Glass is an amazing addition to any build. It allows us a safe way to look outside of our base, but its colored variations allow us to really brighten up the space around us.
Though, you do not always want a lot of light to be visible out through your windows. Sometimes you need a way to look out without giving away your position with your indoor lights. Especially if you are in a PVP server and trying to stay hidden.
That is what tinted glass is for and luckily it is fairly easy to make it once you have your hands on all the materials you need.
In this article we will show you exactly what you need to make tinted glass and how to use it effectively.
Minecraft Tinted Glass Recipe
- 1 block of glass
- 4 amethyst shards
To make tinted glass you will first have to find yourself amethyst and this is the trickiest part of making tinted glass. You will have to find quite a bit of it if you are planning on making a larger amount of tinted glass.
Amethyst can be found in geodes, which we will talk more about further down in this article.
The rest of the recipe is pretty easy as all you have to do is stock up on a little bit of regular glass blocks. To make glass you simply have to cook sand in the furnace.
The recipe you see here is enough for 2 tinted glass blocks.
Finding Amethyst Shards
To get amethyst shards you will have to find yourself an amethyst geode. These natural structures that generate anywhere underground in the Overworld realm of Minecraft.
They are large circular or semi-circular features that can be found between the Y levels of -58 and 30 in caves. Each chunk has a 1 in 24 chances of spawning one.
They can be either fully closed or cracked, but spotting them in either state is rather easy. An amethyst geode has a total of 3 layers. the first one is a layer of smooth basalt, then a layer of white calcite, and finally the amethyst layert.
In a stoney cave it is very easy to spot the round smooth basalt and even easier to spot the two other inner layers of a geode.
Amethyst shards can be harvested from the large crystal clusters you can see growing inside.
They have to be mined with a regular pick-axe, preferably one that does not have the silk touch enchantment, as that will not yield you any shards.
It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with how ores work in Minecraft to help you in finding the geodes.
Using Tinted Glass in Minecraft
Now that we know how to make tinted glass we can finally use it.
The way tinted glass works, as we mentioned, is that it is a transparent block through which you can see, but it does not allow for any light to pass through it, unlike other glass blocks.
This means if you were to surround a light source with tinted glass there would be no light, though you’ll be able to see the light source through the blocks.
Now there are many uses for this specific mechanic.
The first one to consider is hiding your base while still wanting to have windows and a view outside. You may not always feel up for making your base underwater or underground, but you also may not want to get raided.
Tinted glass helps here as it will make it harder to spot your base at night, when your lights are most visible.
Keep in mind, the tinted glass is still transparent and can be looked through.
Another good use for it is when making a mob farm in Minecraft.
Mob farms heavily rely either on having a spawner or complete darkness in order to work. Using tinted glass will allow you to look inside your farm while still making it work.
