Minecraft’s fauna includes not only well-known creatures like sheep or pigs but also very exotic and fictional animals. Among them is the new Sniffer, a large and slow creature that loves to dig in the ground and can give you rare items. The Sniffer has many exciting mechanics that are not always easy to understand as a player. You might not even know how to obtain this mob. That’s why we present everything you need to know about the Sniffer in this guide!
Finding and Breeding Sniffers
You won’t find Sniffers in the overworld of Minecraft, as they don’t spawn naturally and must be found and hatched by you. In terms of lore, Sniffers are very old and already extinct animals that you, as a player, can revive. For this, you need a Sniffer Egg.
This can be found through an archaeological excavation. We’ve already written a comprehensive article on this topic (Minecraft Archaeology: Discover All Dig Sites & Rare Items) , if you want to learn more. For the Sniffer Egg, you should focus on warm ocean ruins. It’s best to use a Potion of Night Vision and Water Breathing to search with your brush for suspicious sand. Sniffer Eggs have a 6.7% chance of appearing. And you need at least two eggs for an effective farm.
Hatching and Breeding Sniffer Eggs
You need to hatch the egg, preferably on a moss block. With our article on a moss farm (Automatic Minecraft Moss Farm: Generate Infinite Bone Meal) , you’ll surely have enough of it! Simply place it and wait about ten minutes for the egg to hatch. During this time, the egg will crack and emit green particles to signal its progress. In the end, a small Sniffer hatchling emerges, which takes another twenty minutes to grow into a full-fledged Sniffer.
We mentioned that you should search for at least two eggs. Because if you have two Sniffers, you can breed them yourself. For this, you need Torchflower Seeds. You use these like items in normal breeding, but then you receive another egg for hatching. But you’re surely wondering how to obtain these seeds for breeding. This is where the unique ability of the Sniffer comes into play!
Rare Plants for Your Minecraft World
Sniffers live up to their name and love to sniff around the ground. Every eight minutes, they have a chance to dig up one of two rare seeds. This is where the aforementioned Torchflower Seeds and Pitcher Plant Pod come into play! Both have a 50% chance of being dug up by a Sniffer. The seeds or pods can then be collected by you.
This only works on the blocks:
- Dirt
- Grass Block
- Podzol
- Coarse Dirt
- Rooted Dirt
- Moss Block
- Mud
- Muddy Mangrove Roots
Usage and Application of the New Crops
Interestingly, the Pitcher Plant and Torchflower are not flowers but rather crops! You must cultivate the seeds with farmland, just like wheat or carrots. Both flowers are truly beautiful and more detailed than any other plants in Minecraft. For this reason alone, it’s worth searching for Sniffers. You won’t get the seeds through cultivation, only the flowers. However, you can still build automatic fields with water (Build an Automatic Minecraft Wheat Farm: Unlimited Wheat with Minimal Effort) .
At the end of the day, both flowers are mainly intended for decoration. You can transform them into orange or turquoise dye, but for such rare plants, it’s not really worth it. They can also be composted or used for breeding bees. Additionally, with the Torchflower, you can make a peculiar stew that gives you a night vision effect for five seconds.
Building Your Own Automatic Sniffer Farm
To have enough seeds, you need enough Sniffers and, ideally, an automatic way to collect the dug-up seeds. We present two different methods for doing this. Both are equally effective but use different Minecraft mechanics.
Starting Point: Both farms require a very similar setup. First, measure a field of 10x10 blocks and fill it with a block that the Sniffer can dig. Normal grass is perfectly sufficient. Surround the field with a 3-block-high wall, preferably using glass or fences. The roof should be made of slabs to prevent monsters from spawning. Illuminate the farm itself with torches.
Once you have built one of the two mechanisms, you can bring your Sniffers into the farm using a lead. And you can, of course, hatch more baby Sniffers and expand your farm.
Allays as Support
Allays are a helpful mob, which we also discussed in detail in another article. Their ability is to collect items and then give them to the player. But thanks to note blocks, we can also make Allays drop items over a hopper.
On one side of the cage, you should build a small collection basin for the Allays’ drops. To keep the note block ringing continuously, use two observers facing each other, creating a constant signal. The Allays will then fly to the note block and drop the dug-up Pitcher Plant Pods and Torchflower Seeds into the hoppers. Two Allays are completely sufficient, and you give each of them one of the exotic plant seeds.
Rail System with Hoppers
If you haven’t found any Allays yet or prefer another method, you can also build a simple rail system with a hopper minecart beneath the 10x10 field.
Again, start on one side and place both two hoppers and a double chest in front of them. Then lay out a rail network that covers each block once. Between them, you need 4 sections with 3 powered rails each, powered by a lever. This way, you can let a hopper minecart run indefinitely, which pulls the pods and seeds from the layer above and places them in the chest.
Conclusion
Sniffers are incredibly cute and fit perfectly into Minecraft! They have unique abilities that allow you to cultivate long-forgotten plants and use them as decoration. Rent your own Minecraft server with us and embark on a quest with your friends to find the rare Sniffer Eggs to start your breeding and build an automatic farm.
