Wool

Wool (previously known as cloth) is a block derived from sheep that can be dyed in any of the 16 different colors. Wool blocks are weak, highly flammable, and offer little resistance against explosions. Wool is harvested by right-clicking a sheep with shears (1–3 wool) or killing it (1 wool). It can also be crafted from 4 pieces of string. White, light gray, gray, black, brown, and pink wool can be found naturally on sheep. Untamed wolves (commonly seen in Forest or Taiga biomes) will sometimes kill nearby sheep, resulting in the occasional block of wool being found. Before the 1.7 update, wool could be obtained by hitting sheep without a tool.

Uses
Wool is a key component of beds and paintings.

Because of the variety of colors in which wool is available, many players use it to build colorful buildings. Wool is commonly used as decoration, as carpeting in houses and for large 'beds'. It can also be used to color-code a cave system by placing blocks at intervals so that you know which cave section you are in.

Dyeing sheep (right-clicking them while holding dye) is the most productive method of obtaining colored wool, as the sheep will drop 1–3 blocks of wool when shorn. This is a much greater yield than can by gained by dyeing blocks of wool or killing a dyed sheep. All sheep can be colored and re-colored equally easily, regardless of whether they are any of the naturally occurring colors (white, brown, pink, black, gray, or light gray), or previously dyed to any available shade. Nor is there any need to 'bleach' a sheep to white using bone meal before re-coloring it.

Wild wolves can be located by looking for randomly dropped blocks of wool on the ground (especially in Forest or Taiga biomes) as wolves will kill sheep while roaming.

Occurrence


Aside from sheep, black wool blocks can also be found naturally in NPC villages where they lie on top of a fence post, surrounded by 4 torches.

Since Snapshot 12w21a 54 orange wool blocks and 1 blue wool block are naturally generated as part of a Desert Temple.

Crafting
Wool can be crafted from string if required. However, as sheep are much easier to collect from than spiders are to kill, doing so may be a waste of resources. But with the Adventure update, string can be collected very easily for bows and beds (and perhaps even fishing rods, if low on food) for use underground.

As a crafting ingredient
Note: Any color of wool or wood may be used, but it has no effect on the product's final appearance.

Colored wool
The placement of the wool block and dye doesn't matter as long as they are both in the crafting grid. While sheep of any color can be re-dyed to any other color, this does not apply to wool blocks. Only white wool blocks can be re-colored. A minor quirk of the dyeing system is that you can recolor a white wool block (but not a white sheep) to white with bonemeal, using up a dose of bonemeal to no effect.

Data values for colored wool
Different colors of wool can also be obtained by adjusting the "damage" values in the inventory. To give someone colored wool (with /give or any other similar command), simply add a colon and then the number of the color after the 35. Example usage: /give 35:4 for yellow wool.

Trivia

 * Sheep have a 5% chance to be black, 5% chance to be gray, 5% chance to be light gray, 3% chance to be brown, and a 0.164% chance to be pink. The remaining 81.836% are white.
 * The damage values for wool and their respective dyes are the inverse of each other.
 * The only way to get the purple error block is to use an inventory hack. It does not have the same texture as a normal wool block when held, but if placed will turn into normal white wool.
 * Shears do not take damage from destroying wool blocks.
 * White wool can be crafted together with bonemeal, but this merely "dyes" the already-white wool into another block of still-white wool.
 * On the Xbox 360 Edition Tutorial Map, the MineCraft Logo seen in the sky is made of Light Gray and Black Wool.
 * Using /give to obtain Wool with a Damage Value of 16 will show the first stage of Nether Wart on all faces in the inventory. Placing it will turn into White Wool.
 * Beyond that, obtaining wool with a DV of 17 or higher will wrap around to 1 again (i.e.: 17 gives orange, 18 gives Magenta) and appear like normal coloured wool in the inventory.
 * Before leather was available, cloth was also used to craft leather armor.
 * Colored cloth was unobtainable during Classic's Survival Test and Indev unless they were pre-placed into the map file. Colored cloth blocks were completely removed from the code in Infdev. Placing these blocks on the map would cause the game client to crash, since the blocks no longer existed.

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