How to conquer Minecraft's Ocean Monuments

One of Minecraft's greatest wonders lurks deep beneath the oceans surface, filled with one-eyed sea monsters, gold, and an incredibly rare resource - the sponge. The Monument is the only location in Minecraft to have sponges.

Minecraft's Ocean Monuments can be a truly terrifying battle, from mining fatigue, to drowning, and everything in-between. Built out of prismarine, and completely flooded, these monuments are protected by Guardians, pufferfish-like creatures that will attack the player and nearby squids with a laser beam that goes through shields, and cannot be dodged. Inside, a much larger threat awaits, the Elder Guardian. Defending eight gold blocks, and holding onto a block that can remove water source blocks in a localized area, this mob is the king of the Ocean Monument.

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What to bring into the depths

It's recommended to not attempt taking on the Ocean Monument unless completely ready. Full diamond armor, enchanted with at least Protection II on each piece. Aqua Affinity on the helmet to increase mining speed underwater, in order to help counter-act the Mining Fatigue debuff placed upon the player by the Elder Guardian.

Respiration is also a handy helmet enchantment to bring along, and it stacks with Aqua Affinity and Protection. This enchantment gives the player an increase of 15 seconds of underwater breathing time per level of enchantment.

Milk buckets, collected by right clicking a cow with an empty bucket, clear any and all debuffs inflicted to the player, which means there should be about five or six in the players inventory before they head off into the ocean. These, along with sand and gravel to quickly remove water source blocks, should be all that's required.

Water breathing potions are a must have.

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Assaulting the Monument

Guardians' laser beams. Image via Minecraft

Before trekking through the entrance, seen in the first image of this article, the player should break some of the blocks directly at the top of the monument in order to have an escape tunnel for emergency air.

Once this has been done, it's time to attempt to enter. The Guardians are going to put up a fight, but here's what to look out for:

• If the Guardians' orange spikes are extended, attacking the creature will result in the player taking damage, as if the Guardian had the Thorns enchantment.
• Once a Guardian begins sending its laser towards the player, there's a two second window of time to rush the Guardian, doing so properly will cancel it's attack against the player. If the attack goes off, on normal mode it will deal three and a half hearts of damage.
• The laser can also be blocked by solid blocks, and will also immediately disappear if the player is outside of the 15 block range.

After the player is inside Minecraft's water temple, they should immediately begin dropping sand from the ceiling to create a little room safe from guardians and water. This room will act as a resting point in case the player is overwhelmed.

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Minecraft's Elder Guardian Fight

Inside Minecrafts Ocean Monument with two Elder Guardians. Image via Minecraft

Pound for pound one of the harder fights that inexperienced players will go up against, Minecraft's blue and grey Elder Guardian has a few tricks up its sleeves. It's about three times the size of regular Guardians, and has the ability to place debuffs on the player.

• Its laser attack, with a longer charge up time where the beam turns green before damaging the player, deals a total of four hearts of damage on normal difficulty.
• The range of this attack is one block less than the smaller guardians, at fourteen.
• Once every minute, the Elder Guardian sends out a Mining Fatigue debuff to all players within 50 blocks, decreasing attack speed by 30% and mining speed by considerably more.
• This debuff, while underwater, makes breaking cobblestone with a diamond pickaxe take as long as breaking obsidian, so take caution and utilize the saferoom.
• Like Minecraft's smaller green and orange variant, the Elder Guardian also has a thorns-like attack, where if it's blue spikes are extended, it will deal a full heart of damage per attack the Guardian receives.

With a behemoth health bar boasting 40 hearts, this fight is going to be a decent length of time. It all boils down to using your environment to your advantage, ducking behind blocks and using milk buckets.

Once Minecraft's hardest water fight is over, eight gold blocks and one wet sponge is awarded to the player.