Glass is a type of material that lets you enhance your Minecraft base in many ways. You can create windows and color them as well for a unique look–all you need is some Sand.
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What You Need to Make Glass Blocks
You can make Glass blocks easily by cooking Sand (or Red Sand) in a Furnace. This process works in the same way that cooking food does. Simply place the Sand in the top slot and any kind of fuel in the bottom slot to cook the Sand. After the white progress arrow fills up, a block of Glass will appear in the right slot.
Where to Get Sand
Sand can be found in large amounts near water or in Desert biomes. The best tool for collecting Sand is a shovel, which will let you scoop up a ton of the stuff quickly. Just be careful when gathering Sand, as it’s a kind of block that gets affected by gravity. This means that Sand can fall onto you, potentially suffocating your character.
Red Sand can be found in Badlands biomes and will appear more orange than actually red. This variant of regular Sand won’t cause the Glass it makes to be a different color–for that, you need dyes.
How to Make a Furnace
Furnaces can be made by forming a ‘ring’ of Cobblestone on a Crafting Table. After making a Furnace, you must place it somewhere to use it. You will need to put fuel into the bottom slot to cook items.
Where to Find Naturally Generated Glass
While Glass blocks, and other Glass items, can be found in the wild, you can’t collect Glass without special tools. Most of the time, when you try to break a Glass block, it will simply shatter and not drop anything–the same goes for Glass Panes. You will need to break Glass with a tool that has the Silk Touch enchantment to get the item to drop itself. With that said, here are some places that can spawn Glass blocks and Glass Panes:
- White Stained Glass Panes and Yellow Stained Glass Panes can spawn in overworld Villages
- Glass blocks can spawn inside the secret rooms of Woodland Mansions
- Magenta Stained Glass blocks can spawn in End Cities
Additionally, you can possibly find a trade option for Glass blocks when talking with a Librarian Villager. Journeyman-level Librarian Villagers can sell you 4 Glass blocks in exchange for 1 Emerald. In the Bedrock Edition of Minecraft, there is a 50% chance that a Journeyman-level Librarian Villager will have this trade option. However, in the Java Edition of the game, your chance is about 66%.
How to Use Glass to Make Decorative Items (Stained Glass, Glass Panes, Tinted Glass)
While regular Glass blocks can look nice in your Minecraft home, you can craft even more beautiful kinds! If you want more color in your home or different kinds of clear Glass, be sure to take a look at all the possible options in your crafting menu.
How to Make Stained Glass Blocks
To craft Stained Glass blocks, you’ll need to place the desired color of dye onto the middle slot of a Crafting Table and then completely surround it with regular Glass blocks. This recipe will require 1 dye and 8 Glass blocks, though the end product will give you 8 Stained Glass blocks of the chosen color.
Stained Glass blocks can be made with regular Glass blocks and any kind of dye. Similar to making colored Concrete Powder or colored blocks of Wool, you can craft 16 different kinds of Stained Glass. Being able to make colored Glass blocks from any of the possible dye colors will allow you to turn your base from a dirt and wood hut into a vibrant home.
How to Make Glass Panes
You can make 16 Glass Panes by placing 6 Glass blocks onto a Crafting Table and completely filling 2 adjacent rows. If you’re planning on making windows, or other Glass decorations, it’s highly recommended to use Glass Panes instead of Glass blocks. Glass Panes are much more resource-efficient, as Glass Panes and Glass blocks cover the same amount of space.
It’s also possible for you to make Stained Glass Panes, though there are multiple ways of doing this. The first and cheapest way is to use the same Glass Pane crafting recipe mentioned above, but swap out the Glass blocks for Stained Glass blocks. The chosen color of Stained Glass blocks used will allow you to create Glass Panes of the same color. The other way of making Stained Glass Panes is to completely surround 1 dye with normal Glass Panes on a Crafting Table–similar to how you would make Stained Glass blocks.
How to Make Tinted Glass
This colored variant of Glass is a bit different from the others. You can make Tinted Glass blocks by placing 1 regular Glass block in the middle slot of a Crafting Table and then surrounding it on the top, left, right, and bottom adjacent slots with Amethyst Shards. This recipe will give you 2 Tinted Glass blocks. To get Amethyst Shards, you’ll have to break Amethyst Clusters that can appropriately only be found in Amethyst Geodes. Such geodes spawn in the overworld between layers 1 to 70, though only a single Amethyst Geode will spawn per chunk.
Tinted Glass blocks are transparent but don’t allow light to pass through them. As such, you can see through these blocks as well as use them to block light out of an area. This can be useful for spawning monsters for mob farming and more.
How to Use Glass to Make Functional Items (Glass Bottle, Daylight Detector, End Crystal, Beacon)
The reason you would mostly use Glass is for decorative purposes, however, you can also use it to make a few unique items. The functions of these items will vary a lot, and some can be dangerous, so tread carefully when making one of them.
How to Make a Glass Bottle
Out of all the functional Glass items, Glass Bottles are the easiest to craft and the most useful. You can create 3 Glass Bottles by placing 3 Glass blocks onto a Crafting Table in a “V” shape. Put simply: use the same recipe as you would for crafting a Bucket, but use Glass instead of Iron Ingots.
Glass Bottles are crucial for making potions, so, if you want to be the best alchemist, be sure to stock up on them. However, you can also use Glass Bottles to hold water and honey to store them. Water and honey contained in Glass Bottles can be consumed if you hold them in your hand and use them.
How to Make a Daylight Detector
To craft a Daylight Detector, you’ll need to place 3 Glass blocks on the top row of a Crafting Table, 3 Nether Quartz in the middle row, and 3 Wood Slabs on the bottom row. While a bit expensive to make, this device is great for automatically powering a Redstone circuit of some kind. After being placed, a Daylight Detector will produce a power signal when it detects sunlight. As such, you can use it to power circuits without needing to do anything manually. Although, you should keep in mind that the aptly named Daylight Detectors are the most useful during the day.
How to Make an End Crystal
Making an End Crystal will require you to place an Eye of Ender on the middle slot of a Crafting Table, a Ghast Tear below it, and then fill the remaining slots with Glass Blocks. Be careful after making an End Crystal, as it will damage you, and other players, after being placed. The original purpose of this entity is to heal the Ender Dragon and hurt players. Therefore, it can be used as an effective element in a PvP trap. Although, it can also be used as a unique decorative item–just stay away from it.
How to Make a Beacon
You can make the beautiful Beacon by putting a Nether Star in the middle slot of a Crafting Table, 3 Obsidian blocks on the bottom row, and then filling the rest of the slots with Glass blocks. The most obvious function of a Beacon will be the pillar of light that it creates. This is an excellent marker that can help you find your way home from any adventure.
However, this beam of light does more than simply look nice from far away. If you put specific items into a Beacon, you can cause the beam of light to give you different buffs. You can get multiple positive status effects at the same time, which is always handy. Furthermore, you can increase the power of these buffs depending on how many Beacons you have active. You can get the following buffs from Beacons:
- Speed – increases movement speed
- Haste – increases mining speed and attack speed
- Resistance – decreases most types of incoming damage
- Jump Boost – increases jump distance and jump height
- Strength – increases melee damage
- Regeneration – causes you to gradually regain HP over time
