the way the game calculates the distance between water blocks and the sponge, essentially creating an octahedron, not a cube or sphere. Once a sponge is placed and dried successfully, even a single block of water, it becomes a wet sponge. So you have to remove the water from the block to be able to use it again.
Drying small surfaces with a sponge is an easy task, but on a large surface it is not the same. So spamming your sponge blocks into the ocean won’t be that helpful. This is the case because of the surrounding water blocks. Your sponge will remove as much water as possible, but then all the water around it will start to combine and form water source blocks again.
That’s why when draining a large area in YouTube videos, people create vertical sections from the water’s surface all the way to the bottom, usually with gravity-biased blocks, such as sand. This way you can remove the water in one section and not have to worry about the surrounding water seeping in and filling it back up.
These sections should be 4 blocks long and 4 blocks wide and when draining you should always start from the top and work your way down so the water doesn’t flow down. Additionally, try attaching sponge blocks to opposite sides so that any remaining water is absorbed.
And so now you know how to get and use a sponge in Minecraft. These rare and precious blocks allow us to achieve incredible goals such as setting up an efficient guardianship farm so you can play with the prismarine blocks endlessly. Or you can even create an epic underwater base. So, what do you think about sponges? Do you use them regularly in your world? Let us know in the comments below!
