How to Get Prismarine Shards in Minecraft

As you might know, the Overworld in Minecraft is divided into three major parts, the surface, the underground, and the underwater part. All of these areas have distinctive blocks, items, and mobs unlike any other in the game. That said, today, we will be checking out the underwater world and taking a look at a very special item called the prismarine shard. We will be explaining how to get prismarine shards in Minecraft.

Where Will You Find Prismarine Shards

Unlike many other items in Minecraft, you can acquire prismarine shards in only one way. They are drops from the guardian and elder guardian mobs in Minecraft. This means you will need to locate an ocean monument structure.

It’s a huge underwater building that generates only in the deep ocean Minecraft biomes. There, you will come across ugly-looking mobs that resemble fish in a way. The smaller cyan fish are guardians, whereas the big white fish (mud-colored) are elder guardians.

Both of these mobs can drop up to 2 prismarine shards after you defeat them. Moreover, if you put the looting Minecraft enchantment on your sword, you can get up to 5 shards with the highest level. But don’t get overly confident now.

Ocean monuments are not that simple, especially if you’ve never visited one before. That’s why we strongly recommend you check out our guide on how to find and raid an ocean monument. There, you will learn how to locate this structure, what preparations you should make, as well as how to execute the raiding successfully to get some rare rewards.

How to Farm Prismarine Shards in Minecraft

Every ocean monument has three elder guardians inside. They are strong mobs that inflict the mining fatigue effect when the player gets in range. Once you defeat the elder guardians, they will not respawn anymore. However, the guardians are not as tough, and they constantly spawn within the bounds of the structure. So, to farm prismarine shards, stick to killing regular guardians.

You can swim from one end of the ocean monument to the other, so the guardians repopulate the structure. Furthermore, make sure you eat consistently since these mobs also have the permanent thorns effect, which will every once in a while harm you when you harm them.

In addition, swimming behind pillars to break the guardians’ line of sight will keep you safe from their laser attacks.

If you’d like to farm prismarine shards in an automated way, you can make a guardian farm. There are several different designs of this farm, with some being more efficient and others less. Either way, making a guardian farm can be quite time-consuming and heavy on the resource count.

However, if you are sure that’s the Minecraft farm you want to build, we recommend a great tutorial video from YouTube creator Pixlriffs. This farm requires the whole structure and surroundings to be completely drained. But, that’s not necessary in some other designs.

How to Use Prismarine Shards in Minecraft

Prismarine shards have pretty much just one use in the game. They are the crafting ingredient for various prismarine blocks. Those include:

• Prismarine Blocks
• Prismarine Bricks
• Dark Prismarine
• Sea Lantern

Prismarine blocks are the most common ones in this family. They have a special animated texture that cycles between a greenish and a bluish color. This block changes color 22 times and the entire animation lasts for about 5 minutes and 30 seconds.

Prismarine bricks, on the other hand, are cleaner than prismarine blocks and have distinctive cracks in their texture. Dark prismarine goes very well in combination with multiple other building blocks in the game. Sea lanterns are amazing light source blocks that fit numerous building styles. As their name suggests, they also work perfectly underwater.

If you’ve reached the end of this guide, congrats! Now you know how to obtain and use prismarine shards. Prismarine blocks are one of the most unique and fun blocks to use in house builds, so get your hands on this unique item as soon as possible.