Sugar Cane

Overview

Sugar cane is the tall green reed that grows beside water, and it is the only renewable source of paper — which makes it the source of books, bookshelves, maps and everything those unlock. It grows on grass, dirt, sand, red sand, podzol, moss or mud with at least one water block directly beside the block it stands on, needs no light level at all, and grows to a maximum of 3 blocks tall on its own. Harvest the second block up rather than the base and the plant regrows from what is left, which is why every sugar cane farm cuts at that height. Three sugar cane make three paper, and three paper make a book with one leather; a bookshelf is three books and six planks, and an enchanting table's full 15-shelf setup needs 45 books, so a sugar cane farm is effectively a prerequisite for serious enchanting. Sugar cane also crafts into sugar for cake, pumpkin pie and fermented spider eyes, and it composts. Its ability to grow with no light makes fully automatic underground farms straightforward.

Paper for books, bookshelves and maps, sugar for cake and pumpkin pie, and the fermented spider eye chain in brewing. An enchanting table's 15 bookshelves need 45 books, which is 135 sugar cane.

Minecraft classifies Sugar Cane as a plant 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 Paper and Sugar.

How to get it

Break naturally generated sugar cane along any river, beach or swamp waterline, then replant it on a block with water directly beside it. It grows up to 3 blocks tall and needs no light at all.

Tips

Harvest the 2nd block up and leave the base — the plant regrows without replanting.
It needs water beside the block it stands on, not beside the cane itself, which is the usual layout mistake.
Sugar cane grows at any light level, so an underground farm needs no lighting whatsoever.
An observer facing the 3rd block with a piston is the standard fully automatic harvester.

How long it takes to break

Sugar Cane 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.

Efficiency contributes its level squared plus one to tool speed, and on something this soft that reaches instant mining almost at once.

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

With 0 blast resistance Sugar Cane goes down to any nearby explosion. It is transparent to light and produces no light. A single slot takes 64, the usual full stack. Being renewable, it can be produced indefinitely in one world. 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.

Transparent: Yes
Required tool: Any
Renewable: Yes