Chest

Overview

The chest is the container every base is built around: 27 slots on its own, or 54 when two are placed side by side to form a double chest. It is the first storage most players craft and it stays useful forever, because almost every automation block in the game interacts with it — hoppers pull from it and push into it, comparators read how full it is, minecarts carry it, and droppers and dispensers feed it. There is one placement rule that catches people out: a chest needs a free block directly above it to open, so a chest tucked under a ceiling or a slab will not open at all. The exception is a cat sitting on it, which blocks it just as effectively. Chests can be placed on top of one another vertically without any problem; the restriction is only about opening space. Two chests join into a double only when they face the same direction and sit next to each other on the same axis, and sneaking while placing stops them joining if you want two singles side by side. Broken with an axe, a chest drops itself and spills its contents on the floor.

Storing 27 stacks, or 54 as a double chest, and acting as the endpoint for every hopper, sorter and farm output in the game. A comparator on one reads its fill level for automation.

Chest counts as a storage block in Minecraft 1.21.4. A crafting table turns its ingredients into Chest. Its hardness of 2.5 makes it a normal, unhurried block to mine.

Mining it returns the block itself, so it is safe to relocate. A blast resistance of 2.5 means a single creeper will clear it away. It stacks to 64.

You make it with Oak Planks. 14 recipes call for it, including Acacia Boat with Chest, Bamboo Raft with Chest, Birch Boat with Chest and 11 more.

How to get it

Craft one from 8 wooden planks of any type, which is 2 logs. Chests also generate already stocked in villages, mineshafts, dungeons, strongholds, shipwrecks, temples and every other loot structure in the game.

Tips

A chest needs 1 free block above it to open — a slab, a trapdoor or a sitting cat will all block it.
Sneak while placing to stop 2 chests merging into a double when you want them separate.
Label chests with item frames or signs; a storage room without labels stops being usable at around 20 chests.
Trapped chests look identical but do not merge with normal ones, which is worth knowing before you build a wall of them.

How long it takes to break

Chest has a hardness of 2.5. By hand that is 3.8 seconds per block; with the correct tool at netherite tier it is 0.45 seconds.

Iron manages 0.65 seconds and diamond 0.5, which makes iron the tier that changes how this block feels.

There is no tier requirement to worry about. Any tool, or none, returns the drop; the numbers below just say how fast.

Each Efficiency level adds level² + 1 to the tool's speed, so a level V tool clears this about 3 times faster than an unenchanted one.

Tool	No enchantment	Efficiency III	Efficiency V
Hand	3.8 s	3.8 s	3.8 s
Wooden	1.9 s	0.35 s	0.15 s
Stone	0.95 s	0.3 s	0.15 s
Iron	0.65 s	0.25 s	0.15 s
Diamond	0.5 s	0.25 s	0.15 s
Netherite	0.45 s	0.2 s	0.15 s
Golden	0.35 s	0.2 s	0.1 s

Properties

With 2.5 blast resistance Chest goes down to any nearby explosion. It is fully opaque and produces no light. A single slot takes 64, the usual full stack. The fastest tool for it is an axe; any other kind of tool mines it no faster than a bare hand does, because the speed bonus only applies to the tool class the block is tagged for. As furnace fuel it burns for 15 seconds — one and a half smelting operations.

Transparent: No
Required tool: Any
Fuel value: 15 s

Crafting recipe

Crafting Table

Chest

Any plank — Oak Planks, Spruce Planks, Birch Planks, Jungle Planks, Acacia Planks, Dark Oak Planks, Pale Oak Planks, Crimson Planks, Warped Planks, Mangrove Planks, Bamboo Planks, Cherry Planks

Drops

Mined with any, Chest drops itself.

Chest

Used to craft

Chest is an ingredient in 14 recipes, producing Acacia Boat with Chest, Bamboo Raft with Chest, Birch Boat with Chest, Cherry Boat with Chest, Minecart with Chest, Dark Oak Boat with Chest, Hopper, Jungle Boat with Chest, Mangrove Boat with Chest, Oak Boat with Chest, Pale Oak Boat with Chest, Shulker Box, Spruce Boat with Chest, and Trapped Chest.