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Minecraft Smelting Explained

Smelting is a crucial part of Minecraft survival. This is how you cook food, make ore ingots, and produce other resources. In this guide, we'll discuss all the different types of furnaces, fuels, and explain how smelting works in Minecraft.

How smelting works in Minecraft

Smelting in Minecraft allows you to place a material and fuel into a furnace in order to cook food, make ore ingots, turn sand into glass, refine stones, and more. To smelt, you first need to build a furnace.

Minecraft furnace types

There are three different types of smelters you can build in Minecraft.

Furnace

This is the first smelter you'll have the resources to craft. The standard furnace works for all types of resources you can smelt, such as food, ore, and sand. You can even smelt terracotta to create colorful glazed blocks.

This furnace only requires eight pieces of cobblestone to build. You can also quickly craft one in the Nether by using Blackstone.

Blast Furnace

The blast furnace provides a speedier way to smelt ore types, but it doesn't work for food or other materials. To build, it requires five iron ingots, three pieces of smooth stone, and a regular furnace.

Smoker

The smoker is exclusively built for cooking food, and this will cook faster than the furnace. The build requires four wood logs and a furnace.

Campfires

While these don't look like the other furnace types, it's worth mentioning you can also cook food on campfires. The campfires are lit with flint and steel, and these can cook four pieces of food at once.

To build a standard campfire, you'll need three logs, three sticks, and one piece of coal. For the soul campfire, you'll need three logs, three sticks, and one piece of soul sand.

Smelting fuel types

Coal and charcoal are probably the most commonly used resources for fuel, but there are several other items in the game that can be used as fuel for smelting. Here we'll list several resources you can use as fuel, including efficient sources and the less recommended options.

The most efficient fuel sources:

• Lava bucket: Can smelt 100 items
• Coal block: Can smelt 80 items
• Dried Kelp block: Can smelt 20 items
• Blaze Rod: Can smelt 12 items
• Piece of coal: Can smelt 8 items
• Piece of charcoal: Can smelt 8 items

Resource-wise, stacks of coal will be one of the easiest and most efficient fuel sources, especially early in your game. Lava Buckets will be best suited for when you're trying to smelt large qualities of ore.

Less efficient fuels sources:

• Wood logs, planks, fence pieces, wood crafting tables, bookshelves, and more will smelt 1.5 items each
• Wooden tools, signs, and wooden doors will smelt 1 item each
• Then you have other normal items that will smelt less than 1 item each, including wool blocks, carpet, seeds, and bamboo

These normal items aren't efficient to use as fuel, but in a pinch, you can throw these in your furnace.

Experience points and achievements

It's worth noting that smelting contributes to your experience points. You gain valuable XP every time you retrieve smelted items from the furnaces.

There are also Minecraft achievements tied to smelting various items, including cooking your first cake and bread.

Now that your furnaces are up and running, make sure to check out our Minecraft guides hub for more tips and tricks.