How to make a lead in Minecraft: five string, no slime ball any more
The lead recipe dropped its slime ball in Java 1.21.6. The 26.3 recipe, where string comes from, what a lead can hold, and the distances that pull and snap it.
If you learned the lead recipe with a slime ball in the middle, it has changed. Comparing the 1.21.5 and 1.21.6 client jars, data/minecraft/recipe/lead.json went from four string and one slime ball to five string, and 26.3 still uses the new version:
~ ~ ~ = minecraft:string
~ ~
~ → 2 × minecraft:leadIt is shaped: a 2 × 2 square of string with a fifth one diagonally below it. One craft still makes two leads. The old slime-ball pattern no longer crafts anything.
Where the string comes from
| source | string |
|---|---|
| spider, cave spider | 0–2 per kill, +1 max per Looting level |
| strider | 2–5 per kill |
| cat | 0–2 per kill |
| cobweb, broken with a sword | 1 |
| tripwire | 1 |
A cobweb needs the right tool: a sword turns it into string, shears or Silk Touch return the cobweb itself, and a bare hand gets nothing. Mineshafts are full of them, which makes one abandoned mineshaft worth more string than a night of spiders.
What a lead holds
Use a lead on a mob to tie it to you. Anything that is not a hostile monster can be leashed by default, with a list of exceptions written into the code — the ones people try most:
| can be leashed | cannot |
|---|---|
| farm animals, horses, llamas, camels, wolves (unless angry) | villagers and wandering traders |
| iron golems, snow golems, allays | fish, bats, turtles, pandas |
| dolphins, squid, axolotls | hostile mobs such as zombies, creepers, spiders |
| hoglins and zoglins, two hostiles that allow it | |
| boats and rafts |
A boat is not a mob, but it takes a lead all the same, and a leashed boat is towed behind you with its passengers still aboard.
How far before it breaks
The distances are measured between the centres of the two hitboxes:
| distance | what happens |
|---|---|
| under 6 blocks | slack — the lead does nothing |
| over 6 blocks (minus the widths of both) | the lead pulls the mob towards you |
| over 12 blocks | the lead snaps and drops as an item |
A happy ghast on a lead is the exception: it only pulls at 10 blocks and snaps at 16. And when a happy ghast is the one holding the lead, horses, llamas, sniffers and boats hang from it by four lines instead of one.
Fences, hand-offs and cutting
- Tie to a fence: use the lead on any fence. Every mob you are holding within a 32-block box around it gets tied there.
- Hand the leads to another mob: sneak and use an adult leashable mob, and every animal you are leading moves onto it.
- Let go: use the leashed mob again and the lead drops back as an item.
- Cut it: use shears on a leashed mob to cut every lead attached to it, at the cost of 1 durability.
Leads are how horses get between pens while you breed them for speed and jump. The Horse Breeding Calculator works out what a foal can inherit from its parents before you drag the next pair across the field.