Every potion is the same three-step decision — a base, one ingredient that sets the effect, and modifiers that shape it — so you stop needing a chart once the structure clicks.
Almost every potion is built the same way: a water bottle turned into an Awkward Potion, then one ingredient that sets the effect, then optional modifiers that shape how it works. Learn that order once and you stop needing to memorize which item goes with which effect — you just ask what step you're on.
A brewing stand is the only thing that makes potions, and it's crafted from one blaze rod (dropped by blazes in the Nether) in the top-center slot with three cobblestone or blackstone across the bottom row. It won't work without fuel: Blaze Powder, made by crafting a blaze rod into powder, goes in the stand's fuel slot and lasts for 20 brewing operations before it needs replacing.
Each brew takes 20 seconds and works on up to three water bottles at once, so it's worth filling all three slots rather than brewing one at a time. Water bottles themselves are just glass bottles dipped into a water source or cauldron — cheap, and the true starting point of every potion you'll ever make.
Add Nether Wart to a water bottle in the brewing stand and you get an Awkward Potion — not useful on its own, but the required base for nearly every effect potion in the game. If you skip this step and add an effect ingredient straight to plain water, nothing happens; the ingredient needs the Awkward Potion as a starting point to react with.
There's one deliberate exception: Fermented Spider Eye dropped straight into a water bottle produces a Potion of Weakness without ever touching Nether Wart. It's the only potion in the game brewed that way, which is exactly why it's worth knowing as the exception rather than trying to force it into the three-step pattern below.
With an Awkward Potion in hand, adding a specific ingredient locks in what the potion actually does. This is the part a chart usually covers, and it's also the part our own recipes database and effects database cover in full — the table below is only the ingredients worth knowing by heart:
| Effect | Ingredient | Base needed |
|---|---|---|
| Swiftness | Sugar | Awkward Potion |
| Healing | Glistering Melon Slice | Awkward Potion |
| Fire Resistance | Magma Cream | Awkward Potion |
| Night Vision | Golden Carrot | Awkward Potion |
| Poison | Spider Eye | Awkward Potion |
| Weakness | Fermented Spider Eye | Water Bottle (only exception) |
Once you know an effect exists, the real question is whether it's one you want landing on you or on a target — our effects page breaks down which of the game's 40 status effects help and which hurt, which matters more than the brewing step itself once you're deciding what to actually carry into a fight.
This is the step people skip, and it's the one that turns a decent potion into the right potion for the situation:
Redstone and Glowstone don't stack. Adding one after the other overwrites the first, so a potion is either extended or amplified — never both at once. Decide which matters more for what you're brewing it for before you commit the ingredient.
Instant-effect potions — Healing and Harming among them — can't be extended with Redstone, since there's no duration to stretch in the first place; Glowstone still works on these, since amplifying an instant burst is a different thing than extending a duration.
A finished potion is really just three decisions stacked on top of each other: Awkward Potion as the base, one ingredient to choose the effect, and however many modifiers you need to shape duration, strength, or delivery. Brew a Swiftness potion, add Redstone for a Swiftness potion that lasts longer, or add Gunpowder instead for one you can throw at someone else entirely — same effect ingredient, completely different result depending on which modifier step you take.
If an ingredient here isn't one you recognize, the items database is the fastest way to check what it looks like and where it drops before you go looking for it.