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    Duncan Geere
    Written By
    Duncan Geere
    Published
    2/23/23

    Block of the Month: Froglight

    It’s hoppin’ bright

    Frogs love to eat small slimy things. In most situations, that means Minecraft’s slime mobs – which frogs will attack by using their sticky tongue to pull them into their mouth. Once the digestive process takes its course, the result is slimeballs. 

    But there’s something else that comes out of the business end of a frog. No, not that. I’m talking about the froglight! Which by a mysterious coincidence just so happens to be our block of the month?

    Froglights were added to Minecraft not all that long ago. They became a part of the game alongside mud, goat horns, and mangroves when we released the Wild Update in June 2022. These new discoveries are still being investigated by Mojang’s top scientists, but here’s what we know so far.

    First, how to get a froglight. You might have noticed, while wandering around the Nether trying to find your portal again, hopping beasts known as Magma Cubes that look a bit like slimes but on fire. That’s pretty much what they are. Here’s former Mojang Studios developer Alexander Östman explaining what happened next.

    We figured that if the frogs ate small slimes, they could also eat the small magma cubes since they’re very similar in appearance. Basically, if a frog sees a small magma cube it thinks it’s a small slime and thinks to itself “Yeah, I know those are yummy!” and eats it. Once it realizes its mistake, it spits out a cool shiny block!

    Alexander Östman

    That’s neat, but it turns out that wasn’t the original plan:

    The original idea was for them to eat fireflies, but when the community let us know that they can be poisonous to many real-world frogs, we started working on a new source of food – slime and magma cubes. We did something similar with parrots back in the day. They originally ate chocolate chip cookies, but you should never feed a parrot chocolate in real life because it’s very poisonous to them.

    Alexander Östman

    There are different kinds of frogs in Minecraft, which have different digestive processes. This creates different froglights. You can get a pinkish “pearlescent” one from frogs found in warm biomes, a yellow “ochre” one from those found in temperate biomes, and a green “verdant” one from frogs found in cold biomes.

    Each one emits a light level of 15, which is the highest possible – and the same as the light emitted from glowstone, jack o’lanterns, beacons, redstone lamps and sea lanterns. They’ll drop as an item when broken using any tool or by hand, so don’t worry about accidentally smashing them.

    Any last tips, Alexander?

    We didn't really have that many light-emitting blocks of different colors in the game, so I think froglights will come in handy as a cool decorative block that acts as a light source as well. I’m envisioning players gathering frogs to use them to get lots and lots of froglight blocks for their builds.

    Alexander Östman

    You heard the man. Go forth and gather frogs!

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