Sponge

A sponge is an item that can be used to remove water around itself when placed, turning into a wet sponge in the process.

Obtaining
Either type of sponge can be mined by hand, or with any tool, dropping itself as an item; however, hoes break sponges the fastest compared to other tools.

Elder guardians
An elder guardian always drops one wet sponge when killed by the player.

Natural generation
Ocean monuments can generate "sponge rooms." Each room contains an average of 30 wet sponges. See Ocean Monument/Structure for details.

Smelting
A wet sponge can be dried in a furnace, making the sponge reusable.

Drying
A wet sponge placed in the Nether dries out instantly with a puff of steam and turns into a normal sponge.

A wet sponge placed in any dry biome in the Overworld dries out after a few minutes and turns into a normal sponge.

If a normal sponge comes into contact with water in a dry biome, it absorbs the water and immediately dries out with a puff of steam.

Usage
A sponge can be used to turn water into air by "absorbing" the water. A sponge instantly absorbs nearby water when it is placed next to water or when water comes into contact with it. Sponges immediately turn wet upon absorption and do not absorb any more water afterwards. Wet sponges drip small water particles. Sponges in item form do not absorb water or become wet.

A sponge absorbs both flowing and source blocks of water up to 7 blocks away (taken as a Manhattan distance) in all six directions around itself. Instead of a cube or a sphere, this effectively encloses the volume of an octahedron with vertices placed 7 units away from the center in each direction due to the game's extensive use of taxicab distance. A sponge does not absorb more than 135 blocks of water however, and water closest to the sponge is absorbed first. The absorption propagates only between adjacent water blocks and does not "jump over" non-water blocks, including air.

ID




Metadata
$$, sponges use the following data values:

Block states
$$, sponges use the following block states: