How to Carve a Pumpkin in Minecraft

In a Nutshell

To carve a pumpkin in Minecraft, you need a shear. Shears can be crafted by placing two iron ingots on a 2×2 crafting grid, one in the top left corner and the other in the bottom right corner. Next, point your shear towards a pumpkin and press the right-click or Use button to carve it.

The world of Minecraft shares many similarities with our natural world. There are beautiful rivers, majestic mountains, and different kinds of flora and fauna. Players can farm plants and animals to get various resources in Minecraft.

Pumpkin is one of the popularly farmed vegetation in Minecraft as this fruit has many different uses in the game. Players can use pumpkins to make pumpkin pies, trade emeralds, and so on. Since pumpkins are tied with the spooky festival Halloween, developers made it possible to carve pumpkins in Minecraft as well.

Carved pumpkins were added along with regular pumpkins in the Halloween Update for Minecraft Java Edition. It has been in the game for almost 12 years now. In this article, we share a step-by-step guide on how to carve a pumpkin in Minecraft.

Table of Contents

How to carve a Pumpkin in Minecraft

Carving pumpkins in Minecraft is a pretty simple process. To cut a pumpkin, all you need is a shear. In Minecraft, players can use a shear to carve pumpkins and turn them into carved pumpkins. Carved pumpkins have the same texture as regular pumpkins but a scary face in front that looks like a Jack o’lantern.

1. Craft a shear

Shear is a necessary item for carving pumpkins. Without it, you cannot carve a pumpkin in Minecraft.

To make a shear, you need two iron ingots.

Place the iron ingots on a 2×2 crafting grid in the following positions: one iron ingot in the top left corner and the other in the bottom right corner.

2. Find a pumpkin

It is an obvious step. You will definitely need a pumpkin to get a carved pumpkin.

If you don’t have any pumpkins, try searching for pumpkin patches in biomes with grass blocks like plains, savannas, etc. Players can also find a bunch of pumpkins lying around in taiga villages.

If you have enough patience, you can try growing pumpkins using seeds. Pumpkin seeds take an annoyingly long time to grow into a stem and finally produce pumpkins. You can find pumpkin seeds in loot chests or buy them from wandering traders.

3. Use shear on a pumpkin

To carve a pumpkin, you need to use a shear on the pumpkin.

Point towards a pumpkin while holding a shear and right-click or press the Use button to carve the pumpkin in Minecraft.

Congratulations! You have now successfully carved a pumpkin.

Break the carved pumpkin to obtain it as a block in the inventory. Now that you have obtained a carved pumpkin, it is natural to wonder about the uses of carved pumpkins. Let’s look at what you can do with carved pumpkins in Minecraft.

Uses of Carved Pumpkin in Minecraft

1. Summon iron golem and snow golem

Carved pumpkin is used for summoning iron golem and snow golems in Minecraft. Iron golems are great for protecting villagers and bases against hostile monsters like zombies, skeletons, etc. Similarly, snow golem, being a little squishy compared to iron golems, also attack mobs and produce snow layers.

2. Pumpkin Helmet

Once a pumpkin has been carved, you can put it on your head like a helmet. However, it doesn’t provide any defense points and serves only as a decoration.

As a hat, a pumpkin is beneficial for beginners visiting the End dimension for the first time because endermen ignore players wearing carved pumpkins.

You can also enchant carved pumpkins with Curse of Binding and prank your friends in Minecraft. Carved pumpkins can be dispensed onto another player’s head using dispensers.

3. Jack o’lanterns

In Minecraft, you can create a Jack-o-lantern by combining carved pumpkins with torches. These blocks emit light and serve as a beautiful decoration for Halloween-themed builds.

Can you un-carve a pumpkin in Minecraft?

Unfortunately, carving a pumpkin is not a reversible process in Minecraft.

When you cut a pumpkin, it drops pumpkin seeds. You cannot add pumpkin seeds back to a pumpkin and get a carved pumpkin. Therefore, be careful with shears around your pumpkin farms.

If you still end up with some unwanted carved pumpkins, there are always some ways to use them. Try summoning a golem to protect your base or create a jack o’lantern to illuminate your haunted builds. In Minecraft, nothing is completely useless.

Do jack-o-lanterns scare away mobs and creepers?

Even though they have a scary appearance, Jack-o-lanterns do not scare mobs away. They are used as light sources and for decoration in Minecraft.

Nothing screams Halloween as much as jack o’lanterns do in Minecraft. These blocks were added as part of the Halloween Update.

A jack o’lantern emits a light level of 15, which means it spreads light to a radius of 15 blocks. Jack o’lanterns have been popularly used in Halloween-themed builds.

That’s all there is to Minecraft pumpkin carving. You might as well want to read the following Minecraft articles: