Minecraft Sniffer: Where to Find, Drops, More

Nutan Lele
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<div class="paragraphs"><p>The new mob in Minecraft ,the Sniffer, is a gentle giant which can be spawned or bred.</p></div>
The new mob in Minecraft ,the Sniffer, is a gentle giant which can be spawned or bred.

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Highlights
Sniffers are the newest mob added to Minecraft in the last major update.
Sniffers can be bred in two ways in the game.
Here is all you need to know about the Minecraft Sniffer.

Sniffers are a new mob in Minecraft, coming to the game in the recent Minecraft 1.20 update. Sniffers were added to the game after winning the mob vote for Minecraft Live 2022, beating out Rascal and the Tuff Golem. Sniffers are passive mobs, great for sniffing out plants and seeds. There are a couple of ways you can breed these gentle giants in Minecraft. Here is all you need to know about Minecraft Sniffers including where to find them and what they drop. 

Where do Sniffers spawn in Minecraft

You will need to spawn sniffers in Minecraft using sniffer eggs found in warm ocean ruins. Make sure you come prepared for combat since these ruins have a large number of drowned waiting to attack you. Bringing a potion of water breathing is a good option so you can stay underwater longer. Also note that you’ll need to craft a Brush tool added in the Archeology Update to uncover the eggs. 

You can dig up sniffer eggs in suspicious sand.

Once you find the suspicious sand use the brush tool to extract items from the sand.

A suspicious sand block on the right and a normal sand block on the left.

You’ll find items like pottery shards, and there is an approximately 6% chance of getting sniffer eggs. Once you get two sniffer eggs you can simply breed them for more of these mobs.

How to breed sniffers in Minecraft

If you want to breed sniffers from their eggs, you can simply place them anywhere and they will hatch after 20 minutes. If you want to hatch them faster, you’ll need to place them on moss blocks which can be found naturally in lush caves. Eggs placed on moss will hatch in 10 minutes. You’ll start noticing cracks in the egg when it's close to hatching.

Sniffer eggs in various stages of hatching.

Once it hatches, you’ll have spawned a baby sniffer or as they are called, a snifflet. These snifflets will grow into adults in 20 minutes. You can speed this up by feeding them torchflower seeds. Once you have two adult sniffers you can breed them like most other passive mobs in Minecraft using an item to get them to mate. You can feed two sniffers torchwood flower seeds to breed them and have one of them lay a sniffer egg. 

Torchflower seeds are a rare item but you can have these gentle giants farm it for you themselves. There is an approximately 50% chance of getting torchwood seeds when they dig for seeds. Sniffers will dig for seeds once every eight minutes but there is a chance it will dig up a pitcher pod instead. Sniffers can dig in the following blocks:

  • Dirt

  • Grass Block

  • Podzol

  • Coarse Dirt

  • Rooted Dirt

  • Moss Block

  • Mud

  • Muddy Mangrove Roots

If your sniffers wander off too far, you can bring them to where you want by attaching a lead to them. Sniffers have a meagre 7-hearts worth of health and have a chance to drop moss when slain.


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Nutan is experienced with content across various FPS, MOBA, and BR titles for both PC and mobile gaming. Basically, she's a Jill of all trades. As the former captain of an all-woman esports team, her roots lie firmly in PC gaming but she does enjoy that one map in Call of Duty: Mobile.