Wool

Wool

Type	Solid Block
Requirements	None
Physics	No
Transparency	No
Luminance	No
Blast resistance	4
Tool
Renewable	Yes
Stackable	Yes (64), same color only
Flammable	Yes
Availability	?
First appearances	Classic colors Classic 0.0.20 (June 20, 2009) Beta colors Beta 1.2 (January 13, 2011)
Data value	dec: 35 hex: 23

Wool (previously known as cloth) is a block derived from sheep that can be dyed in any of the 16 different colors. Wool blocks are weak, highly flammable, and offer little resistance against explosions.

[edit] Obtaining

[edit] From sheep

Wool is harvested by right-clicking a sheep with shears (1–3 wool) or killing it (1 wool). White, light gray, gray, black, brown, and pink wool can be found naturally on sheep. Untamed wolves (commonly seen in Forest or Taiga biomes) will sometimes kill nearby sheep, resulting in the occasional blocks of wool being found.

Dyeing sheep (right-clicking them while holding dye) is the most productive method of obtaining colored wool, as the sheep will drop 1–3 blocks of wool when shorn. This is a much greater yield than can by gained by dyeing blocks of wool or killing a dyed sheep. All sheep can be colored and re-colored equally easily, regardless of whether they are any of the naturally occurring colors (white, brown, pink, black, gray, or light gray), or previously dyed to any available shade. Nor is there any need to 'bleach' a sheep to white using bone meal before re-coloring it.

[edit] Crafting

Wool can be crafted from string if required. However, as sheep are much easier to collect from than spiders are to kill, doing so may be a waste of resources. But with the Adventure update, string can be collected very easily for bows and beds (and perhaps even fishing rods, if low on food) for use underground.

Ingredients	Input » Output
String

[edit] Naturally generated

Naturally occurring black wool with torches on them.

Black wool blocks can also be found naturally in NPC villages where they lie on top of a fence post, surrounded by 4 torches.

54 orange wool blocks and 1 blue wool block are naturally generated as part of a Desert Temple.

[edit] Uses

Because of the variety of colors in which wool is available, many players use it to build colorful buildings, statues and other structures, especially in Creative mode. Wool is commonly used as decoration, as carpeting in houses and for large 'beds'. It can also be used to color-code a cave system by placing blocks at intervals so that you know which cave section you are in.

Wool can be used for color coding redstone circuits, to make it easier to find a wire or to separate one contraption from another. It acts as a solid block with no special behavior.

You may also trade wool to some farmer villagers for emeralds. You can give them any color of wool, but you can't give them more than one color at once.

Wild wolves can be located by looking for randomly dropped blocks of wool on the ground (especially in Forest or Taiga biomes) as wolves will kill sheep while roaming.

[edit] As a crafting ingredient

Wool is a key component of beds and paintings.

Name	Ingredients	Input » Output
Painting	Sticks + Wool
Bed	Wool + Wood Planks
Carpet (upcoming)	Wool	3

Note: Any color of wool or wood may be used for beds and paintings but it has no effect on the product's final appearance.

[edit] Colored wool

The crafting recipes for colored wool are shapeless; that is, the placement of the wool block and dye doesn't matter as long as they are both in the crafting grid. While sheep of any color can be re-dyed to any other color, this does not apply to wool blocks. Only white wool blocks can be re-colored. A minor quirk of the dyeing system is that you can recolor a white wool block (but not a white sheep) to white with bonemeal, using up a dose of bonemeal to no effect.

Name	Ingredients	Input » Output
Light Gray Wool	Wool + Light Gray Dye
Gray Wool	Wool + Gray Dye
Black Wool	Wool + Ink Sac
Red Wool	Wool + Rose Red
Orange Wool	Wool + Orange Dye
Yellow Wool	Wool + Dandelion Yellow
Lime Wool	Wool + Lime Dye
Green Wool	Wool + Cactus Green
Cyan Wool	Wool + Cyan Dye
Light Blue Wool	Wool + Light Blue Dye
Blue Wool	Wool + Lapis Lazuli Dye
Purple Wool	Wool + Purple Dye
Magenta Wool	Wool + Magenta Dye
Pink Wool	Wool + Pink Dye
Brown Wool	Wool + Cocoa Beans

[edit] Data values for colored wool

The unused wool with damage value 16.When placed it appears as white wool.

Different colors of wool can also be obtained by adjusting the "damage" values in the inventory. To give someone colored wool (with /give or any other similar command), simply add the number of the color after the quantity. Example usage: /give <player> 35 <amount> <data value>

Data values	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Preview
Red[fn 1]	221	219	179	107	177	65	208	64	154	46	126	46	79	53	150	25
Green[fn 1]	221	125	80	138	166	174	132	64	161	110	61	56	50	70	52	22
Blue[fn 1]	221	62	188	201	39	56	153	64	161	137	181	141	31	27	48	22

1. ↑ ^{a b c}
   RGB color values for the default texture pack.

[edit] Video

[edit] History

Classic
0.0.20 (June 20, 2009)		Cloth was added in 16 different color shades for the creation of carpeting, colorful structures, and in-game pixel art.
Classic
0.27 SURVIVAL TEST (October 25, 2009)		Added Sheep, which will drop white cloth.
Indev
February 23, 2010		Added Paintings, which can be crafted using cloth
Alpha
1.0.1 (Seecret Friday 3)		Sheep will now regenerate their wool.
1.0.8		Changed the recipe of cloth/leather Armor from cloth to leather.
1.1.0 (Seecret Friday 9)		Sheep will now drop 1-3 cloth when hit instead of always dropping 2.
Beta
1.2		Changed the color shades of cloth.
		Renamed cloth to wool.
		Added 15 dyes; white sheep could be dyed by right-clicking on them while holding any dye.
		Light gray, gray, and black sheep now rarely spawn, dropping the corresponding colored wool.
1.4		Brown and pink sheep now rarely spawn, dropping the corresponding colored wool.
1.6.6		Changed the crafting recipe of wool, reducing the amount of String required from 9 to 4 pieces.
1.7		Added Shears to shear sheep without hurting them, dropping 2-4 wool.
		Sheep no longer drop wool when hit, albeit they drop one wool when being killed when they are unsheared.
Official release
1.1		Sheep will now eat Grass and Tall Grass to regain their wool, keeping the color they had before shearing.
		As a counterbalance, shearing sheep now yields 1-3 wool instead of 2-4.
1.2.4		Tweaked the saturation of wool, making wool blocks slightly darker than before. Comparison
1.3.1	12w21a	54 orange wool and 1 blue wool now naturally occur in Desert Temples.
Upcoming
13w16a		Added carpets, which are crafted using two blocks of wool of any color and placing them side-by-side in the crafting grid.
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.2.0		Added the ability to shear sheep.
0.4.0		Added a crafting recipe for wool.

[edit] Issues

Issues relating to "Wool" are maintained on Mojira. Report issues there.

[edit] Trivia

• Sheep have a 5% chance to be black, 5% chance to be gray, 5% chance to be light gray, 3% chance to be brown, and a 0.164% chance to be pink. The remaining 81.836% are white.
• The damage values for wool and their respective dyes are the inverse of each other.
• Shears do not take damage from destroying wool blocks. They're also the fastest tool to destroy already placed wool blocks.
• White wool can be crafted together with bonemeal, but this merely "dyes" the already-white wool into another block of still-white wool.
• On the Xbox 360 Edition Tutorial Map, the MineCraft Logo seen in the sky is made of Light Gray and Black Wool.
• Using /give to obtain Wool with a Damage Value of 16 will show the first stage of Nether Wart on all faces in the inventory. Placing it will turn into White Wool.
• Beyond that, obtaining wool with a DV of 17 or higher will wrap around to 1 again (i.e.: 17 gives orange, 18 gives Magenta) and appear like normal colored wool in the inventory.
• Before leather was available, cloth was also used to craft leather armor.
• Colored cloth was unobtainable during Classic's Survival Test and Indev unless they were pre-placed into the map file. Colored cloth blocks were completely removed from the code in Infdev. Placing these blocks on the map would cause the game client to crash, since the blocks no longer existed.
• Obtaining the unused wool with damage value 16 as of Minecraft 1.5 will crash the game.
• Black, Gray, Light Gray and Brown wool can only be obtained in Pocket Edition through natural colored sheep as there are no squids or Cocoa Beans to dye the wool. Even then, there is only a small chance to find Black, Gray, Light Gray and Brown dyed sheep. There is no chance to find a Pink colored sheep in Pocket Edition.