Soul Campfire

Overview

A soul campfire is the blue-flamed version, and it differs from the ordinary campfire in three specific ways. It deals more damage to anything standing in it — 2 points per tick of contact rather than 1 — which makes it a genuinely better trap block. It emits less light, level 10 rather than 15, so it will not fully prevent mob spawns in a wide area and is better read as atmosphere than as lighting. And, most usefully, it repels piglins within 8 blocks: a piglin will not approach one, which makes a ring of soul campfires the cheapest and most reliable way to hold a position in a bastion or beside a nether portal without fighting anything. It cooks food exactly as a normal campfire does, four items at a time with no fuel, and it calms bees the same way. The blue flame and the pale light make it a favourite for builds that want a cold or spectral look, and it pairs naturally with soul lanterns and soul torches, which share the palette and the piglin-repelling property.

Repelling piglins within 8 blocks for safe Nether camps and bastion approaches, dealing double the fire damage of a normal campfire in a trap, and cooking food with no fuel.

Soul Campfire counts as a light-emitting block in Minecraft 1.21.4. Soul Campfire has a crafting recipe, so it is renewable as long as you can source its ingredients. At a hardness of 2 it takes a moment to break but never slows a build down.

Instead of dropping itself it yields Soul Soil. It glows faintly at light level 10. It is transparent, which matters when you are managing light levels.

With a blast resistance of only 2 it will not survive an explosion. Sixty-four fit in one inventory slot. The recipe calls for Stick, Soul Sand, and Oak Log.

It is not used in any crafting recipe.

How to get it

Craft it from 3 sticks, 1 coal or charcoal and 3 soul sand or soul soil. Both soul blocks come from the soul sand valley biome in the Nether, which is also where you will most want the piglin repulsion.

Tips

Piglins will not come within 8 blocks of one, so a ring of them secures a nether portal without a wall.
It deals 2 damage per contact tick against a normal campfire's 1, which makes it the better trap block.
At light level 10 it is dimmer than an ordinary campfire, so add lanterns if you need spawn-proofing.
It calms bees identically to a normal campfire, so either works under a hive for safe harvesting.

How long it takes to break

Soul Campfire has a hardness of 2. By hand that is 3 seconds per block; with the correct tool at netherite tier it is 0.35 seconds.

Iron manages 0.5 seconds and diamond 0.4, which makes iron the tier that changes how this block feels.

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

Efficiency contributes its level squared plus one to tool speed, which makes Efficiency V roughly 3.5 times faster than the plain tool.

Tool	No enchantment	Efficiency III	Efficiency V
Hand	3 s	3 s	3 s
Wooden	1.5 s	0.25 s	0.15 s
Stone	0.75 s	0.25 s	0.1 s
Iron	0.5 s	0.2 s	0.1 s
Diamond	0.4 s	0.2 s	0.1 s
Netherite	0.35 s	0.2 s	0.1 s
Golden	0.25 s	0.15 s	0.1 s

Properties

Soul Campfire resists blasts at 2, which is not enough to survive anything explosive nearby. Light passes through it, and it emits at level 10. 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. Broken normally it drops Soul Soil rather than itself; Silk Touch is what returns the block, and Fortune raises the ordinary drop instead.

Transparent: Yes
Required tool: Any