Potent Sulfur is a new block arriving with the Chaos Cubed update, and it does something most blocks don't. Drop it under shallow water, and it releases noxious gas. Place it over lava or a magma block beneath water, and it becomes a geyser that throws entities into the air. You can get it two ways: by crafting it from regular Sulfur or by mining it where it generates underground and on the surface.
What Potent Sulfur is and its block stats
Potent Sulfur is a renewable block that stacks to 64. It needs a pickaxe to drop as an item, has a hardness of 1.5, and a blast resistance of 6, so ordinary explosions won't break it. It is not flammable and does not catch fire from lava.
One important detail affects how you handle it. Potent Sulfur is a block entity, which means pistons cannot push it and sticky pistons cannot pull it. Plan any redstone builds around that limit.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Renewable | Yes |
| Stackable | Yes (64) |
| Tool | Pickaxe required |
| Hardness | 1.5 |
| Blast resistance | 6 |
| Flammable | No |
| Note block instrument | Bass Drum |
How to craft Potent Sulfur from Sulfur
Crafting is the most dependable way to build up a large supply. As long as you have regular Sulfur, you can make Potent Sulfur over and over, which is what makes it fully renewable.
Step 1: Gather Sulfur. You need nine Sulfur blocks for each Potent Sulfur, so collect a stack before you start converting.
Step 2: Open a crafting table and place one Sulfur in every slot of the 3×3 grid. All nine slots must be filled.
Step 3: Take the single Potent Sulfur from the output slot. Repeat as needed once you have enough Sulfur stockpiled.
Sulfur itself is easy to keep flowing. It generates throughout the sulfur caves and as part of sulfur springs, and it can also be crafted from Sulfur Spikes, so a farm or a few mining trips keeps your crafting going.
Where Potent Sulfur generates naturally
Potent Sulfur appears in two places, and the behavior differs between them because of what sits underneath the block.
In the sulfur caves biome, it forms at the bottom of sulfur pools, submerged in acid-green water. These pools have no magma blocks beneath the Potent Sulfur, so the block gives off noxious gas instead of erupting. Anyone standing in that water gets hit with Nausea, which keeps refreshing as long as you stay in it. Sulfur caves generate underground at the same depth as lush caves and dripstone caves, and a sulfur spring at the surface is a sign that caves sit below.
On the surface, Potent Sulfur generates as part of sulfur springs. These springs include magma blocks under the Potent Sulfur, which turns them into working geysers that periodically erupt and launch entities upward. Surface springs are easier to spot than the caves because you can see the eruption particles and hear the geyser from a distance.
How to mine Potent Sulfur and tool speeds
You must use a pickaxe to collect Potent Sulfur. Mining it with anything else, or with your hand, destroys the block and drops nothing. Any tier of pickaxe works, but the speed varies.
| Tool | Breaking time |
|---|---|
| No tool (hand) | 7.5 sec (drops nothing) |
| Wooden Pickaxe | 1.15 sec |
| Stone Pickaxe | 0.60 sec |
| Copper Pickaxe | 0.45 sec |
| Iron Pickaxe | 0.40 sec |
| Diamond Pickaxe | 0.30 sec |
| Netherite Pickaxe | 0.25 sec |
| Golden Pickaxe | 0.20 sec |
A Golden Pickaxe breaks the block fastest at 0.20 seconds, but its low durability makes it impractical for repeated mining. An Iron or Diamond Pickaxe is the better everyday choice, and the Efficiency enchantment cuts the time further.
How to confirm you got it
When mining works, the broken block leaves a Potent Sulfur item you can pick up. If you swing without a pickaxe, the block disappears and nothing drops, so check that you have a pickaxe equipped before breaking it. From crafting, success is the single Potent Sulfur in the output slot once all nine grid cells hold Sulfur.
Once you have a stack, the block earns its place in builds. Set it over a magma block under a 1-to-4-block water column for a periodic geyser, with a 4-block column launching entities as high as 20 blocks. Place it under shallow water with no magma below for a noxious gas zone that applies Nausea to anything that wanders in. Both effects come from the same block, decided entirely by what you put beneath it.