Updated to 1.20
In Minecraft you can find thin Layers of Snow covering the top of the mountains or entire cold areas. But can we place Snow Layers under the sun in warm places? And do Snow Layers have any use? Let’s answer those and more questions.
Where you can find snow
We’ll se below how to craft or pick a Snow Layer, but first you have to find Snow. You can find Snow in Snowy Biomes or in Cold Biomes at high altitudes, you will find Spruce Trees in most of them. The Snowy biomes are:
- Snowy Tundra
- Ice Spikes
- Snowy Taiga
- Snowy Taiga Mountains
- Frozen River
- Snowy Beach
And Cold biomes are :
- Old Growth Pine Taiga
- Old Growth Spruce Taiga
- Stony Shore
- Taiga
- Windswept Forest
- Windswept Gravelly Hills
- Windswepts Hills
If you can’t find any of these biomes, you can try to use the command /locate biome.
For example, if you want to find the closest Winsdwept Forest, you just need to open the commands and type:
/locate biome minecraft:windswept_forest
And you’ll see a message appearing with the coordinates ot the closest Windswept Forest.
Now, if you press F3 you will see your coordinates.
Now what you have to do to get there is just closing the gap between your coordinates and the coordinates of the biome you want to go to.
If you want to find other biomes, just change windswept_forest with the name of the biome that you want to find.
How to get Snow Layer
Once you find Snow, there are two ways to get a Snow Layer. The first is breaking a Snow Layer with a Silk Touch enchanted tool. This way you will directly get a Snow Layer.
If you don’t have a Silk Touch enchanted tool or if you don’t want to damage it (related topic: How to repair enchanted tools), you can craft a Snow Layer. To do so, you first have to gather Snowballs: if you break Snow Layers using a Shovel, they will drop one Snowball each. If you are using a Fortune enchanted Shovel they will drop more Snowballs.
You can throw Snowballs by right clicking while having them in your hand. And by combining 4 Snowballs, you can craft a Snow block.
Then you can use 3 Snow blocks to craft 6 Snow Layers.
How to get Snow Layer – commands
If you don’t want to go for a trip to find snow, you can also get Snow Layers by using commands. In fact, you can type this in the commands:
/give @p snow_layer 1 0
And one (one because the command says “1”, but you can type another number) Snow Layer will be added into your inventory.
Usage
You can place Snow Layers on top of other solid blocks (not Ice blocks). If a block covered by a Snow Layer is removed, the Snow Layer will break without dropping any Snowball.
Dirt blocks change texture when if there is a Snow Layer above them.
You can cover a solid block with multiple Snow Layers. If you place a Snow Layer on top of another Snow Layer, they will fuse into a single thicker Snow Layer. You can keep on adding new layers:
If you pile 8 Snow Layers up, they will fuse into one Snow block.
PvP uses
Snow Layers can be useful against other players if used with Magma blocks.
You can build a massive area of Magma blocks and cover it with Snow Layers. This way, Magma blocks will still deal damage to players and mobs walking on top of the Snow layer.
On the other hand, you can walk on top of them without getting any damage by using Frostwalker enchanted Boots. This way you can put yourself ahead of your enemies.
Melting
As explained in How to prevent water from freezing, Snow and Ice melt when their light level is 12 or more. Only the light level provided by light emitting blocks is considered for the melting mechanic: this means that the light provided by the sun (which is 15 during the day) doesn’t count.
To understand better how the light level works, you can check the article Minecraft Torch spacing.
Snow Layers farming
If you need a massive amount of Snow Layers, you can watch this video that shows how to build an automatic Snow farm.
