Discover How to Obtain Slimeballs in Minecraft Without Slimes

Have you ever wondered what slimeballs are in Minecraft and why players need them?

We explore the importance of slimeballs, what you can craft with them, and how to find slimes in the game.

We discuss alternative ways to obtain slimeballs, such as killing magma cubes, fishing, trading with villagers, looting chests in dungeons, and using a slime farm.

Find out how to build your own slime farm for maximum efficiency!

What Are Slimeballs in Minecraft?

Slimeballs are items that follow liquid physics, can be thrown, and are required for crafting and brewing applications in the game. They can be used for making mob heads, leads which allow users to tie various kinds of animals to fences, and for crafting sticky pistons which are essential for advanced automation systems. This system records binaural audio, which simulates the three-dimensional hearing of the listener and makes it sound as though the sounds are happening around you.

Why Do Players Need Slimeballs?

In Minecraft, players need slimeballs to make several different types of items such as leads, magma cream, sticky pistons, and firework rockets. A slimeball is a crafting product available in the Minecraft game that is necessary for the creation of a few rare items, such as leashes, magma cream, and the glue that holds all the redstone components inside sticky pistons. According to the game’s wiki, these slippery items occasionally drop from the passive, jiggly slime enemy in certain swamp and subterranean biomes.

What Can You Craft with Slimeballs?

Depending on the version of the game and what mods are used, you can craft the following items with slimeballs:

1. Leads – allows you to hitch animals, such as horses, to a fence post.
2. Slime blocks – makes for fun bouncing pads and can prevent fall or damage from being bumped.
3. Slime balls into magma creams – these are mainly used for brewing, although they can also be used to create sticky pistons by adding a piston to them so that they attach to (and pull) blocks.
4. Firework stars – for setting off fireworks.
5. Potion of leaping – which allows players to jump higher.
6. Poissonous potato farming – tames wolves, ocelots, and other animals.
7. Piston – essentially, sticky pistons are created from regular pistons by adding a slimeball to the recipe.

Which items you can craft with slimeballs may depend on the mods you are using. Regenerate recommends consulting the Minecraft wiki for the most up-to-date information if you are using mods.

How to Find Slimes in Minecraft?

To find slimes in Minecraft, players must first find a swamp biome where slimes can spawn. Minecraft slimes spawn below height 40 regardless of light level, making them unique born mobs. Each chunk has a 10% chance of spawning slimes. If those chunks are below layer 40, this percentage increases, but it becomes zero at level 0 so that slimes stop spawning far below the Minecraft world.

This is how to find slimes in Minecraft effectively to get slimeballs if you do not have slimes in your own seed easily. The precise conditions for their spawning in swamps are not widely specified in the complex matrix of conditions, but they will indeed spawn underground in all biomes with spawning parameters, although these are rare in non-swamp biomes by comparison and actually impossible on peaceful mode. Smaller slimes have a high chance of spawning in swamps while larger ones are able to spawn both aboveground and in normal caves.

What Are the Spawn Conditions for Slimes?

Slimes spawn in the overworld and underground with the following conditions. They are not included in the Mobs Types which can spawn in the Nether or End.

1. Slimes can spawn below layer 40 with no vertical bounds, with a limitation of 5% of their li mes on average.
2. They can only spawn in certain chunks in which there is a partial dependence upon their movement constraints.

Stringently regulated for such an early game mob, Slimes can only spawn in swamps during the night, at levels 51 or lower, in swamps or slime chunks.

Because chances for normal slime spawning are so low, you need to go to altitudes above layer 50 (or lower) and in swamps during nighttime when the chances of slime spawning are at their highest to give yourself the best chances of encountering Slimes.

What Biomes Do Slimes Spawn In?

Slimes spawn most often in the swamp biome, followed by swamp hills and then on superflat world layers. These layers are the Y levels where slimes spawn.

On the Y-level closest to the surface, the chance of a slime spawning is, roughly, just shy of 75% in swamp biomes during a full moon. They spawn in swamps during any phase of the moon, but a new moon reduces the spawning odds. 50% is given to the slimes for spawning during new moons compared to normal conditions every 8 minutes.

Uvs10 created this chart to show the spawning levels and probabilities for slimes. He noted in his Reddit post that biomes not mentioned no longer have very different spawn rates because he used the number `100dBai` to reduce large percentages with very little difference. River biomes used to have a maximum slime spawn level at Y-32, but that was removed in update `21w16a` of version `1.17`.

