Crying Obsidian

Crying obsidian is a luminous variant of obsidian that can be used to craft a respawn anchor. It produces purple particles when placed.

Breaking
Crying obsidian can be harvested only with a diamond or netherite pickaxe.

There is no way to convert normal obsidian into crying obsidian. It can only be obtained via the methods listed below.

Natural generation
Crying obsidian can generate as part of ruined portals.

Bartering
Piglins have a ~8.71% chance ($40/459$) to barter 1–3 crying obsidian when given a gold ingot.

Lightning
If lightning strikes normal obsidian, it turns into crying obsidian.

Usage
Similarly to obsidian, crying obsidian is a resilient building block. It has a blast resistance of 1,200. In addition, it cannot be destroyed by the ender dragon. It is used to make the respawn anchor, a block that has the function of letting players respawn in the Nether.

When placed, crying obsidian occasionally produces purple dripping particles, as if it is "crying". These droplets are purely decorative.

Unlike obsidian, crying obsidian cannot be used as a nether portal frame. End crystals also cannot be placed on crying obsidian.

Light
Crying obsidian gives off a light level of 10, which does not melt snow or ice. Its blast resistance distinguishes it from other light-emitting blocks.

Note blocks
Crying obsidian can be placed under note blocks to produce "bass drum" sounds.

Piston interactivity
Crying obsidian cannot be pushed or pulled by pistons or sticky pistons.

ID




Trivia

 * When it was originally going to be added in Beta 1.3, it was going to act as a way to reset the player’s spawn point and would be crafted using lapis lazuli. When beds were added, they took this role instead. In 1.16 the respawn anchor was added which is crafted with crying obsidian.
 * More than 9 years passed between its initial planned addition and finally being available in-game.
 * The community had heavily requested crying obsidian return in 1.16 as a way to respawn in the Nether, as a callback to its initial intended functionality before beds were added, as an unspecified and likely implied to be undecided way of respawning was mentioned during the reveal.
 * According to Brandon Pearce, crying obsidian was added when they wanted to have cracked obsidian for the ruined nether portals. They decided to add it as crying obsidian instead because it was more unique and due to high player demand.
 * The team considered having crying obsidian be obtained by throwing obsidian through a nether portal, or by having regular obsidian be struck by lightning. However, they chose bartering with piglins as a way to make bartering useful.