How to farm clay in Minecraft

Minecraft’s clay is a great block for creating decorations. It’s the starting point for everything from flower pots to glazed terracotta.

In this Minecraft clay guide, we’ll explain where to find clay and how to farm as much clay as you’ll ever need.

Where to find clay

On the surface, the best place to find clay is near (or under) water. You’ll find it everywhere from rivers to swamps to the ocean floor.

Below ground, look for a lush cave biome — the underground caves with lots of greenery in them. Lush caves tend to generate below dark forest and jungle biomes, and never generate under forest, plains, or savanna biomes.

You can mine clay with any (or no) tool.

How to farm clay

Instead of looking for lush caves or wandering the ocean floor, you can make your own clay from dirt.

Hitting dirt with a water bottle turns it into mud. Once you have enough mud, you’ll need some pointed dripstone that you can find in dripstone cave biomes or that you can farm yourself.

Image: Microsoft/Mojang via Polygon

With that in hand, place a block (we like using dripstone blocks for simplicity) with a pointed dripstone underneath it. Place one of your mud blocks on top and wait. In a little while, that mud will become a clay block.

How to use clay

Clay isn’t that versatile, but it turns into some useful (decorative) items. Breaking a clay block drops four clay balls.

• Putting one clay ball into a furnace will give you one brick. Three bricks can be crafted into a flower pot, and four can become bricks — a block of brick.
• Four clay balls can be turned back into a clay block. If you throw the entire block in a furnace, you’ll get terracotta. Terracotta can be dyed to become colored terracotta, which can then be run through a furnace again to get glazed terracotta.