How To: Make Minecraft Potions

Sometimes mining and crafting gets boring. The thrill of hunting mobs, exploring strongholds, or the Nether is often much more satisfying and appeals to the RPG nerd in all of us. Well, Mojang took the hint and as part of the 1.9 release, there will be potions, more mobs, other worlds, and enchantments added to the game. To preview this release, read my tutorial on how to download and install 1.9.3.

Pre-release 1.9 part 3 contains a potions system, a preview of skylands, enchanting tables, and additions to strongholds; some new mobs were also added. Most of this content is half complete, but nonetheless interesting. 

Potions are, so far, the most complete update and as such the most game-changing as of yet. So without further adieu, let's take a look at "brewing".

So what are potions anyway? Potions in Minecraft are pretty much what they are in any fantasy lore. They are bottles of magical stuff that have an effect on your player character such as speed, health, or power for a given time of effect. 

Sounds exciting, no? Let's brew some potions.

Getting Started Brewing

Before you begin brewing you will need water bottles, a brewing stand, and a cauldron or two (optional).

For water bottles, take three glass blocks and place them in crafting table like so. Each batch will yield three bottles.

For a brewing stand, you will need three cobblestone blocks and one blaze rod.

Cauldrons only hold water and potions at the moment, so you may find them useless. Rumor has it cauldrons may have a different use in the future. To build a cauldron, you will need seven iron ingots.

For added color or storage purposes, you can dump your potions into cauldrons!

Potion Ingredients

The active ingredients in potions are: Water, Spider Eye, Fermented Spider Eye, Glowstone Dust, Redstone Dust, Nether Wart, Blaze Powder, Ghast Tear, Magma Cream, and Sugar.

With the exception of water, which I trust you can find on your own, you may wonder where these new ingredients come from. 

• Spider Eye: Comes from Spiders
• Fermented Spider Eye: This is, as you guessed, a variation on the Spider Eye. To get this, place a spider eye, some sugar, and a brown mushroom in the crafting table as seen here.
• Glowstone Dust: Comes from Glowstone
• Redstone Dust: Comes from Redstone
• Nether Wart: Grow in the Nether and are found inside Nether Dungeons, usually near stairs.
• Blaze Powder: Made from Blaze Rods, which can be taken from a new Nether mob called Blaze. 
• Ghast Tear: Comes from Ghasts.
• Magma Cream: Comes from a new Nether mob called Magma Cubes.
• Sugar: Comes from reeds.

Getting Started

You will first need water bottles, which in turn become your potion bottles or vials (which sounds cooler).

To make water bottles place three glass blocks into a crafting table like so.

Three water bottles removes one buckets worth of water. To collect water in your bottles, simply left click a water source with a water bottle in hand. If you like, you can keep your water stored in cauldrons, but any container will suffice.

If you happen to not be interested in specifics and just want to get your mad scientist hands on some concoctions, then simply open your brew stand, fill it with bottles and start trying out combinations of the ingredients above. 

Keep in mind, however, this was just a quick list of overall potion ingredients. To get desired results, you'll need to know a bit more about the process and each ingredient.

Potion ingredients can be further broken down into the following groups: Base Potion Ingredients, Special Effects Ingredients, and Modifying Ingredients.

Base Potions

Base potions are what you will always start with in brewing. They are potions that set the foundation for effects that ingredients you add later will have. 

Keep in mind that all potions require water bottles, as water is the fundamental ingredient common to all potions. 

The base potions are Awkward Potion, Thick Potion, Mundane Potion, and Potion of Weakness. Awkward Potion is made from adding Nether Warts, Thick Potion is made from adding Glowstone, Mundane Potion is made from adding Redstone, and Potion of Weakness is made from adding fermented Spider Eye. 

The first three bases of Awkward, Thick, and Mundane have no effect in themselves until you add further Modifying Ingredients to them, whereas the Weakness base has the effect of weakening the damage the player can do to animal and monster mobs for exactly one minute and thirty seconds (1:30). This contradiction strongly suggests to me that Weakness Potion will not make the final cut as a base in the official 1.9 release.

To make any of these bases, simply add the corresponding ingredient to your potions in the potion stand, like so.

Once you have your base potion, you will need to add a further ingredient to get an effect (with the exception of the Weakness Base).

