Froglight farm in Minecraft 26.3: all three colors, how frogs make them, and a simple Nether design

Froglights are the best-looking light source in the game: light level 15, three colors, and a texture that reads as organic instead of another glowing cube. They also have exactly one source. A froglight drops when a frog eats a tiny magma cube. No crafting, no trading, no structure loot.

That makes a froglight farm less about redstone and more about getting the right animals in the right place. This guide covers the three steps: raise the frogs you need, move them to the Nether, and keep tiny magma cubes walking past them.

How froglights drop

Frogs attack with their tongue and swallow certain small mobs whole. Two of those matter here:

• Size-1 slimes, which always drop exactly one slimeball when a frog eats them.
• Size-1 magma cubes, which drop one froglight when a frog eats them.

Medium and large magma cubes are ignored. A frog will happily sit next to a big cube all day; it only eats the smallest size. That one rule shapes the whole farm.

Which frog gives which color

The color of the froglight comes from the frog that ate the cube, not from where the farm is built.

If you want all three colors, you need at least one frog of each variant in the farm.

Step 1: raise the frogs you need

A frog's variant is decided when a tadpole grows up, by the biome it is in at that moment:

• Cold frogs grow up in cold biomes such as snowy plains, frozen peaks and frozen oceans.
• Warm frogs grow up in warm biomes such as desert, jungle, savanna and badlands.
• Temperate frogs grow up everywhere else, including swamps and mangrove swamps.

The workflow:

1. Find frogs in a swamp or mangrove swamp. Lure two with a slimeball (frogs follow a player holding one within 6 blocks) and feed them to breed.
2. One frog lays frogspawn on water. After 3 to 10 minutes it hatches into 2 to 5 tadpoles.
3. Scoop tadpoles with a water bucket (a bucket of tadpole), carry them to the biome you want, and release them into water there.
4. Tadpoles grow into frogs after 20 minutes in that biome. Stay nearby so the chunk keeps loading.

A desert well or a small pool you dig in a snowy plain is enough. You only need one or two frogs per color.

Step 2: get the frogs into the Nether

Magma cubes only spawn in the Nether, so the frogs have to travel. Two reliable ways:

• Lead them in with a slimeball. Frogs follow a held slimeball, so you can walk them into a Nether portal. It is slow but needs nothing else.
• Boat them in. Put a frog in a boat, push the boat into the portal, and the frog comes through with it. On the other side, break the boat to release the frog into a fenced pen.

Fence the frogs in as soon as they arrive. Frogs do not despawn, but they wander, and a frog that walks off a basalt ledge into lava is a lost color.

Step 3: a simple froglight farm

Magma cubes spawn in basalt deltas, Nether wastes and Nether fortresses, with basalt deltas the most reliable. Slimes and magma cubes spawn in three sizes, so roughly a third of natural spawns are already the tiny size frogs eat.

The simplest working design:

1. Pick a flat stretch of a basalt delta and level a square of about 16 by 16 blocks. Fill lava pools and holes so nothing drops out of reach.
2. Fence it in. A ring of fences keeps the frogs inside, and the cubes that spawn on the floor inside the ring stay in with them.
3. Put your frogs inside, one or more of each color you want.
4. Stand next to the pen. Spawns only happen in loaded chunks around you, and the closer the pen is to the edge of the no-spawn zone around a player (24 blocks), the better: a perch about 24 to 32 blocks away keeps the floor in range without blocking spawns.
5. Kill medium and large cubes yourself. Frogs ignore them, and every big cube you kill splits into smaller ones. Kill the medium ones too, and the tiny cubes they split into go straight to the frogs.

Collect the froglights with a hopper under a single collection block, or simply walk the pen every few minutes. A frog eating a cube does not make the item fly off; it drops where the cube was.

Making it more automatic

The design above is semi-AFK on purpose: frogs only eat the tiny size, so somebody has to break the big ones down. If you want fewer trips:

• Raise the frog count. More frogs means tiny cubes get eaten before they wander out of reach.
• Let cubes come to you. Magma cubes hop toward a nearby player, so when you walk up to the fence to clear big ones, the cubes crowd the side where you stand. Keep a few frogs on that side.
• Combine with a slime farm. In the Overworld, the same frogs turn tiny slimes into slimeballs. If you already run a slime farm, a frog pen at its kill floor converts small slimes without any extra redstone.

What froglights are good for

• Light level 15 from a block with three orientations, like logs, so it works as a pillar, beam or floor tile.
• They melt nearby snow and ice, which matters if you use them near the new 26.4 ice builds.
• No fire, no heat, no glowing outline. Unlike sea lanterns or shroomlights, the three colors let you light a build in its own palette.

Frequently asked questions

How do you get froglights in Minecraft?

A frog has to eat a tiny (size 1) magma cube. The froglight drops where the cube was swallowed. There is no other way to obtain them.

Which frog makes which froglight?

Temperate (orange) frogs make ochre froglights, cold (green) frogs make verdant froglights, and warm (white) frogs make pearlescent froglights.

Do frogs eat big magma cubes?

No. Frogs only eat the smallest size. You have to kill medium and large magma cubes until they split into tiny ones.

Can I build a froglight farm in the Overworld?

Not for froglights, because magma cubes only spawn in the Nether. A frog pen in the Overworld can still turn tiny slimes into slimeballs.

How do I choose a frog's color?

Let the tadpole grow up in the right biome: cold biomes give cold frogs, warm biomes give warm frogs, everything else gives temperate frogs. Tadpoles need water, so they cannot be raised in the Nether, where water evaporates.

Related

For more Nether farming, the gold farm guide and the blaze farm guide cover the two classic Nether builds. If you want to know which frog is which at a glance, every mob's stats are in the Mobdle Bestiary.