How to Make a Potion of Fire Resistance in Minecraft

Of all the ways to die in Minecraft, burning is the most common and the most preventable. The potion of fire resistance gives you complete immunity to fire and lava for minutes at a time, turning the Nether's lava oceans from an instant death sentence into a swimming pool. It is also one of the simplest potions to brew once you have the key ingredient.

What You Need

The shopping list behind that table: a brewing stand, blaze powder for fuel, glass bottles, nether wart for the awkward base, and magma cream as the star ingredient.

Getting Magma Cream and Blaze Powder

Magma cream drops from magma cubes, which hop around basalt deltas, nether fortresses and parts of the nether wastes. No cubes nearby? Craft it instead from one slimeball and one blaze powder. Blaze powder comes from blaze rods, dropped by the blazes guarding nether fortresses. Their fireballs hurt a lot less with a shield raised, and you will be immune to the fire itself once your first batch is brewed.

Brewing Steps

1. Put blaze powder in the brewing stand's fuel slot and up to three water bottles in the bottom slots.
2. Add nether wart on top and wait for the bottles to become awkward potions, the base for almost every useful brew.
3. Leave the awkward potions in place and add magma cream on top.
4. When the brewing finishes, you have three potions of fire resistance at three minutes each.

Extending and Splashing

Three minutes disappears fast in a bastion. Brew the finished potion with redstone dust to extend it to a full eight minutes, the version worth carrying. Do not waste glowstone here: fire resistance has no level II, because immunity is immunity, so glowstone does nothing. For group safety, add gunpowder to make a splash version you can throw at teammates, pets or yourself in a panic. It is the fastest way to save a dog that has just wandered into a lavafall.

Where This Potion Shines

• Lava accidents: fall into a lava lake and simply swim out, or dive back in to recover gear after a death.
• Bastion remnants: loot the treasure rooms without fearing the lava pools and narrow bridges between them.
• Blaze fights: blaze fireballs deal no fire damage, which turns fortress farming into a fair fight.
• Ancient debris mining: bed or TNT mining in the Nether gets far safer when the lava pockets you uncover cannot hurt you.

Brew a stack of the eight-minute version before any serious Nether trip. It is cheap insurance, and the first time you swim out of a lava ocean with your inventory intact, you will never travel without it again.

Carrying It Well

A brewing stand works on three bottles at once, so always brew in full sets rather than singles. Keep one splash version on your hotbar in the Nether instead of the drinking kind: if you fall in lava, throwing a splash at your feet is faster than opening your inventory and drinking, and those seconds are the whole ballgame.