How to Get a Sniffer in Minecraft 1.20

Image: Mojang via Fandom.com / Hubertkot5

Human Made

Penned by Nathan Hart

I'm a stand-up comic by night and write for HGG by day. Most of my gaming happens at an improvised desk at the Days Inn right outside whatever small town I'm in for the night.

Reviewed by Ashley Johnson

Minecraft is a beloved classic for a reason, and developers make incredible additions to the world with each new patch. The recent 1.20 introduces buried artifacts, the new Camel mob, and the biggest friendly mob in the game — the Sniffer. In today’s guide, we’ll cover how to get a Sniffer in Minecraft, as well as how to make the most out of your lovable new dino turtle.

Let’s get started!

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How to Get a Sniffer in Minecraft

Getting a Sniffer is easier said than done, as they don’t exactly spawn randomly in the overworld. You’ll need to make use of biomes and tools introduced across a handful of different expansions! We’ll begin with how to get a Sniffer egg in Minecraft.

Archaeology Tools

The first thing you’ll need to do is create a brush, which is a tool from the new Archaeology mechanic. You can craft this using a stick, a feather, and one copper ingot. Brushes gradually degrade in quality but are easily replaceable, as well as repairable.

Brushes are used to…well, brush away suspicious sand or gravel to reveal a hidden artifact within. Suspicious sand and gravel can only be found around a structural ruin, now known as “Trail Ruins.” You can uncover a variety of artifacts this way, including pottery shards, dyes, stained glass, and armor trim.

Finding a Sniffer Egg

To find your Sniffer egg, you’ll need to seek out a warm ocean biome. You can easily identify a warm ocean by the presence of coral, as well as the fact that it’s likely next to a similarly hot biome, like a jungle, desert, or savannah. Seek out some high ground and look outward until you see a wide swath of water. Build a boat and hop on the ocean, then just keep paddling until you find yourself surrounded by coral blocks and colorful fish.

From here, you’re on the lookout for some ocean ruins. Keep your eyes peeled for an underwater sandstone structure, which will typically be visible from the surface if you look into the depths for red or blue lights. These unusual light colors will emanate from the magma blocks and sea lanterns typical of an underwater structure. Note that the ruins you’re searching for are different from the old kind made of prismarine, which are now known as “Ocean Monuments” instead.

Once you find the ruins, use your brush to dust around on the suspicious sand. You might want to get ahold of an enchanted turtle shell helmet or some water-breathing potions so you can take your time. Brush around in the sand until you finally find a Sniffer egg, then take it with you back to your base.

Hatching a Sniffer Egg

Now that you’ve gotten a Sniffer egg, the first thing you’ll need to do is set it down somewhere safe so it can grow. You’ll want to build it a safe little nest area, although you don’t need to concern yourself too heavily with this the way you would with a Turtle egg. Hostile mobs don’t notice the Sniffer egg or try to destroy it. The only major threat to your egg is a Creeper explosion, so keep it somewhere high up and well-lit!

You’ll also want a block of moss for the Sniffer egg to rest on. This cuts the gestation time in half! You can find moss blocks by searching through lush caverns, often found inside a mountain. If you want to scale up your Sniffer farm (more on that in a second), you can easily duplicate moss blocks with bonemeal and open space.

How to Use Sniffers in Minecraft

Once your Sniffer has hatched — typically after ~10 days — you can let it get to work. Simply let it wander around a grassland area until it finds a dirt, grass, podzole, or mud block. Every eight minutes, the Sniffer can dig into the ground to find two different decorative plants.

Torchflowers can be grown in tilled soil and then replanted into flower pots. Pitcher Plants can only survive in tilled soil. For now, both of these plants are entirely decorative. Watch for future updates, though, as they might gain additional functions in the future!

How to Breed Sniffers in Minecraft

That brings us to the next part of our guide — how to get another Sniffer in Minecraft. You need to start with at least two Sniffers, so repeat the process above to hatch yourself a second egg. Uncovering two different Sniffer eggs to breed with is hard enough, so knowing how to breed these prehistoric beasties is a must.

Remember when we said Torchflowers are nothing but decorative? We lied…sorta. You can actually use Torchflower seeds to breed Sniffers. Just feed two Sniffers some Torchflower seeds and the Sniffers will enter love mode like other mobs, coming together and producing an egg of their own.

Place the egg on a moss block like before, and it will hatch into a Snifflet. Snifflets don’t accompany their parents like most baby mobs, and will instead wander off into random directions while avoiding hazards. They take longer to mature than any other mob in the game by a long shot! It takes somewhere between forty minutes or two in-game days for a Snifflet to mature, although you can speed this up by feeding the Snifflet more Torchflower seeds.

Join the High Ground!

That’s it for our guide on how to get a Sniffer in Minecraft — thanks for reading! Minecraft has a history of adding new features to old mobs, so we might see more from these lovable mobs in the future! For now, make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more guides like this.

Happy gaming!