Swamp Biome in Minecraft: Slimes, Witch Huts and Frogs

Swamps are murky, flat wetlands with dark green-blue water, vine-covered oak trees and lily pads. They’re the only place besides mangrove swamps where slimes spawn on the surface, and the only biome with witch huts. Expect bogged at night too.

Slimes on the surface

Slimes normally spawn only in slime chunks deep underground. In swamps they also spawn on the surface at night, between roughly Y 50 and Y 70, in light level 7 or lower. The moon controls how many: lots at full moon, none at new moon.

That makes a swamp the easiest place to collect slimeballs early. For sticky pistons, leads and magma cream, a stack is easy to get on a couple of full-moon nights. If you want a steady supply, see our slime farm guide.

The witch hut

A swamp hut is a small spruce cabin on stilts. It generates with a witch and a black cat, and only witches spawn in its area afterward. That’s why witch farms are built around these huts: they drop redstone, glowstone, sugar, gunpowder, spider eyes, sticks and glass bottles.

The hut itself has a cauldron, a crafting table and a flower pot with a mushroom. No chest.

Other mobs

• Bogged. A mossy skeleton variant from 1.21. It spawns in swamps and mangrove swamps, and its arrows poison you. Bring a shield.
• Frogs in groups of two to five. Frogs eat small slimes and drop slimeballs, and when they eat a small magma cube they drop a froglight. The frog’s color depends on the climate where its tadpole grew up: swamp tadpoles grow into orange temperate frogs.
• The usual zombies, skeletons, creepers and spiders, plus sheep, cows, pigs and chickens.

Drowned no longer spawn in swamp water in current versions.

Resources

• Clay on the floor of the shallow water.
• Blue orchids. They grow only in swamps and make light blue dye.
• Lily pads. Walkable, and a cheap way to cross small stretches of water.
• Brown and red mushrooms, more common here than in most biomes.
• Fossils sometimes generate underground.

Mangrove swamps

Mangrove swamps are a separate, warmer biome with tangled mangrove trees, mud and roots. Slimes spawn there too. Tadpoles growing up there become white warm frogs. Mud can be turned into packed mud and mud bricks, a nice building block.

Building here

Swamps are awkward for building: flat but flooded, and noisy with slimes and witches at night. They’re great for farms, though. Build on stilts or fill in the water with dirt, then light the place up. If you want the opposite, an island where nothing hostile spawns, look at the mushroom fields. All biome pages are on the biomes hub.