Data values of slimeball drops from slimes by color when killed by the player were given by Antidawn on reddit as follows:
`0` slimes give 0-1 green slimeballs.
`1` small slimes give 0-1 green slimeball`1-453` medium slimes give 2-4 green slimeballs.drops.
`454` large slimes give `9-12` green slimeballs, and if zombies don’t consume the drops, will drop another 201 green slimeballs on average.

How to Increase the Chances of Finding Slimes?

The chances of finding slimes can be increased in Minecraft Bedrock Edition (PE, Windows 10, Xbox, Switch, PS) by travelling to a slime chunk close to the world spawn point or constructing a slime farm.

According to the ChunkBase Slime Chunk Finder, every seed has 9 out of 1024 possible chunks that spawn slimes. The absolute best chance for finding a slime chunk method is by quickly trying to figure out whether a chunk at your world spawn is one. If it is not, go to the Nether and travel to a slime chunk as quickly as possible, as while you are moving the chunks around you are also potentially de-spawning slimes that you want to keep around.

Constructing a slime chunk is an automatic method to get slimes in Minecraft. This may take some time and resources and not give slimes exactly where and when you want them, but within a measured period, as long as the slime farm is in proper condition, slimes will spawn in it.

What Are Alternative Ways to Obtain Slimeballs?

There are no other alternatives to obtaining slime balls outside of slaying slimes. Any other way that you would get slimeballs outside of killing slimes would only be through spawning slimes; there is no other natural occurrence of slimeballs in the game. Without slimes existing there would be no slimeballs.

Killing Magma Cubes

In Minecraft, Magma Cubes are found in the Nether and in all three versions of a Magma Spawner. A Magma Cube is a hostile mob and will attack the player to cause damage. It is not as difficult to defeat as a Slime. Magma cubes’ jumping ability means they generally can leap across lava pits to reach players, so being in an elevated position and attacking from a distance with a ranged weapon may be the best way to defeat them.

It gives you the opportunity to avoid the column of Magma Cream below it. Once the Warden is introduced in Caves and Cliffs part 3, that version of Magma Cream may be phased out. In previous editions of Minecraft (before the introduction of the Dripstone Cave biomes), the only mod that has Slime Balls and Magma Cream as interchangeable components is Tinkers’ Construct.

With Tinkers’ Construct and Thermal Foundation, players can make both. However, it is not yet known whether the Dripstone Cave Biomes will allow players to duplicate the old interchanging effect that Tinkers’ Construct featured with the Magma Cream item.

Fishing

Fishing is the main way of sometimes obtaining slimeballs or any other items that would otherwise need to be obtained as drops. A default build attempts to generate something every half second, and if this something is an item that would normally be drop-generated, default fishing should be able to locate it. This will not generate slimes but does mean that, after much patience and time, you could possibly catch slimeball items.

Trading with Villagers

To find slimeballs in Minecraft, villagers have up to a 48.3% chance of having slimeballs in their trading inventory, according to the Minecraft wiki. Players can use emeralds to trade with villagers. For example, a plainsmith has up to a 48% chance of having 4 slime balls in his trading inventory, at a cost of 3 emeralds per slimeball. You can often find plainsmith white-coats, which is then the person you would want to interact with. Although the size of the trade inventory is technically random and may change over time, you might try finding positive trades, and using those villagers’ as your go-to slimeball source, so you always have a place to go when you need them. Remember too, that some villagers might have vastly different trades, not allowing for any easy access to slimeballs.

Looting Chests in Dungeons

Chests under the ground in dungeons, strongholds, and buried treasure areas can produce slimeballs in Minecraft. This is a far more rarely source than killing slimes and finding them in on the ground amongst the swamp grass, although it can allow someone who has not been able to secure their own supply of slimeballs to access some.

Chests may be found in the following underground or otherwise obscured locations. Minecraft uses a number of different versions of dungeons, including a traditional cobblestone-floored versions that can be found underground and abandoned mineshafts. There are espansion-packs that contain underwater ruins and fortress. Strongholds are composed of bricks, mossy bricks, cracked bricks, stone bricks, chiseled stone and various forms of the latter materials.

