How to Make Chains in Minecraft

Few blocks do as much decorative heavy lifting for as little iron as the chain. It is the difference between a lantern sitting on a fence post and a lantern swinging over a medieval street, and it quietly holds together half the good-looking builds you have ever seen. The recipe is tiny, so let us get it out of the way first.

Items Required

• 1 iron ingot — smelt raw iron in a furnace, or break down an iron block.
• 2 iron nuggets — place a single iron ingot in a crafting grid to get nine nuggets, or smelt unwanted iron gear.
• A crafting table.

The Chain Crafting Recipe

1. Open the crafting table.
2. Put the iron ingot in the centre slot.
3. Put one iron nugget in the slot directly above it and the other directly below it, forming a vertical line of three.
4. Take your chain from the result slot.

Each craft produces one chain and effectively costs just over one ingot, since a single ingot broken into nuggets covers the nuggets for four chains with change. Copper chains exist too, following exactly the same layout with a copper ingot and copper nuggets.

Where Chains Generate Naturally

If you would rather loot than craft, chains hang all over three structures. Bastion remnants use them to suspend bridges and treasure-room fittings, and bastion chests sometimes contain loose chains as well. Mineshafts string them across the ceilings of their corridors, and ruined portals spawn with chains draped around the frame. A silk-touch-free punch breaks them loose, so an early bastion trip can fund your whole decorating career.

What Chains Are Used For

• Hanging things properly. Lanterns and bells attach to the underside of chains, and a lantern placed under a chain even reshapes its top to connect neatly.
• Hanging signs. Two chains are a required ingredient in every hanging sign recipe.
• Walkable detail. Chains can be placed horizontally and walked across, which makes them perfect for rope-bridge railings, tightropes and crane arms.
• Pure atmosphere. Anchor points, chandeliers, well buckets, dungeon shackles — anywhere a build needs to look held together by metal rather than magic.

Placing Chains Well

Chains behave a little like logs: the direction you place them in decides their axis. Click the underside of a block and the chain hangs vertically; click the top or side of a block and it runs horizontally along the line you are facing. Chains placed end to end join into one continuous run, so a ceiling beam of chains is just a row of single placements. Vertical chains are not climbable, despite looking like they should be — if you want players to actually go up, hide a ladder or scaffolding behind them and let the chains do the visual work.

For the classic chandelier, hang four chains of equal length from a ceiling beam, join them to a ring of fences or a single cauldron, and set lanterns on the corners. For bridges, two horizontal runs at hand height with planks between them reads instantly as a rope bridge, and because chains can be waterlogged, the same trick works for piers and docks sitting in a lake. Budget-wise, a generous decorating project rarely needs more than a stack: at roughly one ingot per chain, even a castle's worth of hanging lanterns is cheaper than the lanterns themselves.

One practical note: chains connect to each other end-to-end in any orientation, and they can be waterlogged, so they work for underwater builds too.