Terracotta is the most visually versatile material in Minecraft. It is strong like stone blocks and can be dyed and glazed into several colors and different patterns, making it an aesthetic building block.
In this guide, we will cover how to make terracotta, how to find terracotta, how to dye it or give it patterns, and how to use it, especially glazed terracotta that requires some care.
What Is Terracotta in Minecraft?
Terracotta is a type of building block in Minecraft that can both be found and crafted from other materials (clay blocks). It is an excellent material for any construction project with similar durability to a stone block (and the same blast resistance, too).
The main draw of using terracotta is its visual range – a terracotta block can have 16 different colors, giving you more control over the look of your structures than you get with most building blocks. Once smelted, it has various patterns for an even more decorative appearance, making it the most visually versatile block in the game.
Required Materials for Terracotta
Terracotta is in the weird position of being a material you can find naturally by mining and a material you can craft with the right ingredients. The materials to make terracotta are common – all you need is a clay block (or clay balls) and fuel to smelt it.
Clay is very easy to obtain, generating naturally around sources of water. Caves with ponds, the bottom of rivers and lakes, and even ocean beds or swamps are very abundant sources of clay blocks. You don’t need to break any bedrock; clay is usually found in shallow depths.
You don’t need any specific tools to mine a clay block either – while shovels are the fastest, any tool can break clay blocks. Once you have the clay, you can put it in a furnace with some fuel to turn it into terracotta. Any fuel would do; it’s only to keep the furnace burning.
How to Make Terracotta in Minecraft?
Perhaps the easiest way to acquire some terracotta is to craft it, as clay is its base ingredient and is much easier to obtain.
Like in real life, terracotta is made by baking a clay block, which in Minecraft means smelting it. Take a block of clay and smelt it in the furnace using any ore to obtain a terracotta block. Remember that smelting clay balls turns them into bricks instead, so make sure to combine your clay balls back into a block if you want terracotta. Four clay balls can be crafted into a single clay block.
Of course, this method is very fuel-intensive, so it is not preferred early in the game if you need terracotta building blocks on a large scale unless you have reached a point where you are swimming in fuel and furnaces.
How to Get Terracotta in Minecraft?
Terracotta is one of the rare materials in the game that can be found naturally, traded, and even crafted from other materials. As such, there are multiple sources for getting Terracotta in Minecraft.
Trading with villagers is often a good way to get hard-to-find materials by giving up your surplus gemstones. This is especially useful for obtaining terracotta as the villagers can have a color that you might not be able to find yourself.
Terracotta is on the cheaper side (if emeralds can be considered cheap), costing only one emerald per block. However, only expert stonemasons sell these, so you should look around a little.
Where to Find Terracotta in Minecraft?
Terracotta is generated naturally in badland biomes, so you can quickly rack up a stack of its blocks by mining there. The color ranges between the red and yellow hues, with some uncolored and grey blocks also mixed in.
Apart from mining them naturally, terracotta building blocks may also be found in certain village houses, specifically mason houses in deserts and occasionally savannah villages. While these sport the same colors found in the badlands, you can get some rare blue Terracotta blocks in underwater ruins and other colors in the trail ruins.
The occasional blue block is also found in desert pyramids, but mostly, you will get red-yellowish blocks there. They are still a good source if you haven’t yet found a badland biome.
How to Use Terracotta in Minecraft?
Once you are past the early stages of setting up your first ramshackle shelters in Minecraft, you will reach a stage when you want to start making structures that look appealing. And the main thing you need for that are colored building blocks.
Since you can’t paint stone blocks, Terracotta is the best option. Terracotta can be dyed in sixteen colors (many are also naturally found), giving you access to smooth, solid color blocks for your building projects. Concrete is an even better-colored building block, but that’s a bit harder to get early on, and it lacks the glazed versions of terracotta.
Buildings aside, glazed terracotta blocks make for great interior decoration. Each colored terracotta block has its version of glazed terracotta, obtained by smelting the block in the furnace.
While terracotta does not interact with redstone, combining redstone doors with glazed terracotta walls can create an interesting look.
How to Make Terracotta Blocks of Different Colors
We have seen how to obtain terracotta, but finding a specific color of terracotta from natural sources is tricky. It would be much better if you could change the colors of the terracotta blocks you already have.
And you can. The crafting table in Minecraft lets you dye terracotta into any color you want, using one unit of the respective dye to color eight blocks at once. This means it is a very efficient recipe, and you don’t need that much dye to make it work.
Remember, however, that you can only dye a terracotta block once; a dyed terracotta block cannot be dyed again. This restriction applies to colored terracotta you may find as well. It can be smelted to yield a glazed terracotta block, but more on that in the next section.
How to Add Patterns to Terracotta?
Okay, so you can use the crafting table to dye your terracotta blocks, but that just gives them a solid block of color. What if you want the blocks to have fancy patterns?
You can do that too! For this, you must smelt a dyed terracotta block with any fuel in the furnace. The result would be a patterned terracotta block, with the actual look and pattern depending on the color you started with.
The patterns are tiled – placing multiple glazed terracotta blocks of the same pattern in a grid creates larger repeating patterns. This makes it perfect for designer floors, ceilings, or even walls if you like that look.
Every type of glazed terracotta block creates this unique corner pattern when placed in a 2×2 grid, but orientation can be crucial. For instance, blue-glazed terracotta can create this.
Experiment with the other glazed terracotta blocks to find all the patterns and decide on your favorite!
Conclusion
Terracotta is the ideal building material in the game, capable of being dyed in several colors and glazed into interesting patterns. Sure, it is not as common as stone, but since there are multiple ways of obtaining terracotta, you will probably not have much trouble past the early game.
Start by searching the badlands biome to find terracotta directly. Otherwise, trade with villagers (assuming you have the emeralds), or just craft them from clay blocks that are much easier to get.
With sixteen different colors and the same number of glazed variants, you have a whopping thirty-two types of terracotta blocks to choose from. Do you see all those ambitious Minecraft projects? They are all dependent on the terracotta block’s visual range. Mine or craft some terracotta yourself to get started with your creative constructions!
