What Are The Pottery Shards For In Minecraft?

Introducing Pottery Shards

Pottery shards are items that were introduced to Minecraft in version 1.17. They can be found in the archeological features added in that update such as buried treasure chests and shipwrecks. Pottery shards have a variety of uses related to crafting decorative blocks.

The history of pottery in Minecraft is relatively brief, as pottery shards were only added recently in the Caves & Cliffs update. However, their inclusion adds new crafting mechanics and visually interesting blocks to build with.

Pottery shards have several key uses in Minecraft:

• Crafting decorated flower pots, candles, and other ornamental blocks
• Repairing elytra wings
• Crafting bricks
• Composting
• Trading with wandering traders

Overall, pottery shards open up new decorative possibilities for builders and crafters in Minecraft. Their recent addition shows the continued evolution of crafting in the game.

Finding Pottery Shards

Pottery shards can be found naturally generated in villages and underwater ruins. Look in chests inside village houses, fisher huts, and buried treasure chests for a chance to find some shards. They may also be traded by wandering traders.

You can also obtain pottery shards by smelting clay balls. Clay is common in rivers and swamp biomes, found underground and on the coast. Dig up clay blocks and smelt them in a furnace to get clay balls. Put 4 clay balls in the crafting table or grid to make 4 bricks. Finally, put the bricks in a furnace to smelt them into pottery shards.

For an efficient way to farm large amounts of pottery shards, build a clay farm by a river or swamp biome. Mine up the clay, smelt it into balls, craft into bricks, and smelt again into shards. With a steady clay supply, you can mass produce shards this way. Shards are also renewable since clay is an infinite resource in Minecraft worlds.

Crafting Pottery

To craft basic pottery in Minecraft, you will need some clay balls which can be obtained by mining clay blocks found near bodies of water. Combine 4 clay balls together in the crafting table to make a clay block. Then put the clay block in the center square of the crafting table and surround it with 8 bricks to make an unfired clay pot.

Next, you need to fire the unfired clay pot in a furnace, which will produce a regular clay pot. This basic pottery doesn’t have any designs or patterns on it.

To create more advanced pottery with designs, you will need to find and use a potter’s wheel. Potter’s wheels generate in mason houses found in villages. Interact with the potter’s wheel while holding clay balls to bring up the pottery interface. This will allow you to create custom designed pots, vases, and other ceramic items.

Pottery can also be painted after crafting to apply custom designs and colors using dyes. Overall, pottery provides decorative options for customizing builds and settlements.

Trading Pottery Shards

Once you have collected some pottery shards in Minecraft, you can trade them with certain villagers to get emeralds and other useful items. The main villagers that are interested in pottery shards are Wandering Traders and Masons ¹. Wandering Traders in particular will readily trade emeralds for pottery shards.

The trade options with Wandering Traders are:

• 5 Pottery Shards for 1 Emerald
• 1 Pottery Shard for 5 sticks

Mason villagers will also trade pottery shards, but their trade options are more limited. You can generally trade 1 pottery shard with a Mason for 4 clay blocks. Trading pottery shards with villagers can be very useful early on in survival mode to start accumulating emeralds and other resources ².

Decorative Uses

Pottery shards have become a popular decorative block in Minecraft due to their colorful and varied appearances. When placed, pottery shards retain the painted pattern from the original pot, allowing for unique decorations.[1] Players can exhibit pottery shards in item frames to create a museum of found shards, or line floors and walls with shards as mosaic tiles. Large pottery collections displayed on shelves or pedestals make for an impressive centerpiece build.

Due to their size and shape, pottery shards work well for adding visual interest to floors and walls. Shards can be used to make colorful borders, accents, or murals with careful placement. Staircases and pathways decorated with shards stand out. For a more unified look, players can use shards of a single color as tiles. However, mixing multiple colored shards creates eye-catching randomized patterns. With some creativity, minecrafters can craft beautiful builds using these fragment blocks.

Repairing Elytra

One of the main uses for pottery shards in Minecraft is repairing elytra. Elytra are special chestplates that allow players to glide. However, elytra have durability and will eventually break after extended use. Players can restore the durability of elytra by using phantom membranes or pottery shards. Each pottery shard restores 12% of the elytra’s durability, while phantom membranes restore 25%.

Repairing an elytra with pottery shards can be cheaper than using phantom membranes. Phantom membranes can be difficult to obtain since phantoms only appear when a player has gone at least 3 in-game days without sleeping. Pottery shards are much easier to craft from clay balls which can be readily gathered. For players hoping to save resources, repairing elytra with pottery shards is an optimal choice.

When repairing elytra, it’s recommended to have multiple pottery shards on hand. Fully repairing an elytra takes approximately 8-9 shards. Trying to apply shards one at a time can become tedious. By crafting a stack of shards ahead of time, players can quickly restore their elytra to full durability.

Crafting Bricks

One of the main uses for pottery shards in Minecraft is crafting bricks. By smelting shards in a furnace, you can create bricks. Each pottery shard will smelt into one brick. This provides a renewable source of bricks for building projects.

Bricks are used to craft various decorative blocks like brick stairs, brick slabs, and brick walls. To make bricks, place the pottery shards in the input slot of a furnace with any fuel source like coal or wood. Smelting each shard will produce one brick. It takes about 10 seconds to fully smelt one brick [1]. Then take the bricks out of the output slot to use for crafting.

Some recipes using bricks include:

• 4 bricks makes 4 brick blocks
• 6 bricks makes 4 brick stairs
• 3 bricks makes 6 brick slabs
• 5 bricks and 4 wooden planks makes 6 brick walls

So when you collect pottery shards exploring Minecraft worlds, keep some on hand to turn into renewable bricks for building.

Composting

Pottery shards can be composted to produce bone meal in Minecraft. By adding a pottery shard to a composter, there is a 65% chance of raising the compost level by 1 point. Because a full composter yields one unit of bone meal, it takes approximately 8-9 pottery shards on average to produce one bone meal by composting.

Composting pottery shards can be a renewable way to obtain bone meal. Bone meal is a useful fertilizer that can accelerate the growth of crops and saplings. Composting shards also provides a use for excess shards accumulated from mining or trading.

To compost pottery shards, simply right click on a composter while holding shards. Each composter has 10 empty slots to fill. Once a composter is full, removing the composted contents will empty it and yield the bone meal. Then the composter can be refilled to repeat the process. Composting pottery shards along with other compostable items can help produce bone meal efficiently.

Sources:
https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Composter
https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Bone_Meal

Trading with Wandering Traders

Wandering traders will randomly spawn near the player and offer trades for various items. One of the items they may trade are pottery shards. According to the Minecraft Wiki, wandering traders can trade pottery shards for emeralds https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Wandering_Trader.

The trades that wandering traders offer for pottery shards vary between versions and platforms. In Java Edition, they may trade 5 pottery shards for 1 emerald. In Bedrock Edition, they trade 3 pottery shards for 1 emerald. The wandering trader’s trades refresh every time it spawns, so the trades for pottery shards can change each time you encounter one.

Trading pottery shards with wandering traders can be an easy way to collect emeralds. Since pottery shards are common items found in various structures, trading them to wandering traders allows you to gain emeralds without having to mine or craft as many items.

Summary

Pottery shards in Minecraft have a variety of uses, even though they may seem insignificant at first. They can be obtained by finding and breaking clay pots in desert temples and jungle temples. Once collected, they have several handy applications:

• Crafting pottery items like vases, flower pots, and banners using a loom.
• Trading with wandering traders to get items that are hard to find otherwise.
• Repairing elytra so you can fly longer distances.
• Being cooked into bricks to build structures.
• Composting to help crops grow faster.

In summary, pottery shards serve decorative, trading, repair, construction, and composting purposes. They are worth collecting since they allow you to obtain new items, build better structures, repair important equipment like elytra, and boost your farms. Even though they seem simple, pottery shards can really enhance your Minecraft gameplay.