Nether Wart

Overview

Nether wart is the crop that makes potions possible. A water bottle plus nether wart gives an awkward potion, and every useful potion in the game except Weakness starts from an awkward base, so no brewing happens without it. It grows only on soul sand — not soul soil, not farmland, not anything else — and it needs no light and no water, which makes an indoor nether wart farm one of the easiest fully passive farms in the game: a floor of soul sand, a wart in each block, and a room you visit occasionally. It passes through 4 growth stages and a fully grown plant drops 2 to 4 wart, so a farm expands quickly from a single starting stock. Nether wart generates naturally in nether fortresses, in the soul sand gardens beside the staircases, and occasionally in bastion remnants, which is where the first plant almost always comes from. It also crafts into a nether wart block, which is a deep red decorative bulk material used in huge crimson fungi and in red-themed builds. It is also one of the very few crops that cannot be bone-mealed, so a wart farm runs on patience rather than fertiliser.

The awkward potion that every brewing chain except Weakness begins from, which makes it a hard prerequisite for Fire Resistance, Healing, Strength and Water Breathing, plus nether wart blocks for deep red decorative building.

In Minecraft 1.21.4, Nether Wart is a Nether block. There is no way to craft it; you have to find it and mine it. It breaks almost instantly, with a hardness of just 0.

You can break it by hand without losing the drop. It drops as the same block you mined. Light passes through it, so it will not darken the space behind it.

It offers almost no protection from explosions (0 blast resistance). A full stack holds 64. It is used to craft Nether Wart Block and Red Nether Bricks.

How to get it

Take it from the soul sand gardens inside a nether fortress or from a bastion remnant, then replant it on soul sand anywhere. It has 4 growth stages and a mature plant drops 2 to 4 wart.

Tips

It grows only on soul sand — soul soil looks identical and will not work at all.
It needs no light and no water, so an underground Overworld farm is completely passive.
Bring soul sand home rather than farming in the Nether; the crop behaves identically in the Overworld.
See brewing every potion for what to do with the awkward potions it makes.

How long it takes to break

Nether Wart sits at hardness 0: 0 seconds per block with your fists, 0 with the correct netherite tool.

Nothing here needs a minimum tier: whatever you swing, the block still drops, and the only difference is how long it takes.

Each Efficiency level adds level² + 1 to the tool's speed; against a block this soft, instant mining arrives after only a level or two.

Tool	No enchantment	Efficiency III	Efficiency V
Hand	instant	instant	instant
Wooden	instant	instant	instant
Stone	instant	instant	instant
Iron	instant	instant	instant
Diamond	instant	instant	instant
Netherite	instant	instant	instant
Golden	instant	instant	instant

Properties

Blast resistance on Nether Wart is 0, so any explosion nearby takes it out. It lets light pass and gives off no light. Stack size is 64 — the standard full stack. It renews, so a single world will never run out. An axe is fastest here; any other class mines it at bare-hand speed, because the bonus only applies to the class the block is tagged for.

Transparent: Yes
Required tool: Any
Renewable: Yes