If you’re planning to build an underwater base in Minecraft, or you just wanna spend a significant amount of time in a particular place under the sea (be sure to know how to swim properly), you should consider bringing a Conduit with you. Conduits are beacon-type of block, they provide status effects in a radius around them (see also: How to get the Haste 2 effect with a Beacon in Minecraft?).
One of their effects is a very valuable Water Breathing effect, but it’s not the only useful one. In this article we are going to see how to craft them, how to activate them and what they can do, plus some other things that could come in handy.
Effects
Once the Conduit will be activated, it will provide the effect Conduit Power to all players in contact with water (rain included) around the Conduit. This offers different bonuses:
- underwater Vision
- oxygen restoration
- increased mining speed (1/6 more faster than normal)
- it also damages every hostile mob that is 8 blocks away from it.
These effects make exploring underwater a breeze, so you can always consider bringing a Conduit with you with the materials required to activate it (see below). It takes as much space in the inventory than bringing two Water Breathing Potions and it gives better effects. The mining effect is not as good as Aqua Affinity, but it’s a nice bonus as well.
How to get a Conduit
To craft it you’re gonna need 8 Nautilus Shells and one Heart of the Sea.
You can get the shells by killing drowned, trading with a Wandering Trader or fishing, though the last option is quite rare (you have less than 1% chance to find one by fishing).
The only way to find a Heart of the Sea is by following a Treasure Map instructions, that will lead you to a buried treasure (it will look like a regular chest). As the name suggests, this chest will be buried most of the times, so once you’ll arrive to the X you’ll have to dig a bit around that area.
You can find a Treasure Maps on Ocean Monuments and Shipwrecks. If you’re having a hard time finding this kind of places, you can always feed a Dolphin with Raw Cod or Raw Salmon: if you do that, they’ll start swimming towards the nearest Shipwreck, Ocean Monument, or buried treasure chest.
Otherwise, you can obtain a Conduit using commands by typing:
/give @p minecraft:conduit 1
Activation
The Conduit will need to be at the centre of a 3x3x3 volume of water (source blocks or flowing, it’s the same), which needs to be inside the activation frame. This is a structure that you can build using only one of the following types of block: Prismarine, Dark Prismarine, Prismarine Bricks and Sea Lantern. You can find all of them in Ocean Monuments.
The simplest structure that you can build is a 5×5 square, which requires exactly 16 blocks. You can build the frame using at least 16 blocks up to a maximum of 42 blocks, but keep in mind that the more blocks you are using, the largest the radius the effect will have.
This in the screenshot above is a simple 5×5 square. Once the structure will be complete, the Conduit will open (revealing the Heart of the Sea inside it) and it will start to spread its benefic effects. This provides a 32 blocks radius Conduit Power effect.
This one is a “double” frame, made by intersecting two 5×5 square frames. This provides a 64 blocks radius Conduit Power effect.
And this one is a triple frame. It provides a 96 blocks Conduit Power effect.
The single frame will provide a 32 blocks radius of effect. The radius is equivalent to16 blocks for every 7 blocks in the frame (though there can’t be less than 16 blocks to activate it).
So a 21 blocks frame will have a 48 blocks radius, a 28 blocks frame will have a 64 blocks radius, a 35 blocks frame will have a 80 blocks radius and a 42 blocks frame will have a 96 blocks radius.
Only the blocks in the frames will be counted. For example, this structure:
has a 5×5 square frame, so 16 blocks, plus other 8 blocks, for a total of 24 (which will be rounded down to 21 for the count). It will provide a 48 blocks radius.
This structure on the other hand:
has only the 5×5 square frame, the other blocks aren’t placed in spots that are important for the count. Thus, it will only provide 32 blocks radius.
I hope what I explained is understandable, down below in this article I’ll leave a video where it can be easier to follow how it works. If you’re in doubt anyway, just build the triple frame that provides the maximum radius. I don’t see a reason why you should want a lesser radius.
Miscellaneous
- A conduit can be broken by hand or any tools and it will drop as an item
- it was added in 2018 with version 1.13, the Aquatic update
- conduits release the highest light level in the game, 15
- its Namespaced ID is conduit
- in the Java edition its Translation key is block.minecraft.conduit
- in the Bedrock edition its Translation key is tile.conduit.name and its Numeric ID is 412
- Conduits are stackable
