Where do Sniffers spawn in Minecraft 1.20?

The Sniffers are a new mob introduced in 1.20, a big furry beast with a giant nose that does exactly as its name suggests: it sniffs out seeds for you. Naturally, you may be wondering where such a friendly and helpful companion spawns and how to get one for yourself. So where do Sniffers spawn in Minecraft 1.20? The answer is a multi-step process.

How to find and tame a Sniffler in Minecraft 1.20

Getting a Sniffler is, like many tasks in Minecraft, very tedious to go through. You cannot find one roaming in the Overworld. Instead, you have to find its egg and hatch it. As for how to do that? Stay with me here.

First of all, you have to find Warm Ocean Ruins. They’re little sandstone and sand structures that spawn in the ocean off the coasts of deserts and mesas, in the same ocean biomes that will have coral reefs elsewhere.

A Warm Ocean Ruin, with sea lanterns for better visibility. Screenshot by PC Invasion

When you find one, you need a brush. You can make a brush with a feather, copper ingot, and stick in the middle row.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

Now that you have a brush, you need to use it on all of the Suspicious Sand contained around the ruin. Suspicious Sand is just sand that looks more grainy.

Normal sand (left) versus Suspicious Sand (right). Screenshot by PC Invasion

It’s hard to tell the difference, especially underwater, so try brushing the sand to see if it slowly disintegrates or not. If it does, an item will slowly unveil itself and then pop out.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

You’ll know if you manage to unearth a Sniffler Egg because you’ll get the achievement ‘Smells Interesting’ by picking one up.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

Now you can place the egg down anywhere and wait for it to hatch.

It takes twenty minutes to hatch on regular blocks, but only ten on moss blocks.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

When your new child hatches, it’s already effectively tamed. If you don’t want to dig through ruins while drowning, I recommend finding a second egg and breeding the pair with Torchflower Seeds (uncovered by Snifflers naturally if you leave them to it). Then you have a theoretical infinite amount of Snifflers to spawn.