How to get Minecraft glow berries

Minecraft Glow Berries growing on house
(Image credit: Mojang)

Minecraft glow berries are perhaps the best-looking plants in the game. The shiny, fruity cave vines are difficult to find, but once you stumble upon them, you can collect some glow berries to plant at your base - they're a gorgeous addition to the best Minecraft houses. Besides their good looks, Minecraft glow berries can be used as food, as a light source, as compost, and as a means to breed foxes.

Here's everything you need to now about glow berries and cave vines in Minecraft, including how to get them and how to use them.

How to use Minecraft glow berries for food and breeding foxes

(Image: © Mojang)

The most obvious use of Minecraft glow berries in Minecraft is eating them. Just like sweet berries, glow berries will restore two hunger points. They can also be used as compost. Using glow berries on a composter has a 30% chance to raise the compost level by 1. 

Given that they can be rare, particularly if you haven't set up a farm yet, it's a bit of a waste to use them as food or compost though. Glow berries have a light level of 14, so it might be more fun to use them as a fancy light source. But perhaps the best use of glow berries in Minecraft is to breed foxes. If you find at least two grown foxes, feeding them glow berries will get you a baby fox. Make sure you learn how to tame a fox in Minecraft with our guide to get all the details.

Where to find Minecraft glow berries

Minecraft Glow Berries in Lush Cave

(Image credit: Mojang)
Minecraft Netherite

Minecraft Netherite

(Image credit: Mojang)

If you want the best tools, you'll need Minecraft Netherite

Although they're very rare (almost as rare as Minecraft diamonds), the natural spawn place of a Minecraft glow berry is inside Lush Cave biomes. Lush Caves can spawn underground at any height, but mostly in humid climates. It's therefore best to search for Lush Caves in Jungles and Swamps, and avoid Plains and Savanna. You can use the best Minecraft seeds to spawn directly in such a biome.

The glow berries grow on cave vines which hang from the ceilings of Lush Caves and can be harvested from the vines. A cave vine carrying glow berries will only drop one berry though, even if there appear to be more (sadly, the 'Fortune' Minecraft enchantment has no effect on the number of glow berries dropped). However, you can also loot glow berries from Mineshafts and Ancient Cities.

Mineshafts generate in any Overworld biome, but it’ll usually take some time to find one. Once you do, however, a mineshaft chest has a 38.7% chance to contain at least three glow berries. Ancient City structures generate in Deep Dark biomes at Y-level -52 and any chests within have a 23.2% chance of containing up to 15 glow berries!

How to farm glow berries in Minecraft

(Image: © Mojang)

To farm glow berries in Minecraft, you first need to get one in a Lush Cave or loot one from a chest. You can then place the berry on the bottom of any block and it'll grow into a cave vine and extend downwards until it reaches another block or it's growth limit (up to 20 blocks). 


However, not every cave vine grows glow berries. Each newly grown cave vine block has a roughly 11% chance of creating berries, so be sure there's plenty of room underneath the vine to maximize its size and thus your chances of getting berries. 


Luckily, using bonemeal on a cave vine will help you sprout glow berries; hold the bonemeal in your hand, then right-click on the vine until the berries appear. 


If your hunt for glow berries has prompted an underground cave expedition, you might want to keep an eye out for Minecraft amethyst shards as well.

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Marloes Valentina Stella

I’m a freelance journalist who (surprise!) kind of has a thing for videogames. When I’m not working on guides for GamesRadar, you can probably find me somewhere in Teyvat, Novigrad, or Whiterun. Unless I’m feeling competitive, in which case you should try Erangel. You can also find my words on PCGamesN, Fanbyte, PCGamer, Polygon, Esports Insider, and Game Rant.