Using a Slime Farm

A slime farm is a building that has been designed to maximize the spawning of slimes artificially, and then to kill them in ways that are easy to obtain the most slimeballs. They contain floors and walls made from solid transparent blocks that have very small exit spaces or utilize sticky pistons, the most passive type of mob farm. Slime farms are efficient, reliable, and a good permanent solution to needing a steady stream of slimeballs.

How to Build a Slime Farm in Minecraft?

A slime farm is a mass of interconnected slime chunks which are fields of 16 to 48 blocks where slimes can spawn. When you create a place for slimes to spawn, they will automatically do so if the area possesses the required conditions. Slime farms are built at lower levels of the world because it has to spawn on a stone block at level Y-20, anywhere it is Y=0 that levels the same. Including solid blocks which are unsuitable for spawning such as packed ice, glass, or solid blocks of obsidian. Slimes will only spawn when they have enough available height below them which in some farms means that deep slimes cannot spawn unless there is an area cut out several blocks beneath where the slimes would spawn.

Based on the desired slimeball spawn rate, a good change in elevation decreases their spawn chance but they need enough area in which to spawn. If you spend more time than hoped building and setting up your slime farm, do not be surprised. Slime farms are time-consuming projects. There is a helpful comprehensive article with videos made by a member of the Minecraft community at this link who runs a spreadsheet with useful slimeball farm designs and information. If you would like to learn the specifics of slime farming (although bear in mind some of these techniques are dated)

Choosing the Right Location

• Swamp biomes: The best place to find slimes in Minecraft because they spawn much more frequently there. Swamps are easy to find, biomes are likely larger than the average Minecraft forest, and slimes can spawn during both the daytime and nighttime in them. This The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft book by Brian J. MacDonald has this to say about slimesSwamp biomes are easy to locate with online mapping tools, such as Unmined or Chunkbase. Large swamp biomes are the best for finding slimes.” The trade-off is that swamps only cover about 6% of a standard Minecraft world, so you will still have to explore a bit to find one.

Constructing the Farm

Constructing a modular slime farm in Minecraft requires placing a bedrock layer one block above the surface of the spawning area. A series of water canals should be constructed one block apart to create a one-block spawning floor. Another bedrock layer allows a second layer of spawning, except instead of water it will be dark in order to duplicate conditions of the overworld in order to increase slime spawn rates.

Top of the second slime layer. Source: ilmango

Optimizing the Farm for Maximum Efficiency

Farms built above sea level can encounter weather difficulties and are more easily found by players who may accidentally break them. Farm designs that are built with optimal scale and file size can provide up to 600% efficiency gains. Nims Productions shares design tips in the following videos, both from the same December 2019 patch walks through his four-tier slime farm, while the other explores if you are missing slimes in Minecraft with an in-depth look at the math behind the drops.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How to Get Slimeballs in Minecraft Without Slimes?

Slimeballs are essential items in Minecraft, used for crafting various items such as leads, sticky pistons, and magma cream. However, finding slimes to get slimeballs can be challenging. Here are six ways to get slimeballs in Minecraft without encountering any slimes!

2. Can I get slimeballs from any other source besides slimes?

Yes, there are several alternative ways to obtain slimeballs in Minecraft without having to find and defeat slimes. These include fishing, trading with villagers, and exploring abandoned mineshafts.

3. How can I obtain slimeballs through fishing?

To get slimeballs through fishing, you will need to fish in a swamp biome. There is a small chance of catching a “junk” item, which can turn out to be a slimeball. However, this method can be time-consuming and relies heavily on luck.

4. Is it possible to get slimeballs through trading with villagers?

Yes, it is possible to trade with villagers to obtain slimeballs. You can trade with a cleric villager, who has a chance to sell slimeballs in exchange for emeralds. This method may require some emerald farming, but it is a reliable way to get slimeballs without encountering slimes.

5. Can I find slimeballs in abandoned mineshafts?

Yes, you can find slimeballs in chests within abandoned mineshafts. However, this method also requires some luck, as not all chests will contain slimeballs. It is also recommended to fully explore the mineshaft to increase your chances of finding them.

6. Are there any other ways to get slimeballs in Minecraft without slimes?

Another way to obtain slimeballs without slimes is by using a slime farm, which involves creating a dark, enclosed space for slimes to spawn and then using a mechanism to kill them for their slimeballs. This method may require some resources and technical knowledge, but it is a reliable way to farm slimeballs.