How To Find and Explore a Lush Cave in Minecraft
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A Lush Cave in Minecraft is a temperate cave biome found in the Overworld. It’s uncommon to find, but when you do, they’re generally quite expansive. They generate at any height underground, more commonly in forested biomes. Their floors and ceilings are covered with moss and ores, along with moss carpets, grass, and azalea bushes. Vines and cave vines with glow berries grow down from the ceiling to light up the caves, while spore blossoms drip water particles from above. Every lush cave includes springs and shallow lakes made of clay where dripleaf plants grow.
Lush caves are home to mobs like Axolotls, Glow Squids, and Tropical Fish. Axolotls only spawn in lush caves, so if you want to take one home, you need to know how to find a lush cave. In this biome, you can also find Azaleas, Dripleaves, and Glow Berries which you can use to decorate and build new structures. Being a cave itself, lush caves are also full of ores, cave mobs, dungeons, and mineshafts where you can gather resources.
Another thing about lush caves is that they usually spawn near Amethyst Geodes. An amethyst geode is an underground feature that houses Amethyst Clusters and blocks, as well as Smooth Basalt and Calcite. Players looking to harvest Amethyst Shards to craft Calibrated Sculk Sensors and other Amethyst items may look for signs of lush caves especially if they want resources from both areas.
In summary, players mainly look for lush caves to mine rare blocks, find Axolotls, or locate Amethyst Geodes. Some like to do it because they enjoy the challenge or want to explore new environments. Whatever your reasons are for wanting to find a lush cave, you’re sure to get something out of it.
🛈 Fun fact: The main inspiration for the lush caves was the painting “Oskuldens Vandring” (Innocent’s Journey) by Swedish painter John Bauer. |
One of the best features of the Caves & Cliffs: Part 2 update are the lush caves. Upon entering one of these beautiful caves, players feel like they’ve entered a fantasy world (still filled with mobs, of course). However, how do we know we’ve found a lush cave? Is there a way to find them easily? Let’s explore that!
How to Identify a Lush Cave in Minecraft?
You can easily spot where a Lush Cave is by looking for Azalea Trees on the surface. An azalea tree is a rare type of tree that generates naturally above a lush cave. Beneath the tree’s logs, you will find Rooted Dirt and Hanging Roots that lead all the way underground to a lush cave. While Azaleas tend to spawn on the surface, some may end up spawning in the cave itself if there’s enough space for it to grow.
It takes a bit of luck to find an Azalea Tree since they spawn randomly, so you need some patience. Be warned that these trees look similar to Oak Trees since their wood is also made of Oak. Luckily, they stand out with their purple blooms so they can be easy to spot in the daylight, more so when they’re isolated.
How to Navigate a Lush Cave in Minecraft?
To navigate a Lush Cave in Minecraft, you need to be prepared and preferably geared up for combat. If you’re there to gather resources, you need the right tools to mine the blocks you may find. So before exploring a lush cave, we recommend bringing the following:
Light Sources. A Lush Cave is still a cave, so expect it to be dark even with the Cave Vines and Glow Berries lighting up the area. Bring Torches or your preferred light source and use them to light up the cave for easier exploration.
Weapons and Armor. You’re likely to encounter a hostile mob or two, so suit up and bring your weapon of choice before heading underground.
Bucket. You can fill this with water to save you from lava and fall damage, or to transport and breed Axolotls. If you want to bring home more than one, bring at least two Buckets before you head down.
Shears. While this is optional, you need Shears if you want to acquire blocks like Hanging Roots, Vines, Azalea Leaves, and Flowering Azalea Leaves.
Shovel. You need one if you want to get Rooted Dirt and Clay.
Pickaxe. Caves are home to ores, so you need a pickaxe to mine them faster. It’s recommended to bring an Iron Pickaxe or better to harvest more ore types. If you find an Amethyst Geode nearby and want to mine Amethyst Shards, a pickaxe will make the job easier.
Any tool with a Silk Touch Enchantment. While this is optional and harder to acquire, it allows you to mine certain blocks as items instead of their drops without breaking them. It’s recommended in case you find an Amethyst Geode and want to harvest Amethyst Clusters or Amethyst Buds. You can also use them in place of Shears and other tools if you want to preserve how a block originally looks.
Most of the other blocks can be mined by hand, but take note that it’s faster to mine Dripleaves and Oak blocks with Axes and Moss Blocks with Hoes.
What Can You Find in a Lush Cave in Minecraft?
In a Lush Cave, you can find the following blocks:
Azalea
Flowering Azalea
Azalea Leaves
Flowering Azalea Leaves
🛈 To manually grow an Azalea Tree, you need an Azalea or Flowering Azalea block. This block can only be planted on Dirt, other dirt-type blocks, Mud, and Moss Blocks. To grow it into an Azalea Tree, you need to feed it Bone Meal after setting it down. Once an Azalea Tree grows, the block below it will be replaced with Rooted Dirt. Sadly, this won’t spawn a lush cave underneath it, but at least you have your own Azalea Tree! |
Oak Logs from Azalea Trees
Glow Berries
Cave Vines
Ponds where you can find Water and Clay
Spore Blossoms
Small Dripleaf
Big Dripleaf
Rooted Dirt
Hanging Roots
Moss Blocks
Moss Carpets
Grass
Tall Grass
Vines
Ores
The passive mobs you can find in Lush Caves are Axolotls, Glow Squids, and Tropical Fish.
Hostile mobs you are likely to find in Lush Caves are Zombies, Skeletons, Spiders, Creepers, and Slimes. Endermen, Witches, and Zombie Villagers have a small chance of spawning, but you can still encounter them.