How to Make a Water Elevator in Minecraft

Minecraft has always had a long history of players discovering unique ways to build and invent certain real-world equivalent structures and places in the game. From rollercoasters to factories, to aquariums and much, much more. A highly requested structure for Minecraft was elevators, and through this guide, you will learn how to make a water elevator.

The Materials You’ll Need and How to Get Them

In order to create a water elevator, you’ll need soul sand, water, a water bucket (and an iron bucket if in survival), a magma block, four signs, and any block type that you want to use as your outer perimeter for the elevator. If you are building the water elevator in creative mode then everything that you need will already be available to you without following the steps below.

Firstly, in order to get soul sand, you will need to enter the nether and mine the soul sand, it can be mined without any tools but using a shovel will mine it the quickest. You only need one soul sand block in total, or you can have as many as you want for the elevator.

In order to obtain the magma block, you will need four ‘magma cream’ in which one of these can be made by combining one ‘slimeball’ and one ‘blaze powder’. Repeat for three more times and you’ll have enough.

The slimeballs on the other hand can be obtained by killing ‘slimes’ (creatures/mobs) in the world, and blaze powder can be crafted by obtaining a ‘blaze rod’ from killing a ‘blaze’ creature in the nether and then crafting the blaze powder from your inventory in the crafting section. Once you have obtained all the materials, craft the magma block. It should be noted that you could make sure to get both the soul sand and the other materials you need from the blaze in the nether in one run.

Secondly, obtain/craft an iron bucket, collect water, and craft four signs, and you will now have everything you require for the main elevator itself. Find a block type that you most want to use and make sure to mine and craft as much of it as you need for the estimated size of your own elevator. Remember, you will be putting it around each side of a one-block column.

Making the Water Elevator

The elevator can now be made with all of the materials you have collected and you can begin to bring your dream elevator into reality! Start by finding a suitable location for your elevator, you won’t need too much ground space, mainly the altitude height that is available to you is the most important.

Now you have found a place for your elevator, begin by digging out one block down where you want your elevator to start rising and place the soul sand in the ground. After this, place your perimeter blocks around the soul sand block with one corner left empty. So you will have three sides of the block with a wall around them and start building up your column.

Following on from this, ensure that you create a one or two block in length corridor towards the soul sand for the entrance with a height of two blocks. Place two signs on each of the corridor wall blocks to the right as shown in the video below.

Afterwards, fill in blocks above the corridor entrance to make sure there are no gaps in the structure that water can leak out of. When you have made the necessary checks, go to the top of the elevator and place/pour the water on the inside top block and let it flow down with no gaps.

You will observe water bubbles rising to the top, if you see this, you now have a working water elevator in Minecraft. Congratulations!

If you also want an elevator that goes down for the player, create the elevator structure in the same way except use the magma block instead of the soul sand and the bubbles will flow down instead. However, just letting the player sink in the water also works for an elevator that goes down. The air bubbles will stop the player from drowning in survival though, so if you plan on creating a skyscraper style elevator in survival mode, this method with the magma blocks is the one for you.

You have now successfully built a down and up water elevator in Minecraft.

Minecraft is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Seris X/S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, IOS, Android, and many more platforms.