Turtle Shells are a very unique item in Minecraft. They can be worn as a helmet (with decent defense), they give a Water Breathing effect and they can be used to brew potions. Before we continue, let me assure you: you won’t have to kill any Turtle to get it. Now that you’re relieved about that, let’s get into it.
Crafting
For crafting a Turtle Shell you will need 5 Scute, items dropped by Baby Turtles when they grow up into adults:
Since it is not easy to find Baby Turtles, you’ll almost certainly need to start breeding Turtles if you want to make a Turtle Shell (if you wanna see how, check my Everything about Turtle Eggs article)
Wearing
A Turtle Shell can be worn as a helmet. It has a nice green color and it provides 2 defense points. This makes it as good as an Iron Helmet, with the difference of having a superior durability of 275.
While wearing it, you will also get enother bonus: 10 seconds of Water Breathing effect, making it an excellent piece of gear for underwater adventures.
Repairing
You can repair a Turtle Shell using an Anvil and putting a Turtle Shell or a Scute as material. The Scute will obviously repair it less.
Brewing
It can also be used to brew potions. Actually only one potion, the Potion of the Turtle Master, which will make you walk slower by 60% and take 60% less damage.
If you want to brew this potion, you’ll need to add this ingredient to an Awkward Potion. And if you want to upgrade it to level II (90% slow and 80% damage reduction) you just need to add Glowstone Dust to the level I potion.
Available enchantments
Like for every other Helmet, you can apply the following enchantments to it:
- Aqua Affinity: makes you mine faster underwater
- Blast Protection: you take less damage from blasts and explosions
- Curse of Binding: once you wear the enchanted item, you can’t take it off
- Curse of Vanishing: the item will disappear if you die
- Fire Protection: you take less damage from fire and lava
- Mending: when you get xp, this will be used to mend (repair) the item
- Projectile Protection: you take less damage from arrows, fireballs and fire charges
- Protection: you take less damage (from any source)
- Respiration: makes your oxygen deplete slower underwater
- Thorns: who attacks you will receive some damage back
- Unbreaking: it increases the item durability
Miscellaneous
- its Namespaced ID is turtle_helmet
- in the Java edition its Translation key is item.minecraft.turtle_helmet
- in the Bedrock edition its Translation key is item.turtle_helmet.name and its Numeric ID is 469
- it was added in 2018 in 1.13 Java version (1.5.0 Bedrock Edition version)
- it’s the only helmet that is not part of an armor set
