Sculk Catalyst

Sculk Catalyst

Renewable	Yes
Stackable	Yes (64)
Tool
Blast resistance	3
Hardness	3
Luminant	Yes (6)
Transparent	No
Flammable	No
Catches fire from lava	No

A sculk catalyst is a block that generates sculk features around it when a mob that drops experience is killed nearby.

Obtaining

Natural generation

Sculk catalysts are generated within the deep dark biome.

Chest loot

Item	Structure	Container	Quantity	Chance
Java Edition 1.19[upcoming]
Sculk Catalyst	Ancient City	Chest	1–2	16.1%
Bedrock Edition
Sculk Catalyst	Ancient City	Chest	1–2	8.3%
Bedrock Edition 1.19.0[upcoming]
Sculk Catalyst	Ancient City	Chest	1–2	16.1%

Mob loot

Wardens drop a single sculk catalyst upon death.

Breaking

Sculk catalysts can be mined with any tool, but hoes are the quickest. It drops 20 experience if mined without Silk Touch.

Block	Sculk Catalyst
Hardness	3
Tool
Breaking time
Default	4.5
Wooden	2.25
Stone	1.15
Iron	0.75
Diamond	0.6
Netherite	0.5
Golden	0.4

Usage

Sculk catalyst activating.

Sculk catalyst detection range.

It turns the blocks around the dead Mob into Sculk or Sculk Vein.

If a mob dies within 8 blocks of a sculk catalyst, it blooms, giving off soul particles and creates a patch of sculk with sculk veins around that location. Blooming sculk can replace blocks in the sculk_replaceable tag, which includes the surface materials of most of the biomes in all three dimensions. If a mob is killed and detected by the sculk catalyst while over a sculk block, it may occasionally result in the growth of a sculk sensor.

The means of death of the mob is irrelevant; mobs can die from being killed by a player or tamed wolf, which yields experience, or by any other means, which does not yield experience; any kill is accepted by the catalyst. Rather than granting experience, a bubbling charge spawns where the mob died, and it travels through sculk until it finds a replaceable block. The strength of the sculk spreading depends on amount of experience the mob have dropped when it was killed by a player or wolf. Several sculk charges may end up on the same block and merge, up to 1000 experience per block.

If a mob dies and a charge is detected more than 4 blocks from a catalyst, a sculk block has a chance to use 10 experience to grow a sculk sensor or a sculk shrieker. A sculk sensor has a 9% chance to spawn and a sculk shrieker has a 1% chance to spawn. However, sculk sensors and sculk shriekers cannot spawn if there are 2 or more sensors within a 9×3×9 box with the bottom center of the box centered on the bubbling charge location (or within -4,0,-4 and 4,2,4 in relative coordinates).

A player dying can also affect the sculk catalyst, depending on how much experience the player has gathered. The sculk catalyst wouldn't spread any sculk blocks if the player has 0 experience, little if the player has few experience points and varied if the player has more experience. This could make the sculk catalyst as a way to preserve the player's experience points without having to restore all of the player's previous experience. This doesn't work on players with the keepInventory gamerule set to true.

A sculk catalyst does not respond to the death of mobs that do not yield any experience, such as baby animals. It also does not respond to the ender dragon's death, although this may be implemented in the future.

Sounds

Generic

Bedrock Edition:

Sound	Source	Description	Resource location	Volume	Pitch
	Blocks	Once the block has broken	break.sculk_catalyst	1.0	0.8
	Blocks	Falling on the block with fall damage	step.sculk_catalyst	0.4	1.0
	Blocks	While the block is in the process of being broken	hit.sculk_catalyst	0.3	0.5
	Blocks	Jumping from the block	step.sculk_catalyst	0.12	1.0
	Blocks	Falling on the block without fall damage	step.sculk_catalyst	0.14	1.0
	Blocks	Walking on the block	step.sculk_catalyst	0.17	1.0
	Blocks	When the block is placed	place.sculk_catalyst	1.0	0.8

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Name	Identifier	Form	Translation key
Sculk Catalyst	sculk_catalyst	Block & Item	block.minecraft.sculk_catalyst

ID

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Identifier	Numeric ID	Form	Item ID	Translation key
Sculk Catalyst	sculk_catalyst	715	Block & Giveable Item	Identical	tile.sculk_catalyst.name

Block states

See also: Block state

Java Edition:

Name	Default value	Allowed values	Description
bloom	false	false true	Whether the sculk catalyst is actively spreading the sculk or not.

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Default value	Allowed values	Description
bloom	0	0 1	Whether the sculk catalyst is actively spreading the sculk or not.

Block data

A sculk catalyst has a block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the block.

Java Edition:

See also: Block entity format

• Block entity data
  • Tags common to all block entities
  •  cursors: List of charges associated with the sculk catalyst.
    • : A charge.
      •  charge: How much power is in the charge.
      •  pos: List of three integers representing the coordinates of the charge.
      •  decay_delay:
      •  update_delay:
      •  facings:

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Block entity format.

Advancements

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Resource location
	It Spreads	Kill a mob near a Sculk Catalyst‌[upcoming: JE 1.19]	Adventure	-	adventure/kill_mob_near_sculk_catalyst

History

October 3, 2020					Sculk catalysts are shown at Minecraft Live 2020.
November 13, 2020					The sculk catalyst has a new texture in a tweet from Brandon Pearce.
April 26, 2021					Kingbdogz states that sculk features aren't coming in 1.17.
October 16, 2021					Sculk features were delayed to 1.19.
					New sculk catalyst functions were shown.
Upcoming Java Edition
1.19		Deep Dark Experimental Snapshot 1			Added sculk catalysts.
		22w11a			Implemented sculk catalysts into normal snapshot.
		22w12a			Sculk catalysts no longer generate sculk shriekers.
		22w13a			Sculk catalysts now can generate sculk shriekers again.
		22w17a			Wardens now drop a single sculk catalyst upon death, making them renewable.
Bedrock Edition
1.17.30		beta 1.17.30.22			"Sculk Catalyst" was mentioned in Bedrock Beta documentation.
		beta 1.17.30.23			Sculk Catalyst textures were shown in internal Caves & Cliffs textures.
Vanilla Experiments (experimental)		beta 1.18.0.22			Added sculk catalysts.
Wild Update (experimental)		beta 1.18.10.21			Moved sculk catalysts to the "Wild Update" experimental toggle.
		beta 1.18.30.22			Sculk catalysts were updated to match Java Edition's behavior.
Upcoming Bedrock Edition
1.19.0		beta 1.19.0.20			Sculk catalysts are now available without enabling experimental gameplay.
		beta 1.19.0.28			Wardens now drop a single sculk catalyst upon death.

Issues

Issues relating to "Sculk Catalyst" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Gallery

• 

  Slicedlime "corrupting" a canyon into sculk block by using sculk catalyst and dying skeleton in his video.

• 

  Sculk charges appear on blocks when mobs' essence (recolected by sculk catalysts) travel on them.

References