A sniffer wanders your base, stops every so often to press its snout into the dirt, then wanders off again. It may look aimless at first, but what you may not know is that it won its spot in the game through a community vote back in 2022, and there is more going on here than the wandering suggests.
So, join us as we dive into how to get one of your own, what it spends its time actually doing, and a few mods that build on sniffers.
How to Get a Sniffer
A sniffer cannot spawn on its own, no matter how long you wait. Every sniffer in your world traces back to an egg, either brushed out of the ground through archaeology or laid by two adults you already have.
A sniffer egg also only ever comes from one place. Here is how to find it:
- Dive into a Warm Ocean, Lukewarm Ocean, or Deep Lukewarm Ocean and look along the seafloor for a small, weathered ruin structure.
- Search the ruin for suspicious sand: a slightly different-looking sand block that generates in place of regular sand.
- Equip a brush and right-click the block until it finishes brushing clean. Each suspicious sand block has roughly a 1 in 15 (6.7%) chance of holding a sniffer egg among its other loot, so expect to check several before one turns up.
- Break the egg block once you have it. Any tool or bare hands work, since a sniffer egg does not need Silk Touch to drop, unlike a turtle egg.
- Place the egg on a moss block for a 10-minute hatch, or on anything else for 20 minutes. It cracks twice before hatching, so watch for those cracks if you want to know how close it is.
Breeding More Sniffers
Once you have two adult sniffers, breeding is the fastest way to grow that number higher. Simply feed each of them a torchflower seed to put them into love mode.
Instead of spawning a snifflet directly, the pair will drop a sniffer egg as an item on the ground, which you can then pick up and place the same way as before. You’ll then need to wait five minutes before trying to breed either parent again.
How a Sniffer's Digging Loop Works
Once a sniffer is grown, it spends most of its time roaming, and every so often it stops, presses its snout into the ground, and "sploots" – the pose players named after the way corgis spread their legs while lying down, before digging up whatever is buried underground.
Where a Sniffer Can Dig
Digging only works on nine specific block types:
- Coarse dirt;
- Dirt;
- Grass block;
- Moss block;
- Mud;
- Muddy mangrove roots;
- Pale moss block;
- Rooted dirt;
- Podzol.
Mycelium looks close enough to grass that it trips players up, but it is specifically excluded, so a mushroom island does nothing for a sniffer. With that said, block type is the only requirement, and nothing on that list is tied to a specific biome, so any of the blocks in this list will do – no matter the biome.
Cooldowns and Blocking States
An eight-minute cooldown starts after every successful dig, and a sniffer also remembers its last 20 dig locations so it will not repeat one. Five states stop it from digging at all: being leashed, being in water, being tempted with a torchflower seed, panicking, and riding in a boat or minecart.
Note: That tempted state in particular tends to catch most players off-guard, since holding a seed to keep your sniffer close is exactly what keeps it from digging in the first place!
What Can a Sniffer Dig Up?
A successful dig produces one item, either a torchflower seed or a pitcher pod, at an even 50/50 split. Only adults can dig though as all a baby snifflet does is roam until it grows up.
What to Use Torchflower Seeds and Pitcher Pods For
Both drops are seeds for genuinely extinct plants, gone from the game's natural world generation entirely, and a sniffer digging them up is currently the only renewable source for either one.
Torchflower
A torchflower seed plants on farmland and grows through three stages, speeding up with bone meal the same as wheat. Breaking it early drops its seed back, while breaking the finished flower gives you the torchflower itself without any seed.
The flower itself crafts into orange dye, can raise a composter's level about 85% of the time, and works as a suspicious stew ingredient for a short Night Vision effect. Bees pollinate it like any other flower, and it can go in a flower pot for decoration, though bone meal will not duplicate a finished flower the way it does with most other tall flowers.
Pitcher Plant
A pitcher pod plants the same way, on farmland, but takes five growth stages instead of three and ends up being two blocks tall. Only its first stage can be trampled, so once it grows past that, foot traffic will not knock it back down. Breaking it during any growth stage before the last drops a pod, and breaking the finished plant gives you the pitcher plant itself.
It crafts into two instances of cyan dye, can raise a composter's level about 85% of the time, and attracts bees once you harvest it and place it as a block, though bees ignore the crop itself at every growth stage – even when fully grown. Unlike the torchflower, it cannot sit in a flower pot, and bone meal will not duplicate it either.
Raising Your Snifflet
A snifflet takes 48,000 game ticks to grow up, or about 40 real minutes – twice as long as most baby mobs in Minecraft. Feeding it a torchflower seed cuts the remaining time by 10% per seed, so a handful of feedings can shave off a real chunk of the wait.
Additionally, baby snifflets don’t follow adult sniffers the same way most baby mobs follow their parents, so it is worth fencing or leashing one if you do not want it roaming off on its own. As of Java Edition version 26.1, a golden dandelion (crafted from 8 gold nuggets placed around a dandelion) pauses a snifflet's growth timer and stops it from despawning, and feeding it a second golden dandelion resumes growth whenever you are ready.
