Which potion is the most useless in Minecraft?

Minecraft has a growing collection of potions, and four new potion types were introduced with their corresponding status effects in the recently released 1.21 update. However, not every potion is always particularly helpful; in fact, some potions may be closer to impractical, but which is the most useless? Many signs seem to point to the recently released Potions of Infestation.

When a Potion of Infestation is used on a target, they'll gain a 5% chance to spawn silverfish mobs when attacked. While this Minecraft potion has some very niche uses, it simply doesn't measure up to nearly every other potion in the game.

---

Why the Potion of Infestation might be the worst Minecraft potion so far

Potions of Infestation are made by brewing stone blocks into awkward potions in Minecraft 1.21 (Image via Mojang Studios)

Like other potions, Potions of Infestation in Minecraft come in their standard form as well as splash and lingering variants. However, the core Infested status effect remains the same regardless, even if the potency level of the potion is increased. Any afflicted targets will have a 5% chance to spawn one to two silverfish, but there's not much to gain from these extra silverfish spawns.

When killed, the silverfish will drop five experience points, which might make Potions of Infestation marginally useful for XP farms, but the silverfish don't exactly do much else. Silverfish only attack certain entities like players, iron golems, and snow golems; otherwise, they just tend to find a stone block to inhabit. This holds back most potential battle applications.

Although silverfish can be useful for mining with the right setup, the Infestation status effect requiring an afflicted Minecraft entity to be attacked limits the potion's mining capability, unless players want to flood an underground area with potential mob targets to give Infestation. Between combat and mining applications, this silverfish-centered potion excels at neither.

While some Minecraft fans might come out with some out-of-the-box uses for this potion in the future, it simply hasn't panned out as useful to players in any significant way thus far. Aside from creating a few silverfish that can be killed for marginal experience gains, there just doesn't seem to be much upside to Potions of Infestation, especially when compared to its various counterparts.

A creeper afflicted with the Infested effect (Image via Mojang Studios)

All in all, compared to potions that heal players, provide them buffs or other benefits, or damage enemies, Potions of Infestation simply have very little to offer. A good argument can be made for them being the most useless potion in the game at the moment, though this can always change with more experimentation from the community or tweaks from Mojang.