How To Activate A Conduit in Minecraft

Live and breathe underwater with the power of the conduit in this guide on how to activate a conduit in Minecraft.

Ever thought about building underwater bases and structures in Minecraft? With hard work and dedication, certainly, anything is possible. But with the conduit? Even better. Generally, being underwater alone poses a lot of problems for players who want to explore its mysterious depths. Certain hazards such as difficulty in mining, short breathing time underwater, and impaired vision make it hard to even think about creating structures underwater. But the conduit can fix all that and more.

Once activated, the conduit lets you breathe underwater infinitely, remove mining impairment, and give complete vision underwater. What’s more, it also attacks hostile mobs within its area of effect thereby making the surrounding area completely free from hostile mobs. This makes things easier especially for players who want to create their own underwater base or hideout. But before delving into creating bases, you must first learn how to craft and activate the conduit in order to harness its powers with this Minecraft guide.

How To Craft A Conduit in Minecraft

Before everything else, you must first know how to obtain a conduit. Unfortunately, the conduit is an item that can only be obtained through crafting unlike other items in Minecraft. To craft one conduit, you will need the following items:

8 Nautilus Shells

1 Heart of the Sea

How To Get Nautilus Shells

Nautilus shells are rather tricky to obtain and take note that you will need a total of 8 nautilus shells to create a single conduit. There are only 3 known ways to get them: fishing, looting, and trading. Through fishing, you have a rare chance of obtaining one nautilus shell. However, the percentage of treasure drops from fishing will depend on what level the fishing rod’s Luck of the Sea enchantment is. A fishing rod equipped with the Luck of the Sea III will have the highest chance of fishing nautilus shells with each catch.

You may loot the nautilus shells from drowned mobs. A drowned that is holding a nautilus shell in its off-hand will always drop them when killed. However, the chances of a drowned spawning with the nautilus shell are rather slim since there is only a 3% chance for java edition and an 8% chance for bedrock edition. This small percentage makes farming for them even trickier.

Lastly, you may try buying from a Wandering Trader. The Wandering Trader’s goods are completely random but if you happen to stumble upon some nautilus shells, make sure to buy them. Wandering Traders sell them for 5 emeralds each. Unfortunately, they will only sell a maximum of 5 nautilus shells so you will definitely need to fish or fight the drowned for the remaining quantity needed.

How To Get The Heart Of The Sea

There is only one way to obtain a heart of the sea and you must loot a buried treasure to obtain one. Buried treasures are naturally spawned chests that are buried deep beneath the sand in specific beaches. These chests contain tons of loot including the prized heart of the sea. To get the heart of the sea, you must follow these steps:

1. Find a shipwreck or an underwater ruin. These underwater structures hide loot chests that contain a buried treasure map. The buried treasure map will guide you to the location of the buried treasure.
   
2. Follow the buried treasure map. Go towards the location of the X on the map. The shipwreck or underwater ruin’s location is usually close to the buried treasure.
   
3. When you reach the beach area that the X is located in, simply dig the sand until you find the buried treasure chest.
   
4. Once you find the buried treasure, click and drag the heart of the sea item into your inventory.
   

How To Activate The Conduit in Minecraft

There are a few things to note down in order to activate the conduit. The first thing you need to know is that the entire structure of the conduit should be submerged in water. This is easily done by building the structure itself underwater—preferably in an ocean to maximize its power.

Next, you will need to build the structure that will surround the conduit. You can use either prismarine blocks, dark prismarine blocks, prismarine bricks, or sea lanterns to build the frame. Whichever one you choose, you will need 16 blocks to activate the structure’s minimum range power. You may increase the structure’s size to increase its area of effect. A complete frame will comprise a total of 42 blocks with a maximum range of 96. Follow these steps to build the complete structure of the conduit and activate the power of the conduit:

1. Find a suitable location underwater to build the frame for the conduit. Remember that it needs to be fully submerged underwater in order to work.
   
2. Start by placing the base of the structure using 9 prismarine blocks (or any of its substitutes) in a cross pattern.
   
3. On each edge, place a 4-block high pillar—making each pillar a total of 5 blocks each.
   
4. Fill in the top area with blocks matching the cross pattern below.
   
5. In the middle section of the structure, place 12 more prismarine blocks in a manner that surrounds the structure horizontally.
   
6. Once the structure is complete, you must place the conduit inside the center of the 5×5 frame. To do this, you can first place a block below it and place the conduit on top of that same block. But you must destroy the block afterwards as the conduit will not activate when a block is touching it.
   
7. After placing the conduit inside the frame, it will immediately expand and rotate, thereby activating the conduit’s effects.
   

Once the conduit is activated, you will then be granted the Conduit Power status effect. The Conduit Power provides the player with underwater breathing, underwater night vision, and underwater haste (haste increases mining speed). However, remember that the range of the Conduit Power will depend on the size of the structure you create, therefore it is best to build the complete structure to fully maximize the conduit’s area of effect.