Special Effect Ingredients

Special Effect Ingredients are ingredients that when added to potions give them an effect on the player who drinks them. They include:

• Blaze Powder- for strength
• Ghast Tear- for health
• Magma Cream- for fire resistance
• Spider Eye- for poisoning
• Sugar- for speed

Modifying Ingredients

The two modifying ingredients are glowstone and redstone. But wait, these were also base ingredients! True, but once added to a potion with a special effect they modify the potency or length of it's effect. Glowstone modifies the potency of a potion by putting it into a "tier II" category, whereas redstone modifies the amount of time a potion is active.

So for example the potion of strength is made from adding Blaze Powder to an Awkward potion. The strength potion adds three minutes (3:00) of plus 1.5 damage to all form of attacks. Now at this stage if you add glowstone to the strength potion it will give you plus 3 damage to all attacks while reducing it's effective time to 1:30. If you add redstone to a strength potion at this stage, it will have have the same plus 1.5 damage to all attacks but will increase the time of effect to 8 minutes. Redstone and glowstone are sort of tit for tat as modifiers. 

Now this is where it gets weird. At the moment, for a reason that probably has to do with the systems current incompleteness, the awkward base potion does most of the potion making. The Mundane and Thick base can only have one modifying ingredient added to them (fermented spider eye) which creates the same potion in either: the weakness potion. The only difference is time of effect in which the weakness potion with the mundane base is 4 minutes whereas the weakness potion with the thick base is 1 minute 30 seconds. Strange as all that sounds I'm sure it will be straightened out by release day.

Now that you understand potions and how their ingredient combos work let's get to making them!

Potion Recipes

As stated earlier, most of the potions are made from the Awkward Base and some have contradictory effects, but if you read through the recipes you'll find what suits you I'm sure. The numbers in the titles are the minutes and seconds that the potion is effective on the player. The II's indicate that a potion is a tier two potion, meaning that its effects are more potent—albeit for a shorter span of time.

It seems that Fermented Spider Eye creates the opposite effect in some of these, making Strength Potion, Weakness and Swift Potion, and the Slowness Potion. In life and in Minecraft, it's best to avoid putting Fermented Spider Eyes into anything.

Awkward Base Potion Recipes:

Instant Health = Awkward Potion + Ghast Tear. This recovers 3 hearts of health.

Instant Health II = Instant Health Potion + Glowstone Dust. This recovers 6 hearts of health.

Potion of swiftness (3:00) = Awkward Potion + Sugar. Increases speed of sprint and distance of jump for 3 minutes.

Potion of Swiftness (8:00) = Potion of Swiftness+ Redstone Dust. Be careful not to add Fermented Spider Eye to this, or you'll get the opposite desired effect.

Potion of Swiftness II (1:30) = Potion of Swiftness + Glowstone Dust.

Potion of Poison(0:45) = Awkward Potion + Spider Eye. Deal poison damage to mobs you hit.

Potion of Poison (2:00) = Potion of Poison + Redstone Dust.

Potion of Poison II (0:22) = Potion of Poison + Glowstone Dust 

Potion of Harming (0:45) = Potion of Poison + Fermented Spider Eye. This is basically a Potion of Poison, except that it removed 3 hearts or bars with each hit against a mob.

Potion of Harming II (0:45) = Potion of Poison II + Fermented Spider Eye.

Potion of strength (3:00) = Awkward Potion + Blaze Powder. This adds plus 1.5 damage to all attacks.

Potion of Strength (8:00) = Potion of Strength + Redstone Dust 

Potion of Fire Resistance (3:00) = Awkward Potion + Magma Cream. This makes you resistant to fire and lava damage. 

Potion of Fire Resistance (8:00) = Potion of Fire Resistance + Redstone Dust.

Potion of Slowness (1:30) = Potion of Fire Resistance + Fermented Spider Eye OR Potion of Swiftness + Fermented Spider Eye. This potion decreases your sprint speed. Try to avoid making this. 

Potion of Slowness (4:00) = Potion of Slowness + Redstone Dust. Once more, I'm not sure why this potion exists. 

Mundane Base Potion Recipes:

Potion of weakness (4:00) = Mundane Potion + Fermented Spider Eye. This potions makes hurting mobs impossible.

Thick Base Potion Recipes:

Potion of weakness 1:30 = Thick Potion + Fermented Spider Eye.

Playing With Potions

I will be adding updates as they come along. Please remember this is a pre-release and if some of the potions or recipes don't seem to make sense this is due to the nature of unofficial updates. 

Potions add a fun and mystical side to Minecraft and I hope you have fun playing with them. Have fun mixing and matching them and remember you can take multiple potions at once! Never has Minecraft seen such reckless abandon!  

If you still do not have the Minecraft 1.9.3 pre-release, learn how to download and install it here.

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