How to Make a Night Vision Potion in Minecraft

While not the flashiest or most spectacular potion you’ll ever brew in Minecraft, the humble Potion of Night Vision still plays a vital role in nighttime exploration.

This article will take you step-by-step through creating a Potion of Night Vision and its variants, as well as where to find the resources to do so.

Crafting the Potion

When night falls, you’ll find your vision alternating between total darkness and a relative visibility of 14 blocks. It’s a dangerous time to be out and about, with hostile mobs and environmental hazards aplenty. It’s also a good time to gather loot drops from these mobs. A Night Vision potion is a must when wandering around. To make one, you’ll need the following:

• One Nether Wart.
• One Golden Carrot.
• One Blaze Powder to set a fire.
• One Water Bottle to contain it.
• A Brewing Stand to put it all together.

Once you’ve got all these assembled, it’s time to start brewing. Here’s how to make your Potion of Night Vision:

1. Interact with your Brewing Stand to open the brewing menu.
   
2. Set things bubbling by adding your Blaze Powder to the slot in the upper-left of the menu. The heat bar below the bubbles will fill up and gradually decrease with time.
   
3. Place your water bottle in one of the bottom slots to catch the potion. You can add up to three Water Bottles in the bottom slots to make multiple potions.
   
4. Put your Nether Wart in the top slot of the brewing menu. The white arrow next to it will begin to fill up.
   
5. Add the Golden Carrot to the top slot to complete the potion. The Water Bottle’s icon will transform into a Potion of Night Vision.
   
6. Grab your new potion and move it to an Inventory slot.
   

Your potion is now ready to drink. The baseline Potion of Night Vision will have a “3:00” next to its name, indicating the amount of time you’ll have the Night Vision buff. During the final ten seconds, the brightness will flash to alert you.

Night vision is helpful not only for exploring the nighttime landscape but also for the depths of the ocean and the fiery darkness of the Nether dimension. It’ll also change your vision in Minecraft’s other dimension, the End, changing the sky from inky black to a lighter purple.

Finding the Resources

If you’re lucky, you can skip the brewing process completely and obtain the Potion of Night Vision as a drop from a Witch. More often than not, though, you’re going to have to do it yourself. Assembling this potion’s ingredients is a bit tougher than your average health potion, requiring you to brave the Nether and carry out some careful crafting. Here’s how to obtain your ingredients.

Gold Carrots

Carrots have a reputation (however shaky in science) for boosting eyesight in the dark. That’s probably what made it part of this potion. And if orange works well, just think what gold will do for you. Minecraft’s carrots can usually be found on farms, or grown by you. Harder to come by is the gold ore you’ll need.

Gold ore is either found as surface deposits in badlands or deep underground, most commonly occurring around level -16. Mining it with at least an Iron Pickaxe will net you raw gold, which you can then smelt into gold ingots in a furnace. To assemble your Golden Carrot, you need to do the following:

1. Open your crafting menu and place a Gold Ingot inside. It will be broken down into nine golden nuggets.
   
2. Place a carrot in the middle of the 3×3 crafting grid and surround it with these nuggets.
   
3. A Gold Carrot should be created. Add it to your inventory and repeat the process as many times as needed.
   

Blaze Powder

To power your Brewing Stand you’ll need Blaze Powder. To obtain this, you’ll need to break down a Blaze Rod at your Crafting Table. Blaze Rods themselves can only be obtained by defeating a Blaze mob in the hellish landscape of the Nether.

The Nether is accessible only by a Nether Portal, which can either be built from scratch or built on the many portal ruins that dot the landscape. A Nether Portal will need:

• 10-14 Obsidian blocks.
• Flint and Steel to create a spark.

Once your Nether Portal is constructed as a vertical gate and your spark has activated it, you can travel through to the Nether and battle a Blaze.

Nether Wart

The other star ingredient of the potion is the Nether Wart, a vital potion plant that only grows naturally in the Nether. The good news is that you can also easily plant it in the Overworld, so long as you have a patch of Soul Sand to put it in. Nether Wart’s growth time is random, with no extra additives being able to help it grow faster. This is one plant you’ll never have to water.

Water Bottle

Glass bottles are very easy to make and can also be collected from fallen enemies. Simply place three glass blocks in a “v” shape in your 3×3 crafting menu and you’ll have a bottle ready and waiting on the result. Fill these bottles with water to create a water bottle.

Night Vision Potion Variants

The standard three-minute Potion of Night Vision is only the beginning. With a few extra ingredients, you can make other potions with different or stronger effects.

Potion of Night Vision (8:00)

This is a longer-lasting version of the original potion and can be created from the Brewing Stand with some Redstone Dust. This can be obtained simply by mining Redstone Ore. To assemble this potion:

1. Open the brewing menu and heat your Brewing Stand with Blaze Powder.
   
2. Place a standard Potion of Night Vision in a bottom slot.
   
3. Place the Redstone Dust in the top slot. The potion should brew.
   
4. Your potion bottle will look the same, but will now last for eight minutes.

Splash Potion of Night Vision

This potion can also act as a grenade of sorts, granting the Night Vision buff to nearby players or mobs when thrown. To give this potion its explosive splash, you’ll need to add some gunpowder to the mix, which can be obtained by killing Creepers. To craft this potion:

1. Heat your Brewing Stand with Blaze Powder.
   
2. Put your Potion of Night Vision in a bottle slot.
   
3. Add the gunpowder to your top slot and the potion icon should change to a slanted purple bottle.

Note that this potion variant is largely useless and even detrimental in single-player.

Lingering Potion of Night Vision

When thrown, this potion will create a lingering cloud, giving any players or mobs who pass through it a two-minute Night Vision buff. This can be useful in multiplayer mode.

What makes this potion so difficult to assemble is its key ingredient: Dragon’s Breath. This can only be obtained from the game’s final boss, the Ender Dragon. You’ll need to capture its purple breath in glass bottles and slay it to return to the Overworld.

Making the potion itself is very simple:

1. Use Blaze powder to heat your Brewing Stand.
   
2. Place the Potion of Night Vision in any bottom slot.
   
3. Add the Dragon’s Breath to the top slot and your standard potion icon should change to a purple bottle.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

Darkness can be a major obstacle to your exploration and survival in Minecraft. While torches are your primary method of navigating underground, a potion is much more dependable. Though the Potion of Night Vision has some difficult ingredients to obtain, the benefits will more than make up for it. You should now have all the guidance you need to brew not only the basic potion but its many different varieties.

From the depths of the ocean to the fires of the Nether, the darkness won’t be able to keep you at bay forever.

What do you use the Night Vision buff for? What’s your go-to method for gathering the Potion of Night Vision’s ingredients? Let us know in the comment section below.