The decorated pot is more than just a decorative block, with new uses for storage and Redstone making it a versatile addition to your world. Furthermore, starting with Minecraft 1.21, decorated pots found in structures like the Trial Chambers can have loot items inside them.
How to Get the Decorated Pot
The crafting recipe for the decorated pot is four bricks or pottery sherds arranged in the crafting table. The recipe can be adjusted to use all bricks or different pottery sherds. The texture on the side of the pot will depend on the pottery sherd or brick placed in each slot of the crafting recipe.
There are 23 different pottery sherds, giving you a wide variety of options for the look of the sides of the decorated pot. To get the pottery sherds, you have to excavate suspicious sand or gravel blocks with a brush, and an item will emerge. Pottery sherds are one of the possible loot items from these suspicious blocks.
You can find suspicious blocks in four locations: ocean ruins, desert temples, desert wells, and the trail ruins. In the Minecraft 1.21 update, pottery sherds can also be found in the corridor on the decorated pots, with three new pottery sherds available here.
How to Use the Decorated Pot
The decorative pot is a directional block, so when you place it, the front will be facing out. If you mine the block with your hand or with a tool enchanted with Silk Touch, it will drop the decorated pot. However, if you use an unenchanted tool like a pickaxe, it will break the decorated pot and drop the pottery sherds or bricks. You can also smash the pot with projectiles like wind charges, fire charges, or arrows to drop the bricks and pottery sherds.
If you craft the decorative pot with the wrong pottery sherds, it is easy to break it and craft it again. Decorated pots will stack in your inventory up to a stack of 64. The stack depends on what type of decorative pot it is and where the pottery sherds are placed on it. The display for the decorated pot will show the front and left side, and you can hover over it to see what pottery sherds are placed on each side.
The decorated pot isn’t a full block; it is slightly less lengthwise and depthwise. This means it won’t connect with other blocks like fences, gates, or walls. However, the height of the decorated pot is a full block. The top part of the decorated pot does not have a collision box, so other blocks can be placed on top of it.
You can stack different decorative pots on top of each other to create a pattern or make a totem pole. You can also place other blocks on top to create a difference in depth, like with terracotta, which could be used in the corner of builds. From playing around with decorative pots, other blocks like flower pots, fences, gates, chains, pressure plates, slabs, and stairs could be placed on top. If you are placing one of these on top, hold the left shift button when placing the block, otherwise they will be put inside the decorated pot. The blocks that couldn’t be placed on top were Redstone components or rails.
The Redstone Uses of the Decorated Pot
In Minecraft 1.21, additions were made to the decorated pot that make it way more useful. Now, decorated pots can be used as a container and can store items inside. Up to a stack of 64 items can be placed inside the decorated pot. Unfortunately, there isn’t a display that shows what items are inside or how many.
To put items into the decorative pot, you have to right-click on it with the item in your hand. The decorated pot will wobble, and there will be a particle effect coming out from the top. When you do this, there will be a frequency of 11 that can be picked up by a calibrated sculk sensor. Once the decorated pot is full and you can’t place an item inside, it will wobble but there won’t be the particle effect from the top.
Hoppers, hopper minecarts, droppers, or crafters can insert items or extract them from the decorated pot. It works the same as a chest, where items can be pushed into the decor pot or a hopper underneath can extract items from it.
A Redstone comparator facing out from the decorated pot can output a redstone signal depending on the fullness of the container, with a maximum redstone signal of 15. The fact that you can place items into the decorated pot, it only has one inventory slot, and it can output a redstone signal with a comparator could make it a useful block to use in Redstone circuits.
Loot in Decorated Pots
Because items can now be placed inside decorated pots, there will now be loot items inside them going forward. An example is the Trial Chambers, where you will find decorated pots in the corridor. When you smash them, there can be loot items inside. This is a small thing, but it is a good change, as before all the loot items would be in chests. I assume this will be added to decorated pots in structures going forward.