Tutorials/Acquiring a conduit

This tutorial is meant to show you, the player, how to acquire a conduit. There are numerous ways to do it, which will be featured here.

To craft a conduit, you need to acquire a Heart of the Sea and eight nautilus shells. To make it functional, you need up to 42 prismarine or sea lantern blocks. Each ingredient has its own section.

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 and they are usually marked with bubble columns and 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 will lead 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 upwards on the map is north and rightwards on the map is east. As the player gets closer to the treasure, the indicator dot will increase in size until they start filling in map features. Traveling may involve a long boat ride. Upon reaching the "X" use a shovel to start digging around that area to find the treasure chest.

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

Method 1: Fishing
Fishing is practical if you build an AFK fish farm. Fishing this way will also yield fishing rods (some enchanted). Some fish farms are cheap and easy, so the biggest hurdle is AFK waiting time.

Method 2: Drowned
Drowned have a chance to drop nautilus shells, but ease depends on the Edition.
 * Bedrock Edition: Drowned have an 8% chance to spawn holding a nautilus shell. It carries the nautilus shell in the offhand so 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. This makes nautilus shells arguably the easiest to obtain of the three ingredients in Bedrock Edition. A Bedrock survival-mode drowned farm will produce more nautilus shells than a player could want.
 * Java Edition: Drowned have a 3% chance to spawn carrying a nautilus shell. After that, it has an 8.5% chance of dropping it, which can be increased to up to an 11.5% chance with the looting enchantment, giving an overall 0.255%-0.345% chance of getting a nautilus shell from any particular drowned. Unfortunately, only naturally-spawned drowned carry nautilus shells; zombies converted to drowned do not. A complex drowned farm or a lot of patience is needed to get enough nautilus shells in Java Edition. Fishing may be a better approach.

Prismarine
Prismarine can be the most difficult ingredient to obtain if the player does not already have a guardian farm. The only source of prismarine or its crafting materials come from ocean monuments. This section is listed last because it is much easier to do when the player has a conduit.

Step 1: Craft a conduit
Ironically, it is easier to get the materials to fully power a conduit if a conduit is used.

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 will likely take time, so it would be best if the player secures a temporary way to breathe underwater. This can be done with bubble columns, non-waterloggable non-solid blocks such as doors, Respiration and Aqua Affinity enchantments, and turtle shells. The room to find must have at least 16 prismarine or sea lanterns in any shape around the outline of a 5x5x5 cube centered on the conduit. Once it activates, it will grant the Conduit Power effect, which allows the player to breathe indefinitely, see better, and mine faster underwater.

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 and scaffolding. 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 will destroy some of the prismarine and leave some items. Even without the extra gravity block, TNT is a good way to quickly kill massive swarms of guardians.