Pufferfish

Pufferfish are bucketable aquatic mobs found in oceans. Although they never seek out mobs to attack, they will defensively inflate themselves when approached too closely by players, axolotls or non-aquatic mobs, dealing damage and inflicting Poison on them.

Spawning

In Java Edition, pufferfish spawn in groups of 1-3 in warm, lukewarm, and deep lukewarm ocean biomes, subject to fish spawning requirements. If trying to spawn inside a waterlogged solid block, the pufferfish uses the bigger "puffed" size to determine if it collides with anything solid.

In Bedrock Edition, fish spawn underwater at around 12–32 blocks away from the player in groups of 3–5 in warm ocean biomes, and only on the surface; that is, there must not be a spawnable block above the spawn location with a non-solid block on top. They are considerably rarer than tropical fish, with only ¹⁄₅ of fish groups or ²⁄₉ individual fish (within the warm ocean biome) spawning as pufferfish.

Drops

Pufferfish drop 1 of their item form when killed:

• 1 pufferfish, unaffected by Looting.^[1]
• 1 bone meal (5% chance)‌^{[Java Edition only]}
• 1-2 bones (25% chance)‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}
• 1–3 when killed by a player or a tamed wolf.

Behavior

Pufferfish inflate themselves when approached by the player, most mobs,‌^{[JE only]} and armor stands.^[2][3]

The player may collect a fish by using a water bucket on it, giving the player a bucket of pufferfish. Fish placed with buckets do not despawn naturally. When that fish bucket is used against a block, it empties the bucket, placing water with that fish swimming in it. An empty bucket may be used as well.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}

Unlike other fish, pufferfish don't swim in schools.

Weaknesses

Like other fish, pufferfish cannot survive out of water. Outside of water, they flop around like guardians for a while until they start suffocating, and then die like squid. In Bedrock Edition they rotate when flopping. Fish cannot swim or breathe in cauldron water.^[4]

All fish are vulnerable to weapons that have the Impaling enchantment, which also affects squid, turtles, guardians, elder guardians, and dolphins.

Defenses

A pufferfish inflates when approached by a player in Survival or Adventure mode, a drowned, an axolotl, or any non-water mob within a 5×5×5 volume around the fish, going from unpuffed, then semi-puffed, to fully puffed. Pufferfish are technically passive mobs but going near one when semi-puffed or fully puffed inflicts the player/mob with three or six seconds of Poison based on the inflation level, and touching one in its puffed or semi-puffed form deals damage separate from the Poison.

Pufferfish also instantly inflate to their fullest form after taking any kind of damage.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]} After inflating, they slowly deflate to their normal shape as long as a threat is out of range. If the player/mob leaves the radius while the pufferfish is in its semi-puffed stage, it deflates back to normal.

Undead mobs are unaffected by the Poison effect, but still, take damage when they come into contact with pufferfish.

A pufferfish inflicting damage to a mob other than creeper and ghast via touching provokes that mob to retaliate.

In Peaceful difficulty, pufferfish do not inflict damage or Poison to player.‌^{[Java Edition only]}

Sounds

Java Edition:
Pufferfish use the Friendly Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.

Bedrock Edition:

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Entity data

Pufferfish have entity data associated with them that contains various properties.

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Achievements

Advancements

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Resource location
	It Spreads	Kill a mob near a Sculk Catalyst	Monster Hunter	Kill one of these 70 mobs near a sculk catalyst: Axolotl Bee Blaze Camel Cat Cave Spider Chicken Chicken Jockey Cod Cow Creeper Donkey Dolphin Drowned Elder Guardian Enderman Endermite Evoker Fox Frog Ghast Goat Glow Squid Guardian Hoglin Horse Husk Llama Magma Cube Mooshroom Ocelot Panda Parrot Phantom Pig Piglin Piglin Brute Pillager Polar Bear Pufferfish Rabbit Ravager Salmon Sheep Shulker Silverfish Skeleton Skeleton Horse Skeleton Horseman Slime Sniffer Stray Spider Spider Jockey Squid Strider Trader Llama Tropical Fish Turtle Vex Vindicator Warden Witch Wither Wither Skeleton Wolf Zoglin Zombie Zombie Villager Zombified Piglin Mobs that drop no experience are ignored for this advancement.	adventure/kill_mob_near_sculk_catalyst
	Tactical Fishing	Catch a Fish... without a Fishing Rod!	Fishy Business	Use a water bucket on any fish mob.	husbandry/tactical_fishing

