This article is designed to remove some of the mystery behind the upcoming potions and brewing system. There will be a section of this regarding potion ingredients, and some of that will be speculation. I will mention when something is in the current iteration and if I only think something will be added. The current brewing method is being changed because of the way that the potions stack because two potions could have the same effects and be made of different materials, thus not allowing them to stack.

First thing regarding potions is their effects. You can test a few potion effects in the current release of the game by eating a golden apple for regeneration, and zombie meat for hunger. The complete list of effects can be seen in the screenshot that is attached to this post. Speed and Slowness changes your movement speed. Haste and Mining Fatigue changes your digging speed. Strength and Weakness change the amount of damage you do. Instant Health and Instant Damage does exactly what it says to you. Nausea causes the screen to distort. Regeneration causes you to heal over time. Resistance causes you to take less damage, though it is not known if this applies to all damage types (ie explosions, fire, drowning etc.) Fire resistance makes you take no damage from fire or lava, though you will still catch on fire, and lava will not drown you. Water Breathing keeps your bubbles full. Invisibility will most likely make the player invisible and cause enemies to ignore them, though it does nothing at this time. Hunger makes your food bar drain faster. Poison is the opposite of regeneration and can be found by getting hit by cave spiders. Blindness causes the screen to go black past a few blocks. Night vision will probably make the world look brighter in the dark but does not currently function. Jump Boost causes you to jump higher but does not add any protection from falling damage. There may be additional potion effects added at a later time, however this list is of all effects currently in the game.

The next thing that we will look at are the available ingredients for brewing potions. During the era of brewing with cauldrons, there were 8 different potion ingredients. To start brewing, you filled a cauldron with water, which gave it 3 doses to start. You could then add any of the following ingredients to the water to change the potion's effects. The regular ingredients are sugar from reeds/sugarcane, Ghast tears from Ghasts, Blaze powder which is made from crushed Blaze rods that you get from the Blaze mob in Nether ruins, Magma Cream by mixing Blaze Powder with Slimeballs, Spider Eye from killing spiders, and a Fermented Spider Eye from mixing a regular eye with sugar and a brown mushroom. You can also use Nether Warts, though this cannot be the first ingredient, and you can also add water to dilute a potion that has fewer than 3 doses in a cauldron. The damage value of the potion determines which effects are added to the potion, with all sorts of fun math taking place in the background with each ingredient added to generate the value and calculate the effects. It seems that Potion effects are coded to examine certain bits in the potion's damage value so that they can have nearly any combination of effects. This information is only regarding the current system and does not necessarily reflect the final system due to the complexity involved. The current plan is to redesign the system according to Jeb.


Potential potion ingredients include Redstone dust, which was mentioned long ago when people were asking about potion making, and by the same extension, Glowstone dust is also a likely ingredient, though gunpowder is not. Mushrooms are also a likely ingredient to be added in the future as they are already used in making some of the ingredients and have little use other than stew beyond that. Slimeballs are also a likely ingredient seeing as they are currently only used to make sticky pistons and Magma Cream. Bonemeal may be used as an ingredient considering the current uses in growing food. Rotten flesh would make a good ingredient as it currently only serves as a food of last resort because of the potential for getting food poisoning. Ender Pearls are not likely because of the current teleporting mechanic that has been added to them in the 1.9 pre-release.

For potions causing much pain, there is a solution. Drinking Milk will remove all potion effects, positive or negative (not including the instant health and damage effects because they do not have timers.) For this reason, milk is probably never going to be a potion ingredient. Also, the current interation of potion brewing does not use the cauldron, it uses the potion stand, though the cauldron will be used for something else later.