It will be pretty tricky to find Sponges in Minecraft, as they only spawn deep underwater. Ironically, these yellow blocks can be great for making paths around aquatic areas. There are 2 variations of Sponges, but only 1 will be useful.
Can You Make a Sponge in Minecraft?
You cannot make a Sponge in Minecraft, as there is no crafting recipe for it. This is one of those blocks that you will have to find, like a Saddle or a Name Tag. However, Sponges are not located in Dungeons or other land-based structures. For these yellow cubes, you will need to head out to sea.
Where to Find Sponges
The only place where you’ll find Sponges is an Ocean Monument. These rare structures only spawn underwater and in Deep Ocean biomes. As such, to get some Sponges, you’ll need to come up with some way to travel to and from this underwater location. Ocean Monuments will have a room full of Sponges for you to harvest, among other treasures.
How to Find Ocean Monuments
You can find Ocean Monuments when exploring Ocean biomes while sailing around in a Boat. It’s possible for you to spot them glowing from beneath the waves, as bright Sea Lanterns will generate as part of an Ocean Monument. However, as mentioned before, since these are rare structures, it will probably take you a while to find an Ocean Monument this way.
Although, if you want a quicker yet more expensive way to find an Ocean Monument, you can trade with some Villagers. You can potentially buy Ocean Explorer Maps from Cartographer Villagers at the cost of a few Emeralds. Ocean Explorer Maps have a regular map icon, but with blue lines on it. Such maps will have the location of 1 Ocean Monument displayed (the nearest one).
Getting Sponges as Mob Loot
Sponges can also drop as items from certain defeated mobs, however, the kind that drops them only spawns in Ocean Monuments. You are guaranteed to get 1 Sponge when you slay an Elder Guardian. This battle isn’t really worth the effort as there are likely many easier Sponges to harvest elsewhere in the same structure.
What You Can Use a Sponge For
The primary use for Sponges in Minecraft is to soak up water. This can be useful for navigating watery terrain—especially for making easy routes to Ocean Monuments. However, you will need to make sure that a Sponge is dry before you use it to soak up water, otherwise, it will do nothing.
How Much Water Sponges Soak up
When a Sponge is placed in water, it will absorb all water up to 7 blocks away from its placed location. This means that all 6 directions around a Sponge will be cleared of water almost instantly. This allows you to create an octahedron (looks like an 8-sided die) air pocket in any body of water. However, keep in mind that there is a limit to how much water a Sponge can soak up. To be exact, every 1 Sponge can absorb up to 135 blocks of water total before it becomes oversaturated.
You should also keep in mind that water can flow through a space created by a Sponge. For example, if you place a dry Sponge at the bottom of an Ocean biome, it will soak up water in its usual range, however, water from above will flow down to refill that air pocket with water. As such, if you’re planning to make a path leading to an underwater location, you’ll have to start from the surface and soak up the water as you travel downward.
How to Dry a Sponge
Since wet Sponges cannot absorb water, you will need to dry them out before being able to use them again. This can be done in a couple of ways. Firstly, you can ‘cook’ a wet Sponge in a Furnace to dry it out. This process works the same as if you were making food in that you put the wet Sponge on the top slot of a Furnace and then some fuel on the bottom slot. The dried Sponge will appear on the right slot after the white progress arrow has filled up.
Although, if you want a way to dry Sponges without using resources for fuel, you can instantly dry out a Sponge in the Nether. Any wet Sponged placed in the Nether will immediately dry out, however, this means that you will need a Nether Portal.
Furthermore, there is a way that you can dry Sponges that is exclusive to the Bedrock Edition of the game. If you place a wet Sponge in a dry biome (a Desert, Savannah, or Plains biome), it will dry out by itself after a few minutes.
A sponge is a block 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.
| 0.6 |
| 0.9 |
| 0.45 |
| 0.25 |
| 0.15 |
| 0.15 |
| 0.1 |
| 0.1 |
- ↑ Times are for unenchanted tools as wielded by players with no status effects, measured in seconds. For more information, see Breaking § Speed.
