Among the many activities that you can do in Minecraft, one stands out for its recipe-centered content: alchemy.
In Minecraft, brewing specific potions is a complex activity that requires a few rare items and a good amount of knowledge; healing potions are among the most exciting.
A healing potion in Minecraft is an excellent tool that can considerably ease gameplay hardships. The game’s risky encounters with enemy mobs and even antagonistic players can end badly without an extra aid to your character’s health.
Nevertheless, making any potion in Minecraft requires specific items; you must follow the game’s recipes religiously to create a unique concoction and health potions are no different.
Therefore, let’s dive deep into a few recipes to clear up how to make healing potions in Minecraft.
Potions
In short, potions are bottled substances that you can either use on your player as a consumable item or throw at mobs to inflict a specific type of effect.
The main effects of potions are a time-limited buff or nerf. So, in the case of health potions, it’s a time-limited buff that enhances the player’s health status.
The most typical way of having potions is by crafting them at a brewing stand. Alternatively, you might get potions in chests inside ancient cities and buried treasures, and igloos. Witches and wandering traders can also drop potions after death.
There are various categories of potions in Minecraft; each category might have more than one type of potion containing a similar-yet-different effect.
Let’s clarify this by discussing the category of health potions.
Health Potions
In the health category, potions work by improving a player’s or mob’s health condition by either providing instant health or a regenerative status.
Health potions are an immediate alternative to foods since they’re both helpful in restoring a player’s health.
In the instant health section, we have:
- Potion of Healing – Instantly restores four health points (2 whole hearts).
- Potion of Healing II – Instantly restores eight health points (4 whole hearts).
Furthermore, the regenerative healing potions are:
- Potion of Regeneration – Restores 18 health points (9 whole hearts) over time; 1 health point every 2.5 seconds for 45 seconds.
- Potion of Regeneration II – Restores 18 health points in a shorter time; 1 health point every 1.25 seconds for 22 seconds.
- Potion of Regeneration + (plus) – Can restore either 36 or 48 health points depending on the potion’s duration. It provides 1 health point every 1 second for either 1:30 or 2:00 minutes.
Crafting any of the potions above is somewhat challenging. Typically, players on a mid to late-game status can achieve the necessary items more quickly.
These types of potions are highly useful in combat scenarios; using health potions you’ll significantly increase your chances of winning a PvP duel.
Crafting Potions
Regardless of the potion that you’ll make in Minecraft, you’ll first need to create a brewing stand. The brewing stand is the most fundamental block to practicing alchemy in the game; to craft one, you’ll need:
- 1 Blaze Rod.
- 3 Cobblestones.
After acquiring the items from the list above, follow this recipe on a crafting table:
Alternatively, you might find a brewing stand in a village’s alchemist’s house.
There’s also a chance of encountering a brewing stand inside igloos; in this case, they’ll often contain a potion of weakness inside their GUI.
With the potion crafting spot ready, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the brewing stand’s GUI. By opening the brewing display, you’ll notice one block at the top and three others sitting beneath it. The arrow pointing downwards indicates that the distillation follows that order.
In the upper slot, you must place the main ingredient for the potion.
The brewing stand requires fuel to work. More specifically, the only available fuel for brewing stands is blaze powder, which you’ll need to place in the fuel slot.
A water bottle is necessary to start the brewing process.
By crafting a glass bottle, you can use it while interacting with a water source. Consequently, the glass bottle will fill itself with water and become a water bottle. To craft a glass bottle, you’ll need three glass units.
Then, follow this recipe:
After acquiring a water bottle you’ll need to place it on the brewing stand and add a base ingredient. The base ingredient will combine with the water bottle, turning it into an awkward potion, making it eligible to receive an “effect” ingredient.
An effect ingredient will grant the potion a purpose. In our case, the effect ingredient should give the potion the regenerative or instant health effect.
You can improve a potion’s effect by adding an enhancer ingredient to the equation.
For example, adding glowstone dust unit will intensify the potion, whereas adding Redstone dust makes the potion’s effects last longer.
Brewing Health Potions
With all the information above, you’re now aware that you’ll need to combine a few water bottles with specific ingredients inside a brewing stand to craft a health potion.
The ingredients for health potions are:
- Glistering Melon Slice – Instant Health.
- Ghast Tear – Regeneration.
By brewing an awkward potion with any of the ingredients above you’ll get either an instant health potion or a regeneration potion.
You can get a glistering melon slice in Minecraft by finding it inside chests in ruined portals in the Overworld and Nether or by crafting it on a crafting table. You’ll need a melon slice and 8 gold nuggets to create a glistering melon slice.
A ghast tear item is a lootable object that ghasts drop after death.
You can find ghasts in the Nether; they’re massive white ghost-like creatures that float around in the Nether dimension. As hostile creatures, they throw explosive fireballs toward players.
Typically, ghasts can drop a maximum of 1 ghast tear.
However, you can increase these chances by enchanting the sword you’ll use to slay these mobs with the “Looting” enchantment. As a result, you can get up to 4 ghast tears from a 1 ghast.
As mentioned, brewing a water bottle with a base ingredient grants the player an “awkward potion”, which the player will then brew again with any of the ingredients above to create a health-related potion.
Otherwise, if the player brews any health-related ingredients with a standard “water bottle” item, the result will be a “mundane potion”, which doesn’t have any effect.