Anyone who’s tried to build a cozy cottage or a grand fortress in Minecraft knows how frustrating it is to run out of brick mid-project. That warm, terracotta hue is perfect for everything from roof tiles to path edges, but a lot of new players struggle to source it consistently. I’ve spent dozens of hours scouring riverbeds for clay early in my survival worlds before I learned how much easier trading for bricks is, so I’ve tested every method on this list firsthand. If you’re one of those players stuck searching for supplies, you’re in the right place: this guide breaks down exactly how to get brick in Minecraft, no matter if you’re playing a hardcore survival world or messing around in creative mode.
How to Get Brick in Minecraft via Basic Crafting (Most Common Method)
Crafting brick from scratch is the most accessible method for new players who haven’t found villages or set up trading systems yet. The process has two simple steps: collect clay balls, then smelt them into bricks. You can find clay blocks in shallow water sources like riverbeds, lake bottoms, swamp edges, and warm ocean floors, where they appear as pale grey blocks half-buried in sand or dirt.
You don’t need a specific tool to mine clay blocks, but a shovel will speed up the process drastically. Each clay block you break drops 4 clay balls, so even a small clay deposit can give you dozens of materials to work with. If you have a Silk Touch enchanted shovel, you can mine entire clay blocks instead of loose clay balls, which saves a ton of inventory space if you’re hauling supplies back to a faraway base.
Once you have your clay balls, place them in a furnace with any fuel source to smelt them. Any fuel works for smelting clay balls, from coal and charcoal to dried kelp blocks or even wooden planks if you’re just starting out. Each clay ball takes 10 seconds to smelt into one individual brick, so if you have multiple furnaces running at once, you can churn out large stacks in no time. Four individual bricks can be crafted into a single brick block for building, or used for smaller recipes like flower pots, brick stairs, or brick slabs.
Loot Pre-Made Brick Stacks From Generated Structures
If you don’t feel like mining clay and waiting for smelting times, you can find pre-made brick items in chests across the Minecraft world. This is a great option for early-game players who are already exploring structures for other loot like tools, food, or armor. You can also break pre-placed brick blocks in existing structures to get brick items, though you’ll need a pickaxe to break them quickly, otherwise the process takes far too long to be worth it.
These are the most reliable structures to find brick loot in:
- Village mason chests: These have a 41% chance to contain 1-8 bricks, making them the most consistent loot source for players who spawn near a village. You can often find multiple mason chests in larger villages, so you can walk away with a full stack of bricks in just a few minutes of looting.
- Stronghold corridor chests: You’ll find a 37% chance of 1-3 bricks in these chests, though strongholds are much harder to locate than villages. Only rely on this source if you’re already hunting for a stronghold to access the End dimension anyway.
- Underwater ruin chests: Warm and cold underwater ruins both have a 15% chance to hold 1-2 bricks, a nice bonus if you’re already exploring ocean areas for clay, prismarine, or buried treasure.
- Woodland mansion chests: These rare structures have a 28% chance of 1-4 bricks, but they’re not worth seeking out just for brick loot given how dangerous they are for new players. Save mansion trips for when you’re hunting for totems of undying or rare enchanted books.
Just note that looted brick stacks are usually small, so this method works best if you only need a few bricks for a small build or craft. If you need hundreds or thousands of bricks for a large project, you’ll be better off with one of the next two methods.
Trade For Bricks With Villager Masons
Once you have a few emeralds saved up, trading with villager masons is one of the most consistent ways to get large stacks of brick without doing any mining or smelting. This is my go-to method for mid-game survival worlds, especially when I’m working on big builds that require thousands of building blocks.
You can either find a naturally spawning mason in a village, or create one yourself by giving a jobless villager a stonecutter as their work station. Novice-level masons will sell 16 bricks for 1 emerald, which is an incredibly fair deal even for early-game players. You can get emeralds easily by selling excess crops, coal, or raw meat to other villagers, so you don’t have to go mining for emerald ore to take advantage of this trade.
For even better deals, cure a zombie villager that’s a mason to get permanently discounted trades. I once cured a novice mason and got 32 bricks per emerald, which cut my build costs in half for a castle I was working on. Higher-level masons also sell pre-crafted brick blocks, glazed terracotta, and quartz, so you can skip crafting individual bricks into blocks if you want to save even more time.
Set Up a Sustainable Clay Farm for Unlimited Bricks
If you play on a long-term survival world and need a constant supply of bricks, setting up a clay farm is the best investment you can make. Before the 1.19 Wild Update, you had to find natural clay deposits to get more supplies, but now you can generate infinite clay using mud blocks and pointed dripstone.
The process is simple: first, make mud by pouring a water bottle on a regular dirt block. Place the mud block on top of any solid block that has pointed dripstone hanging below it, and over a few minutes, the mud will turn into a clay block. This farm works completely automatically if you set up a hopper and piston system to collect the clay blocks as they generate, so you can get infinite clay without ever leaving your base. I have a small 5x5 clay farm near my base that generates enough clay to make 100+ bricks every hour, and I only have to check on it once a day to restock mud blocks.
If you don’t want to build a farm right away, you can also find massive clay deposits in lush caves, which generate below y=0 in most biomes. These deposits are often hundreds of blocks large, so you can get enough clay to last for months of building in just one mining trip. Just be careful of cave mobs like creepers and skeletons when you’re mining in these low-light areas, and bring a Silk Touch shovel to save inventory space on your trip back to the surface.
Bricks are one of the most versatile building materials in Minecraft, and there’s no shortage of ways to source them no matter your playstyle. Whether you’re smelting your first stack for a small survival hut, trading for bulk stacks to build a castle, or setting up an automatic farm for unlimited supply, you now know exactly how to get brick in Minecraft for every possible scenario. Next time you’re planning a build, you won’t have to pause halfway to run out and mine more clay, you’ll have all the brick you need right at your fingertips. The only limit is what you decide to build with them.