Tutorials/Acquiring a conduit

This tutorial is meant to show you, the player, how to acquire a conduit, which requires the crafting ingredients Heart of the Sea and eight nautilus shells.

Heart of the Sea
Heart of the Sea items cannot be farmed. They generate only in buried treasure chests, which are difficult to find.

Step 1: Treasure maps
Buried treasure maps can be found in shipwrecks and underwater ruins chests. These structures can be found just about everywhere in oceans, and underwater ruins are usually marked with bubble columns, sea lanterns or drowned. Before diving down, a player should secure a way to breathe underwater. This can be done with doors, turtle shells, water breathing potions, and bubble columns.

Optionally, the player can feed a nearby dolphin, which then leads the player to a structure with treasure.

Step 2: Following the map
Buried treasure maps are usually blank with a white indicator dot. This shows where the player is in relation to the buried treasure. Remember that upward on the map is north and rightward on the map is east. As the player gets closer to the treasure, the indicator dot increases in size until they start filling in map features. Traveling may involve a long boat ride. Upon reaching the red "X" use a shovel to start digging 2×2 or 2×3 around that area to find the treasure chest. A more convenient method is to dig straight down at the 9, ~, 9 chunk coordinate when at the red "X", since treasure chests always generate in this certain position in a chunk. A buried treasure chest always contains a heart of the sea.

Nautilus shells
Depending on your setup, obtaining eight nautilus shells could be tedious.

Method 1: Fishing
Fishing is practical and easy, yielding an occasional nautilus shell as a treasure catch. Fishing this may also yield enchanted fishing rods that improve the catch rate and chance of treasure. The odds of receiving a nautilus shell from fishing with an unenchanted rod are 0.7%, so you have to spend a lot of time fishing.

Please keep in mind to always fish in open water, otherwise no nautilus shells will be yielded. Fishing directly under the sky and while raining both decreases waiting time between bites.

Method 2: Drowned
Drowned have a chance to drop nautilus shells, but ease of obtaining them depends on the Edition.


 * Bedrock Edition: Drowned have an 8% chance to spawn holding a nautilus shell. If it is holding a nautilus shell in the offhand it is a guaranteed drop. Also, converting zombies into drowned resets the drop counters, giving newly-converted drowned the same chance to spawn with a nautilus shell. Therefore, nautilus shells are most easily obtained conduit ingredient in Bedrock Edition. If you find a dungeon with a zombie spawner, then building a basic flooded dungeon drowned farm is the simplest and most efficient way to produce nautilus shells $$ survival mode, yielding more nautilus shells than a player would ever need.
 * Java Edition: Drowned have a 3% chance to spawn carrying a nautilus shell. If they do, they are guaranteed to drop it. Only naturally-spawned drowned carry nautilus shells; zombies converted to drowned do not.

Method 3: Trading
Another way to obtain nautilus shells is via trading with a wandering trader. A wandering trader can spawn anywhere after one in-game day and has a chance of offering a nautilus shell as one of their trades. One nautilus shell costs five emeralds, so obtaining eight nautilus shells require spending 40 emeralds. Despite costing many emeralds, this method is the fastest way to obtain 8 nautilus shells. However, since the nautilus shell trade is locked after 5 transactions, the player needs to trade with 2 wandering traders that offer nautilus shells to have enough for a conduit, which may take a long time, as not every wandering trader sells nautilus shells.

Prismarine
Prismarine can be the most difficult ingredient to obtain if the player does not already have a guardian farm. Sources of prismarine or its crafting materials come from ocean monuments and ocean ruins. Prismarine and sea lanterns can also be found as part of underwater ruins, but not every ruin generates sea lanterns or prismarine.

To get started, The top two layers closest to the ocean surface yield 16 prismarine blocks and 4 sea lanterns. If you're lucky, the top of the ocean monument is close to the sea surface. You need only 16 prismarine blocks to construct a minimal activation frame to create an initial conduit. You can also use 180 blocks of sand to surround the top structure completely, allowing you to mine further down to get 12 more prismarine blocks of the top structure. Another way to get prismarine from an ocean monument is with an aqua affinity enchanted helmet and a potion of water breathing.

Step 1: Craft a conduit
A conduit can be crafted with 8 nautilus shells and heart of the sea. To make it functional, you need a minimum of 16, and up to 42 prismarine or sea lantern blocks. Each ingredient has its own section.

Step 2: Get temporary underwater breathing
In order to acquire enough prismarine, the player must secure a way to breathe underwater. The best way is to get into an ocean monument and place a conduit strategically to give the player conduit power. Finding such a room likely takes time, so it would be best if the player secures a temporary way to breathe underwater. This can be done with bubble columns, non-solid blocks that cannot be waterlogged (such as doors,) Respiration and Aqua Affinity enchantments, as well as turtle shells. The room to find must have at least 16 prismarine or sea lanterns in any shape around the outline of a 5×5×5 cube centered on the conduit. Once it activates, it grants the Conduit Power effect, which allows the player to breathe indefinitely, see better, and mine faster underwater.

Alternately, a conduit also works well (with a somewhat shorter range) with just a 5×5 ring of prismarine around it. The top of an ocean monument is a 4×4 ring. A player can mine the supporting prismarine pillars under this ring for four additional prismarine, to expand the top ring to 5×5. This can be done near the surface, or from a platform constructed around the top of the monument. The Mining Fatigue effect from the monument's elder guardians greatly lengthens the task of expanding the top ring, so use a good pickaxe, preferably diamond or netherite, but iron can work also. Once you have the 5×5 ring, put the conduit in the middle and then you can breathe underwater inside a radius that covers the entire monument, allowing you to get more prismarine to move your conduit elsewhere later.

Step 3: Obtain prismarine
Prismarine can be obtained from the guardians themselves and from the structure of the monument. The guardians can be a nuisance and the mining fatigue from elder guardians can make mining impossible. For these purposes, it is best to bring building materials that can be broken instantly such as slime blocks, scaffolding, or TNT. Killing guardians is much easier if the player has a trident enchanted with Impaling and Loyalty. A Riptide-enchanted trident or Depth Strider-enchanted boots are also helpful.

The only way to break the monument structure with elder guardians in the way is to detonate TNT. To do this effectively, place a gravity block such as sand on top of the TNT. When it ignites, it turns into an entity, causing the gravity block to fall inside it. When the TNT explodes, it destroys some of the prismarine and leaves some items. Without the aid of a gravity block, TNT damages mobs without destroying underwater blocks.

教程/获得潮涌核心