Mob loot[]
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.
| Wet sponge + any fuel | If a bucket is in the fuel slot at the time the sponge completes its drying, the water drains into the bucket, leaving a bucket of water in the fuel slot. Otherwise, the water just evaporates. |
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.[Bedrock Edition only]
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.[Bedrock Edition only]
Usage[]
A sponge absorbing water in a pond.
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 taxicab 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.
Sounds[]
Java Edition:
Bedrock Edition:
Data values[]
ID[]
Java Edition:
| Sponge | sponge | Block & Item | mineable/hoe | block.minecraft.sponge |
| Wet Sponge | wet_sponge | Block & Item | mineable/hoe | block.minecraft.wet_sponge |
Bedrock Edition:
- ↑ ID of block's direct item form, which is used in savegame files and addons.
- ↑ Available with /give command.
- ↑ The block's direct item form has the same id with the block.
Block states[]
In Bedrock Edition, sponges use the following block states:
Bedrock Edition:
| 0x1 | dry | dry | 0 | Sponge |
| wet | 1 | Wet Sponge |
Achievements[]
| Dry Spell | Dry a sponge in a furnace | — | 15G | Bronze |
History[]
| Sponge was suggested on the TIGSource forums. Notch later approved this suggestion. |
| Sponges were tested by Notch. |
| The sponge is a temporary fix to stop water from flooding until finite water is implemented.[1] |
| Sponges soak up water in a 5×5×5 volume around it, and would decay. |
| Sponges no longer decay. |
| Sponges now soak up infinite water sources and infinite lava sources. This is despite the fact that they do not delete normal lava. |
| Due to Notch reworking many parts of the game to allow for infinite terrain generation the whole liquid system from Indev including sponges becomes non-functional. A new system for liquids was added in a later version of Infdev, sponges weren't touched though as they were no longer required. |
| Sponges have now become available in Creative mode. |
| Prior to this version, sponges could be used in redstone builds for updating blocks, in conjunction with BUDs (block update detectors): if a sponge was placed and then removed, all blocks within a 7×7×7 range would be updated.[2] The cause of this was some remaining code for the sponge's water removing property. |
| Sponges have now become obtainable in Survival mode. |
| A wet sponge, when smelted, fills an empty bucket in the fuel slot with water. |
| Elder guardians now drop dry sponges instead of wet ones. |
| Elder guardians now drop wet sponges on player kills, rather than dry sponges.[3] |
| Wet Sponges now dry out when placed in the Nether. |
| Sponges and wet sponges can now be broken faster using hoes. |
| Sponges are currently available only in creative mode. |
| Sponges have now become obtainable in Survival mode. |
| A wet sponge, when smelted, fills an empty bucket in the fuel slot with water. |
| Sponges dry out in hot biomes. |
| Added drowned, which rarely drop sponges. |
| Drowned no longer drop sponge. |
| Sponges now immediately dry out when placed in the Nether. |
| Sponges and wet sponges can now be broken faster using hoes. |
| Sponges are currently available only in creative mode. |
| Sponges are now obtainable in Survival mode. |
| Sponges now soak up contiguous water source blocks out to a taxicab distance of 7 when placed, thereupon turning into the new wet sponge. |
| Sponges now dry out when placed in the Nether and warm biomes after some time. |
| Sponges have now become obtainable in Survival mode. |
| Sponges now soak up contiguous water source blocks out to a taxicab distance of 7 when placed, thereupon turning into the new wet sponge. |
| A wet sponge, when smelted, fills an empty bucket in the fuel slot with water. |
Data history[]
Issues[]
Issues relating to "Sponge" or "Wet Sponge" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.
Gallery[]
An example of sponges keeping an area dry in Java Edition Classic.
Hidden sponge in the corner of a wood-paneled room, in Java Edition Classic.
A sponge next to a wet sponge.
The old sponge and gravel textures
First picture of sponge in the test version of 0.0.18a_02.
Drying Sponges in Bedrock Edition