How to Make Lead in Minecraft

The lead is one of the most useful utility items in Minecraft when it comes to controlling the mobs, specifically the animals. Suppose you stumble upon a cow in Minecraft and want to bring it back to your base. Say, you want to build a trading hall, or make a massive zoo with every passive and hostile mob in the game. Although you can use a minecart or a boat to bring them, you will require a leash or a lead to nudge them up or down difficult terrain. So, check this guide to learn all about how to make a lead in Minecraft, its crafting recipe, and on what animals you can use it on.

Lead Crafting Recipe

The lead crafting recipe got updated in the Chase the Skies drop, replacing the only slimeball required with a piece of string. This made the lead an easy-to-craft item for all the beginners, allowing them to carry their pets on all their adventures. That said, check out all the stuff you need to craft it below.

What You Need to Make a Lead

The crafting recipe for a lead always gives two items at once. Thankfully, with the Chase the Skies update, you only need 5 strings to make a lead in Minecraft.

String is a drop from the spider mob in Minecraft. These arachnids can drop 0-2 strings after they are defeated. You also need a crafting table, a block used to perform complex crafting actions. Here’s a quick breakdown of all items required to craft a lead:

Crafting Recipe	Materials Required
2 Lead	5 Strings
5 Strings	3 Spider Mobs or Cobwebs

Step-by-Step Lead Crafting Guide in Minecraft

After you get strings, follow the steps below to make a lead in the game:

• Place the crafting table or crafter in your world.
• Right-click the block to open its crafting grid UI.
• Place two strings in the first two slots of the topmost and middle rows.
• Place the fifth string in the bottom right corner of the grid in the last row.

And voila! You will see the lead item in the result slot on the right. Click on the lead and drag it to your inventory.

You can automate this process using the crafter block. It’s similar to a crafting table but supports only automated crafting using a redstone signal. You can use a button, lever, redstone block, and redstone clock.

Why Lead Recipe Changed to String-Only

In the earlier Minecraft versions, players had to locate swamps and defeat the slimes to get a slimeball. This made crafting the lead that required 4 strings and 1 slimeball very inconvenient for the early gamers.

It became increasingly difficult when players didn’t want to use any cheats or even refer to the Minecraft seed map to locate the swamp biomes in the game. Hence, the update in this recipe reduced the friction for crafting leads, and players could even ride the Happy Ghasts and explore Minecraft from the sky.

Other Ways to Get Lead in Minecraft

Crafting isn’t the only way to get lead in Minecraft. A lot of players choose the alternative methods more often to get this item:

From a Wandering Trader

Unexpectedly, the most common way to get the lead is by buying it from the wandering trader. This special merchant spawns with two llamas near your location now and then.

The llamas will always be on a lead and guided by the trader. You can take the lead by killing the llamas or the trader. Another easy and much calmer way to “steal” leads is to put the llamas in a boat or a minecart. This will instantly break the leads, dropping them as items.

Loot from Chests

Apart from crafting, you can obtain a lead in several other ways. The first is by looting chests in the following locations:

• Ancient City (16.1%)
• Woodland Mansion (28.3% in Java, 27.9% in Bedrock)
• Buried Treasure in Bedrock Edition Only (34.3%)

Furthermore, there is a 2.2% chance that you will unearth a lead item while brushing suspicious gravel blocks in the Trail ruins structures.

How to Use a Lead in Minecraft: A Complete Guide

Now that you know how to craft a lead in Minecraft, you can use it to pull the mobs to your base. So, we have discussed all the uses of a lead in great detail below:

Leashing, Unleashing & Tying Mobs to Fences

An amazing fact about the lead is that you can have multiple mobs on leads at once. You can even create a caravan of mobs, one after another, using a single lead. This will enable you to transport many mobs across a short distance easily.

To take the lead off a mob, you can either right-click the mob or use a pair of shears in Minecraft. Moreover, if you get far away from the leashed mob (more than 12 blocks), the leash will break and be dropped near that mob.

When you reach your destination, you can strap a lead to any fence post to keep the mob(s) in a particular area. To do this, you can right-click the fence block. Moreover, you can also tie the lead to a wall in the Bedrock edition, which is impossible on the Java version.

Transporting Mobs Over Land and Water

Using the leads, you can move the mobs across the Minecraft terrain, up and down the ravines, and even climb up mountains. This is not possible using a boat, and you constantly need to create a level ground for the boat to pass through.

You can also tie mobs with a leash and lead them on water, but that may sometimes cause them to drown. Instead, place the mobs on a boat, and tie the boat with a lead to drag it through the oceans without worrying about the mobs drowning or escaping.

Advanced Lead Uses

You may use a lead to direct Minecraft mobs horizontally and vertically. If the mob is seven or more blocks away from the player holding the lead, it will be suspended in the air.

Finally, if you’re thinking of taking them to the sky, simply attach one end of the lead to a happy ghast and the other to any mob or a boat to transport them over larger distances.

It’s also possible to put a lead on a boat in Bedrock edition and now in Java with the Minecraft Chase the Skies Drop, even though it seems strange. When the mob is leashed, they will follow the player closely in the direction of the movement.

Pro Tips & Warnings

Although the leads in Minecraft are excellent at dragging animal mobs, there are a few hidden mechanics that can easily confuse players. One of the most important things to remember is that leads can break if the connecting line gets disrupted.

When the lead is hit by projectiles like arrows or if any block obstructs the connecting line, it can get snapped. This usually occurs when players move too quickly, cross fences, or suddenly change the elevation of the ground. Snapping of a lead will drop the item, and as a result, the mob will become free to move.

All Leashable Mobs

The only use of a lead is to leash mobs in Minecraft. You can do this by having the lead selected on your hotbar and then right-clicking a mob. Not every mob can be leashed, though. So, we have prepared a whole list of the mobs you can leash right here:

Categories	Leashable Mobs
Farm Animals	Cow, Sheep, Pig, Chicken, Goat, Rabbit, Mooshroom
Pets & Companions	Wolf, Cat, Ocelot, Parrot
Mounts	Camel, Donkey, Horse, Llama, Mule
Golems	Iron Golem, Snow Golem
Aquatic Mobs	Axolotl, Dolphin, Glow Squid, Squid
Neutral & Special Mobs	Allay, Bee, Fox, Frog, Hoglin, Polar Bear, Skeleton Horse, Sniffer, Strider, Trader Llama, Zoglin, Zombie Horse
Entities	Boat

Troubleshooting: Why is My Lead Breaking?

If you’re constantly snapping your lead in Minecraft, note that this issue is due to the mechanics rather than any Minecraft bug. If the mobs move too far away from you, who is holding the lead in one hand, it can break. This can also happen if the lead gets hit by projectiles or if it gets obstructed due to blocks in between. Switching dimensions can also break the lead and drop as items.

To sum it up, leads are useful items that make time-consuming and frustrating tasks much more manageable. Their crafting recipe is not overly expensive either, but you may just take them from the wandering trader for free. So, what do you think of leads? How often do you use them in your world? Tell us in the comment section below.