Best ways to find flint in Minecraft 1.21

Minecraft is an open-world sandbox game with numerous items that can typically be obtained in ways more than one. To efficiently acquire the items needed to complete a player's project, it's crucial to know the best methods for obtaining them. Flint is an uncraftable item primarily used as a crafting ingredient for several items and can also be traded with employed villagers.

In Minecraft, flint can be obtained from various sources, though not all of them are reliable or efficient. With the release of the Minecraft 1.21 update, new players are joining the sandbox game, intrigued by its new features. To help these newcomers efficiently acquire this item, this article explains the different methods of obtaining flint in Minecraft.

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Minecraft 1.21 guide to get flint

Flint in the player's inventory (Image via Mojang)

Flint in Minecraft 1.21 is an early-game mineral that can be acquired easily in the Overworld and can be used to craft vital items such as arrows, flint, and steel.

The best way of getting flint is by mining gravel blocks barehand or using a shovel to mine quickly. A gravel block has a 10% chance of dropping a flint instead of itself.

Finding gravel blocks in the Overworld is easy as most naturally generated small water bodies will have a bunch of gravel blocks on the sides. The player only needs one block as they can repeatedly place and break the block to get a flint eventually.

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Improve the flint drop rates using Fortune

A diamond shovel with Fortune III (Image via Mojang)

Players in the mid/end game phase with a bunch of enchantments have the option to increase the drop rates by mining with a Fortune enchanted tool.

When the Fortune enchantment is applied, the chances of flint being dropped increase significantly.

Level 1 Fortune raises the opportunity to 16% from the base 10%, while Level 2 increases it to 25%. Surprisingly, at Level 3, the Fortune enchantment guarantees a 100% chance of dropping flint when mining a gravel block, an unexpectedly huge increase in probability from the previous levels.

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Other sources

A village and a trader (Image via Mojang)

Like most other Minecraft items, flint has more than one source. While mining gravel is the most reliable method, it's useful to know other ways to obtain the same item. Depending on the situation, these alternative methods might be quicker for the player.

A novice Fletcher's trade offers (Image via Mojang)

Fletchers at the novice level have a 50-50 chance in Bedrock Edition or a 2 in 3 chance in Java Edition. The trade offer usually asks for an emerald and 10 gravel blocks in exchange for 10 pieces of flint.

The last source of flint is the village and ruined portal chests. A fletcher's village house has a 55.8% chance of having up to three pieces of flint and a ruined portal has a slightly lower 46.4% chance of having up to four pieces of the same.