What is a lighter / Flint and steel?

A lighter or better known as a flint and steel is a tool in Minecraft that you can use to create fire. You can either create fire or ignite blocks that are flammable, such as wooden planks. You can also ignite structures and mobs.

Why is it important?

This item is one of the most essential items in Minecraft, as it can ignite important structures such as a nether portal. It can also ignite campfires and candles.

Blocks such as netherrack can also be ignited and will never naturally go out. This means it can also be used as a lighting method, which is quite neat.

You can also use it to ignite creepers, which forces them to explode immediately, which cannot be stopped unlike normal creepers, who will keep trying to detect you despite beginning their animation.

Like creepers, you can use flint and steel on TNT to instantly ignite it. This is important as well, because TNT lit this way will count as a player’s attack. Which means you could defeat things like the ender dragon with TNT and still get credit.

Enchantments

Flint and steel can actually be enchanted, but the enchantments they can receive are very limited. You can only apply Mending, Unbreaking, and Curse of Vanishing to one. While curse of vanishing doesn’t have many uses, mending and unbreaking are extremely helpful for keeping the same flint and steel without having to worry about it breaking.

It’s important to note that you cannot use an enchanting table to give the flint and steel this enchantment. You must use an anvil or commands to apply the enchantment to the flint and steel. You can find the books for these enchantments in a few different ways.

Where Do You Get These Enchantments?

Librarian

Players can obtain these enchantments from villager trades with librarian villagers. By breaking and placing down the librarian’s lectern, you can reset their trades. This can be done an infinite number of times by trapping the villager in a small space and constantly breaking and replacing the lectern. However, once you purchase anything from that librarian, the trade will be locked, regardless of whether it is reset.

Fishing

You can obtain these enchantments by fishing. You have a random chance to get these enchantments at a random level, along with other enchantments. You can also use the luck of the sea enchantment to increase this chance further.

Enchanting Table

While not possible for curses or mending, you can use an enchantment table to phish for unbreaking. By putting a book in a enchanting table, you can enchant the book and see if it has your desired enchantment.

Exploration

You can also find these enchantments in different chests around the world. Some examples are ancient cities, strongholds, and jungle temples.

How do I craft or obtain a Flint and Steel?

There are two main ways to obtain Flint and Steel: by crafting it or by finding it in loot chests in different areas of the world.

Loot chest

Flint and Steel’s have a good chance at spawning inside loot chests near ruined portals. This is beneficial, especially for speed runners, as it means you can create a nether portal very quickly by filling in the remaining obsidian blocks.

Flint and steel’s also have a small chance of spawning inside the chests of nether fortresses. While this usually isn’t notable, it’s good to keep track just in case you need one in a dire situation, such as your previous flint breaking.

Crafting

Crafting a flint and steel is quite simple and only requires two materials, which are fairly easy to get.

Iron Ingot

Finding an iron ore is quite simple, as they’re quite common within caves, especially open caves near the service. You can then craft a furnace and use charcoal or coal as a fuel source to cook the iron.

Gravel

Gravel is a material that can be dug with any tool to produce flint. Usually players prefer using a shovel due to the fact that it makes the process quicker, but it is fully up to what the player wants to do. You can usually find gravel near beaches underwater.

Crafting Recipe

The recipe for crafting it is quite simple and only requires you to place flint and iron ingots diagonally across from each other in a crafting table.