How to Get Magma Cream in Minecraft: Recipe and Farming

There are two ways to get magma cream. You can craft it from 1 blaze powder and 1 slimeball (shapeless, any slots in the grid), or you can kill large and medium magma cubes in the Nether, which drop it directly. Bastion remnant chests also contain it fairly often.

Which route is faster depends on what you already have. If you’ve got a stack of slimeballs from the Overworld, crafting is instant. If you’re already in the Nether and slimeballs are scarce, hunting magma cubes is usually the better deal.

Crafting magma cream

Open a crafting table (or your 2x2 inventory grid, since the recipe only takes two slots) and put in:

• 1 blaze powder
• 1 slimeball

The position doesn’t matter. Each craft gives one magma cream, so a stack of 64 costs 64 of each ingredient.

Blaze powder comes from blaze rods, which blazes drop in Nether fortresses. One rod makes two powder. Slimeballs come from slimes in swamps and slime chunks, and a slime farm gives you more than you’ll ever brew with.

If you plan to make a lot, the combination of a blaze farm and a slime farm is the most dependable magma cream supply in the game.

Getting it from magma cubes

Magma cubes spawn in basalt deltas, Nether fortresses and, less often, in Nether wastes. They split when killed, like slimes: a large one splits into medium ones, which split into small ones. Only the large and medium sizes can drop magma cream. The small ones are a waste of a sword swing if cream is all you want.

The drop rate is very different between editions:

Looting level	Java: chance per kill	Java: max	Bedrock: chance per kill	Bedrock: max
None	25%	1	66.7%	2
Looting I	62.5%	2	66.7%	3
Looting II	81.25%	3	66.7%	4
Looting III	87.5%	4	66.7%	5

On Java without Looting, you’ll average one magma cream per four kills, which is slow. Looting III pushes that to about 1.75 per kill, a bigger jump than Looting gives for almost any other mob drop. On Bedrock the base chance is 50%, so you average one magma cream every two kills. Looting there doesn’t raise the chance, only the maximum per drop, which brings Looting III to about 1.25 per kill.

Basalt deltas are the best hunting ground. The terrain is awful to walk on, so bring Fire Resistance if you have any left, and watch for magma cubes jumping at you from above.

One catch: if a frog eats a magma cube, you get a froglight and no magma cream. That’s how froglight farms work, but it means frogs and a magma cream farm don’t mix.

Bastion remnant chests

Bastion chests hold magma cream fairly often: generic bastion chests have it in roughly 44% (Java) to 48% (Bedrock) of cases, in stacks of 2 to 6. Treasure room chests have it about a third of the time, 3 to 8 at once. Bastions are dangerous, with piglin brutes guarding them, so treat this as a bonus while raiding rather than a reason to go.

Piglin bartering no longer gives magma cream in either edition.

What magma cream is used for

• Fire Resistance potions. Add magma cream to an awkward potion in a brewing stand to get a 3-minute Potion of Fire Resistance; add redstone after that for 8 minutes. See how to brew potions for the full setup.
• Magma blocks. Four magma cream in a 2x2 square make one magma block, which damages anything standing on it and creates downward bubble columns in water.
• Mundane potions. Magma cream in a plain water bottle makes a mundane potion, which does nothing. Use nether wart first.

For most players, Fire Resistance is the reason to collect it. A few bottles make the Nether far safer, and one magma cream brews three potions at once.