Java vs Bedrock Edition Differences
Most of what a sniffer does is identical across both editions. While Bedrock Edition introduces a few small differences as outlined in the table below, they’re not exactly worlds apart.
| Behavior | Java | Bedrock |
|---|---|---|
| Breeding requirement. | Any health works. | Only sniffers at full health can breed. |
| Feeding a torchflower seed to an adult. | No healing effect. | Heals for 2 health points. |
| Sniffer egg block. | Not transparent. | Transparent. |
Mods for When Vanilla Sniffers Aren’t Enough
A vanilla sniffer only ever comes home with two plants, and riding one is out of the question entirely. These mods aim to break these restrictions – some widening what the mob can dig up, while others turning it into a mount that carries you and can haul what it finds.
Just Enough Archaeology
“Just Enough Archaeology” answers the exact question this article is built around, right inside your recipe viewer. It adds a browsable list of everything a sniffer can dig up, sitting next to the existing suspicious sand and gravel loot tables, so you can check torchflower seed and pitcher pod odds without leaving your game.
Since the sniffer's own two entries sit right there with the suspicious sand and gravel tables, it makes tracking all these separate archaeology mechanics a piece of cake.
Sussy Sniffers
“Sussy Sniffers” turns the sniffer from a mob you merely observe into one you can ride! Tame it with a grown torchflower or pitcher plant, then saddle it up, and get carried the same way a pig or a strider can, with shears being an option if you want to remove the saddle again.
It widens the dig list too, adding suspicious sand and gravel to the blocks a sniffer will dig through, so its loop turns up pottery sherds and other archaeology loot alongside its usual seeds and pods. Last, but not least, you also get new sniffer variants – some found by pure chance and others tied to the biome the egg hatched in – giving your tamed sniffer a look that matches where it came from.
Hellion's Sniffer+
“Hellion's Sniffer+” takes the collection loop and automates a piece of it. Saddle a sniffer and it becomes rideable, while fitting it with a chest means every seed or pod it digs up drops straight into that chest instead of on the ground.
As a nice touch, this mod also adds a small set of new plants for the sniffer to dig up beyond torchflower and pitcher pod, a full cave biome for it to explore, and a light emission effect for the torchflower itself, so the flower named after a torch now finally glows like one!
Additional Additions
Glowing Torchflower
“Glowing Torchflower” fixes the one thing about the plant that never made sense: a flower named after a torch that gives off no light at all in vanilla. It makes the torchflower emit light at every growth stage and while potted, so a row of these on a windowsill can light up the room instead of simply decorating it.
Light levels are adjustable from the mod's configuration file in case the defaults run brighter or dimmer than you may want. The mod's default light levels are 12 for a fully grown flower and up to 14 once potted based on Minecraft's own 0 to 15 light scale, and both numbers can be adjusted in the mod's configuration file if you want it brighter or dimmer.
How to Install Minecraft Mods
You can install the above mods automatically using the CurseForge app or manually by placing the mod files within your game's mods folder. Both methods allow you to easily add custom features and enhancements into your Minecraft experience.
If you want to learn more, you can read our detailed guide on how to install Minecraft mods.
Common Issues and Quick Fixes
My sniffer never digs up anything
Five separate sniffer states can typically block digging outright: being leashed, being in water, being tempted with a torchflower seed, panicking, and being inside a boat or minecart.
Holding a torchflower seed to keep your sniffer close is the most common cause, since holding the seed keeps it tempted and digging never starts. The fix is to unclip the lead, put the seeds away, and give it a stretch of solid ground to stand on.
It dug twice and then went quiet for a long while
An eight-minute cooldown starts after every successful dig, and unfortunately there is no way to shorten it. If you want a steady supply of seeds and pods, we recommend keeping several adult sniffers going at once instead of waiting on one to do all the digging.
My sniffer stopped digging inside its pen
A sniffer remembers its last 20 dig locations and will not dig into the same spot twice, so a small enclosure can run out of loot fast. The fix is to give the mob a larger patch of valid ground, or break and replace the ground blocks in its pen to reset them.
I bred two sniffers and got nothing
Breeding does not spawn a snifflet directly. The pair drops a sniffer egg as an item on the ground instead – the same as a chicken drops an egg – and you have to pick it up and place it yourself before anything can hatch.
I've brushed dozens of ruins and never found a sniffer egg
Sniffer eggs only turn up in one loot table: suspicious sand from warm ocean ruins, at roughly a 1 in 15 chance per block. Desert pyramids, desert wells, and trail ruins never contain one, no matter how many you brush. Dive a Warm Ocean, Lukewarm Ocean, or Deep Lukewarm Ocean instead and look for the ruin structures on the seafloor.
My torchflower doesn't give off any light
That is normal. Despite the name, a torchflower gives off no light of its own in vanilla Minecraft. Getting it to glow calls for a mod instead, such as “Glowing Torchflower”.
I want to ride my sniffer, but can’t
Vanilla doesn’t offer saddle or riding interaction for a sniffer. The only items it responds to are a lead, a name tag, torchflower seeds, and a golden dandelion for snifflets. Riding one is a mod feature, and both “Sussy Sniffers” and “Hellion's Sniffer+” covered above add exactly that.
My game crashes on startup after installing mods
A startup crash usually means one of three things:
- The mod file does not match your Minecraft version.
- The mod was made for a different loader.
- A required dependency is missing.
Check that you installed the correct Forge, Fabric, Quilt, or NeoForge file for your profile, then look at the mod page for any required files, especially for Fabric API on Fabric profiles and for Quilted Fabric API on Quilt profiles.