Key Takeaway
An active Conduit in Minecraft gives you the Water Breathing, Night Vision, and Haste I effects while you’re touching water and are within range. Furthermore, Conduits with full frames damage nearby enemies for two Hearts every two seconds.
To activate a Conduit, you need to create a frame around it made from Prismarine, Dark Prismarine, Prismarine Bricks, or Sea Lanterns. Plus, the Conduit must be underwater.
If you need help in your next underwater battle—like when farming Guardians and Elder Guardians—you should craft a Conduit in Minecraft. This mystical block gives powerful effects that can help you stay alive longer at sea. However, you first need to give it a proper home.
Table Of Contents
How to Craft a Conduit in Minecraft
To make a Conduit in Minecraft, you need eight Nautilus Shells and one Heart of the Sea. On a Crafting Table, place the Heart of the Sea in the centermost slot and then surround it with the eight Nautilus Shells. This recipe gives you one Conduit.
How to Get Nautilus Shells
There are three ways to get Nautilus Shells. Firstly, you can potentially encounter a Wandering Trader that sells them. If you do bump into such a merchant, they’ll sell you one Nautilus Shell for five Emeralds. What’s more, Wander Traders that have Nautilus Shells carry a maximum of five.
You can rarely find Nautilus Shells when fishing. Specifically, the odds of getting a Nautilus Shell while fishing are 0.8% if you’ve cast your Fishing Rod in a 5 x 4 x 5 area of open water. However, this chance increases to 1.9% if you have the Enchantment Luck of the Sea III on your Fishing Rod.
The easiest way by far to get Nautilus Shells is to farm them from Drowned. Whenever a Drowned spawns, there’s a 3% chance in the Java Edition (8% in the Bedrock Edition) that it’ll spawn holding a Nautilus Shell. After being slain, a Drowned holding a Nautilus Shell always drops it.
How to Get a Heart of the Sea
A Heart of the Sea can only be obtained from Buried Treasure. To find Buried Treasure, you can use either an Explorer Map bought from a Cartographer Villager or feed Raw Cod or Raw Salmon to a Dolphin.
When seeking out Buried Treasure with an Explorer Map, you must look for an “X” that marks the spot. The only type of Explorer Map that shows Buried Treasure is—you guessed it—a Buried Treasure Map.
Despite the pirate-themed excitement that comes with following a Buried Treasure Map, feeding a Dolphin is arguably more efficient for finding Buried Treasure. Dolphins spawn fairly commonly in the warmer Ocean biomes (Ocean, Lukewarm Ocean, Warm Ocean, etc.) Furthermore, Raw Cod and Raw Salmon can be caught in such biomes as well. Once you feed some raw fish to a Dolphin, it swims away—leading you to some Buried Treasure, Ocean Ruins, or a Shipwreck. Buried Treasure can only spawn on a Beach or on the seafloor.
Thankfully, when you do come across a Buried Treasure Chest, there’s a 100% chance you’ll find a Heart of the Sea within.
How to Activate a Conduit’s Effects
Once you’ve acquired a Conduit, you need to place it within a 3 x 3 x 3 cube of water and then surround that watery cube with a frame before the Conduit’s effects activate. The frames (only one is required) need to be 5 x 5 and composed of Prismarine, Dark Prismarine, Prismarine Bricks, or Sea Lanterns to activate a Conduit.
What’s more, each frame needs to have the Conduit directly in its middle to work, which means the orientation of all frames must be different (if you assemble more than one). One needs to be built horizontally and the other two need to be built vertically along different axes.
Following the frame’s assembly, your Conduit activates immediately.
Conduit Effect Range
Depending on how many frames you’ve assembled around your Conduit, the range will vary. With the minimum requirement met (one frame made of 16 eligible blocks), the range of an active Conduit is 32 blocks.
For every 7 blocks added to your frame, the range of an active Conduit increases by 16. At the maximum frame density (three frame rings made of 42 eligible blocks), the range goes up to 96.
NoteHow to Get Prismarine, Dark Prismarine, Prismarine Bricks, and Sea Lanterns
The easiest way to get Prismarine, Dark Prismarine, Prismarine Bricks, and Sea Lanterns is to mine them from Ocean Monuments and Ocean Ruins with any type of Pickaxe.
Moreover, you can farm Prismarine Shards and Prismarine Crystals to make these blocks. Both of these resources are dropped by Guardians and Elder Guardians. However, since Guardians and Elder Guardians only spawn in and around Ocean Monuments, farming them isn’t easier for getting Prismarine block variants.
Here are the crafting recipes for the eligible Conduit frame blocks:
- Prismarine: make a 2 x 2 square of Prismarine Shards
- Prismarine Bricks: make a 3 x 3 square of Prismarine Shards
- Dark Prismarine: make a 3 x 3 square of Prismarine Shards, but swap out the middle one for one Ink Sac or one Black Dye
- Sea Lantern: make a plus sign from five Prismarine Crystals and then fill the four corners of the Crafting Table with four Prismarine Shards
The Effects of an Active Conduit
If you’re in range of an active Conduit and are touching the water (being in rain counts), your Conduit gives you “Conduit Power.” This is a fancy way of saying you get Water Breathing, Night Vision, and Haste I from an active Conduit. However, as you’d expect, these effects are only active while you’re underwater.
On top of these boons, an active Conduit also damages nearby hostile mobs for two Hearts every two seconds. The attack range is eight blocks for an active Conduit. However, this is only for Conduits that have a maxed-out frame (three rings made of 42 eligible blocks). Any hostile mob touching the water will take damage, including those on land but are in the rain.
Now that you’ve got the might of the ocean on your side, nothing can stop you! Well, sort of. Using a Conduit certainly offers you lots of useful effects while in the water, but Minecraft holds many more power-granting blocks, such as the Beacon.