History

This section would benefit from the addition of isometric renders. 

Please remove this notice once you've added suitable isometric renders to the article.
The specific instructions are: 1.16-pre3 pufferfish changes - document old appearances in history

Java Edition Alpha
June 28, 2010					Notch mentioned that fish might be a feature of coral, if he were able to add coral: "... I do know that the corals will have tiny fish particles around them."
October 4, 2010					Fish were a passive mob that Notch showed interest in adding. In the promotional graphic for the Halloween Update, Notch indicated he would add fish. However, they were added only as an item; there was no code for a fish mob.
Java Edition
October 5, 2012					Fish were jokingly teased in the fake snapshot 12marc40awesome, along with coral and "fish blocks".
April 13, 2013					When Jon Kågström was asked in his AMA on Reddit, "What mob would you like to implement into the game?" He responded, "I would like to add birds, fish and tree animals to make it more alive. However this will take some time before it can be done."
July 31, 2013					During Notch's AMA on Reddit, when asked about what happened to his plans of adding fish as a mob, he responded, "Oh yeah, the fish!"
1.13		18w08b			Added "puffer fish".
					Puffer fish have 20 × 10 health.
		18w10a			The health of pufferfish has been changed to 3.[5]
		18w19a			"Puffer Fish" has been corrected to "Pufferfish".[6]
1.13.1		18w31a			Pufferfish now have a 5% chance of dropping bone meal when killed.
1.18		21w40a			Pufferfish now only spawn between y=50 and y=63.
Bedrock Edition
1.4.0		beta 1.2.14.2			Added pufferfish mobs.
1.13.0		beta 1.13.0.9			Pufferfish now drop experience when killed.
1.16.0		beta 1.15.0.51			Pufferfish now semi-puff when the player draws near, and fully puff when the player is up against it.
1.18.0		beta 1.18.0.21			Pufferfish now only spawn between y=50 and y=64.
1.19.10		beta 1.19.10.23			The health of pufferfish has been changed to 3.
Legacy Console Edition
TU69		1.76	Patch 38		Added pufferfish mobs.
Education Edition
1.4.0					Added pufferfish mobs.

Issues

Issues relating to "Pufferfish" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia

• In real life, pufferfish use their spikes for intimidation purposes and not to inject venom. Their flesh is toxic, which is reflected accurately in-game.
• Pufferfish's damage and Poison time are directly related to its current PuffState data value, which can be changed using the /data command.
• There are three textures for the three different PuffState data values in Minecraft. A PuffState value greater than 2 does not visually increase the pufferfish size, but does create a bigger shadow on the ground. All sizes of pufferfish textures are contained in the same texture file.

Gallery

• 
  A fully inflated pufferfish, with six deflated pufferfish and a school of cod behind it.
• 
  Dying pufferfish mob in Bedrock Edition.
• 
  Dying pufferfish mob in Java Edition.
• 
  An up-close screenshot of a completely deflated pufferfish.
• 
  A player is hurting by pufferfish.
• 
  An ocean with some fish visible.
• 
  A cod and pufferfish taking damage because they are not in water.

In other media

• 
  Pufferfish in promotional artwork for the Update Aquatic.
• 
  Several pufferfish as they appear in the Trails & Tales trailer.
• 
  Official pufferfish artwork.
• 
  Lego Minecraft pufferfish.

Textures

See also

• Cod
• Salmon
• Tropical Fish

References