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Gear (item)
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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.

Obtaining

From sheep

Wool is harvested by right-clicking a sheep with shears (1–3 wool) or killing it (1 wool). 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 blocks of wool being found.

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, and can be reshorn repeatedly if the sheep have access to grass. This is an infinitely higher 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.

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 beds for use underground.

Ingredients Crafting recipe
String

Colored wool can also be crafted from white wool and dyes, see the Colored wool section for details.

Naturally generated

File:2012-01-27 16.35.38.png

Naturally occurring black wool with torches on them.

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

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

Usage

Because of the variety of colors in which wool is available, many players use it to build colorful buildings, statues and other structures, especially in Creative mode. 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.

Wool can be used for color coding redstone circuits, to make it easier to find a wire or to separate one contraption from another. It acts as a solid block with no special behavior.

You may also trade wool to some farmer villagers for emeralds. You can give them any color of wool, but you can't give them more than one color at once.

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.

As a crafting ingredient

Wool is a key component of beds and paintings.

Name Ingredients Input » Output
Painting Sticks + Wool Template:Grid/Crafting Table
Bed Wool + Wood Planks Template:Grid/Crafting Table
Carpet
Wool Template:Grid/Crafting Table

Note: Any color of wool or wood may be used for beds and paintings but it has no effect on the product's final appearance.

Colored wool

The crafting recipes for colored wool are shapeless; that is, 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.

Crafting/Wool

Data values

Data value Description Color Code[note 1]
Dec Hex old new
0 0x0 White wool
 #DDDDDD

 #E9ECEC
1 0x1 Orange wool
 #DB7D3E

 #F07613
2 0x2 Magenta wool
 #B350BC

 #BD44B3
3 0x3 Light blue wool
 #6B8AC9

 #3AAFD9
4 0x4 Yellow wool
 #B1A627

 #F8C627
5 0x5 Lime wool
 #41AE38

 #70B919
6 0x6 Pink wool
 #D08499

 #ED8DAC
7 0x7 Gray wool
 #404040

 #3E4447
8 0x8 Light gray wool
 #9AA1A1

 #8E8E86
9 0x9 Cyan wool
 #2E6E89

 #158991
10 0xA Purple wool
 #7E3DB5

 #792AAC
11 0xB Blue wool
 #2E388D

 #35399D
12 0xC Brown wool
 #4F321F

 #724728
13 0xD Green wool
 #35461B

 #546D1B
14 0xE Red wool
 #963430

 #A12722
15 0xF Black wool
 #191616

 #141519
  1. Wool has a mottled pattern. These are the average RGB color values for the default texture.

Video

Wool/video

History

c
0.0.20 (June 20, 2009)Classic wool color spectrum Cloth was added in 16 different color shades for the creation of carpeting, colorful structures, and in-game pixel art.
st
0.27 SURVIVAL TEST (October 25, 2009)Added Sheep, which will drop red cloth.
0.27 SURVIVAL TEST (October 25, 2009)Sheep now drop white cloth instead of red cloth. (This version, although titled the same as the one above, is a different one.)
in
February 23, 2010Added Paintings, which can be crafted using cloth
a
1.0.1 (Seecret Friday 3)Sheep will now regenerate their wool.
1.0.8Changed the recipe of cloth/leather Armor from cloth to leather.
1.1.0 (Seecret Friday 9)Sheep will now drop 1-3 cloth when hit instead of always dropping 2.
b
1.2Beta wool color spectrum. Changed the color shades of cloth.
Renamed cloth to wool.
Added 15 dyes; white sheep could be dyed by right-clicking on them while holding any dye.
Light gray, gray, and black sheep now rarely spawn, dropping the corresponding colored wool.
1.4Brown and pink sheep now rarely spawn, dropping the corresponding colored wool.
1.6.6Changed the crafting recipe of wool, reducing the amount of String required from 9 to 4 pieces.
1.7Added Shears to shear sheep without hurting them, dropping 2-4 wool.
Sheep no longer drop wool when hit, albeit they drop one wool when being killed when they are unsheared.
r
1.1Sheep will now eat Grass and Tall Grass to regain their wool, keeping the color they had before shearing.
As a counterbalance, shearing sheep now yields 1-3 wool instead of 2-4.
1.2.4Tweaked the saturation of wool, making wool blocks slightly darker than before. Comparison
1.3.112w21a54 orange wool and 1 blue wool now naturally occur in Desert Temples.
1.613w16aAdded carpets, which are crafted using two blocks of wool of any color and placing them side-by-side in the crafting grid.
pa
0.2.0Added the ability to shear sheep.
0.4.0Added a crafting recipe for wool.

Issues

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

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.
  • Shears do not take damage from destroying wool blocks. They're also the fastest tool to destroy already placed 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 Data Value of 16 will appear as White Wool in inventory. When placed, the data value is reset to 0.
  • 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 colored 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.
  • Obtaining the unused wool with damage value 16 as of Minecraft 1.5 will crash the game.
  • Black, Gray, Light Gray and Brown wool can only be obtained in Pocket Edition through natural colored sheep as there are no squids or Cocoa Beans to dye the wool. Even then, there is only a small chance to find Black, Gray, Light Gray and Brown dyed sheep. It is possible, but rare, to find a Pink colored sheep in Pocket Edition.
  • It is rarer to see a natural pink sheep than a zombie/skeleton with natural diamond armor. Both can be "faked", however.
  • The wool colors in Classic are brighter and more vivid. If you look closely at the file found in the History section, each color "blends in" with the last.
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