You can plant seeds and grow crops for various plants in Minecraft. This has become a rather iconic feature, as it’s helpful throughout the entire progression. Besides the crops, there are also other plant items that you can grow. Those are saplings, which grow naturally or with the help of bonemeal, into different trees. In this article, we will focus on common fungi, mushrooms, and show you how to grow them in Minecraft.
Types of Mushrooms in Minecraft
Not all mushroom variants from the real world are present in Minecraft, though the ones that are all we need. Depending on the color, there are red and brown mushrooms in Minecraft. Red mushrooms have white-dotted red caps and yellowish stems. Brown mushrooms are completely brown in color.
Moreover, if you believe eating a red mushroom will have bad consequences in this game, that’s actually not true. Neither red nor brown mushrooms are edible in Minecraft and are mostly used as ingredients.
There is one more division of mushrooms in Minecraft, and it’s depended on their size. The regular mushroom items are small variants, but there are also giant variants of the same colors. They act almost like trees with full stem blocks creating the trunk and full mushroom blocks creating the canopy. The stem blocks are the same for both types, but the canopy blocks and canopy shapes differ. These giant variants have their own uses, which we’re going to cover later in this article.
How to Get Mushrooms Naturally in Minecraft
Mushrooms are really not difficult to come by in your Minecraft world. They thrive in poorly lit areas, where the light level is 12 or below. They generate on the surface of swamps, old growth taiga biomes, and especially in mushroom fields/ islands where the mycelium covers the entire surface.
The small mushroom variant also generates basically everywhere in the Nether dimension. You can find them in any biome and even on the bedrock roof in the Java Edition. When it comes to giant mushrooms, you will find them commonly spawning in the dark oak forest biomes and mushroom fields. Both colored variants generate there in large quantities.
Furthermore, small mushrooms can be broken easily and instantly with any tool or hand. Whereas, the mushroom and stem blocks need to be broken with a silk touch enchanted tool, preferably an axe, in order to obtain those specific blocks. If you break the mushroom block without silk touch, you have a chance to get up to two mushroom items of the same color.
Breaking a stem block will give you the same drops as the mushroom blocks in Bedrock Edition and nothing in Java Edition. The fortune enchantment in Minecraft doesn’t affect the mushroom drops at all.
How to Find Dirt and Grow Mushrooms in Minecraft
Mushrooms thrive and spread in not overly lit areas, where the light level is 12 or below. This means you can place a few blocks above an area and create a dim space. Use the F3 debug screen to check for the light level, if you’re playing on the Java Edition. You can then plant the mushrooms and wait for them to spread naturally. Although this is a quick and easy way to have mushrooms spread, there is a better way. You can plant mushrooms regardless of the light level on the following blocks:
- Podzol – Generates in old growth taigas and bamboo jungles. Also, it’s very easily produced after growing a giant spruce tree variant. The surrounding grass and dirt blocks will convert to podzol in the process. Podzol never reverts back into the grass.
- Mycelium – This block covers the surface of mushroom fields and is the only place it generates in. It will spread to the adjacent dirt blocks in the light level of 9 or higher, so is renewable. Mycelium blocks revert back into the dirt if a full solid block is placed on top.
- Nylium – Both warped nylium and crimson nylium generate in the Nether in the warped and crimson forest biomes, respectively.
All the blocks above require silk touch enchantment to be obtained. Collecting these blocks and spreading the mushrooms on top will give you much more freedom in their growth. Furthermore, keep in mind that in order for a mushroom to spread while growing on these blocks, the requirements still need to be fulfilled. So, the surrounding blocks also need to be one of the above mentioned ones, or the light level needs to be less than 13.
How to Grow Giant Mushrooms in Minecraft
Even though giant mushroom variants seem like trees, they don’t behave the same way. Trees randomly and naturally grow from a sapling, whereas huge mushrooms cannot grow naturally from a small mushroom. The only way to grow a huge mushroom is by using bonemeal on a small mushroom. A huge mushroom of the same color has around 40% chance to generate, and its height may vary. It also needs a 7×7×8 block area free of solid blocks to generate. If it does not have the appropriate space, it won’t grow.
Best Uses for Mushrooms in Minecraft
Mushrooms are one of those items that have plenty of uses in Minecraft, so let’s go over all of them. We have discussed four different ways to use mushrooms here:
1. Crafting Ingredient
Placing a brown mushroom, a piece of sugar, and a spider eye on a crafting table produces a fermented spider eye. This item is a fairly essential potion brewing ingredient, as it allows you to make the weakness potion to cure zombie villagers. Also, read our guide on how to make a sugar cane farm, if you are running low on it.
In addition, mushrooms are useful in creating stew food items in Minecraft. One of them is a mushroom stew. All you need to craft it is a red and brown mushroom and a bowl. It restores three hunger points and 7.2 saturation.
The next stew is suspicious stew in Minecraft. It is a special item because, similarly to a beacon or conduit, it will provide players with some buffs or debuffs for a short time. If you’re interested in this peculiar food item, check out our guide on it.
The last stew is a rabbit stew and its recipe is an expensive one. It requires a cooked rabbit, carrot, baked potato, any mushroom, and a bowl. This food item restores a total of 5 hunger points and 12 saturation.
2. Building and Decoration
Brown mushroom blocks are one of the most frequently used building blocks in Minecraft. Their earth tone blends well with blocks such as packed mud, mud bricks, jungle planks, stripped jungle log and wood, and many others. Moreover, the stem blocks don’t have too busy of a texture, and you can easily blend their color with other blocks. One of the most unique features of mushroom blocks is the hidden texture.
When one mushroom block is attached to another one, the main texture on that side is replaced with a texture representing the inside of a mushroom with tiny holes. Simply remove the attached block and the exposed texture will remain. Besides building with mushroom and stem blocks, you can place small mushrooms of both colors in a flower pot.
3. Light Source
Even though it’s a little silly, brown mushrooms give off a light level of 1, as we mentioned in our article about all light sources in Minecraft. This feature can actually be useful, for instance, in some farm designs. They don’t produce light in a flower pot.
4. Composting
This is a great use for mushrooms if you have them in bulk and also have no idea why. Placing any mushroom in a composter has a 65% chance of creating a layer in it. When the composter is full, it’ll create one piece of bonemeal that can then be used to grow even more giant mushrooms.
No, you cannot cook mushrooms, nor use them as fuel.
No, mushrooms need either light level of 12 or less or adequate dirt blocks to grow on.
