The Hardest Items On A Minecraft Bingo Card

The hardest items on a BingoMC bingo card come from the grindy pool, the top of the server's four difficulty tiers. The slowest of them are the netherite chain (ANCIENT_DEBRIS and NETHERITE_INGOT), the crying obsidian build (RESPAWN_ANCHOR), GRASS_BLOCK because it needs silk touch, the two damaged anvils because an anvil costs 31 iron and then has to be worn down, and the fishing and structure items (NAUTILUS_SHELL, PRISMARINE_CRYSTALS, ENCHANTED_BOOK, COBWEB). Two things make them harder on BingoMC specifically than in normal survival: peaceful mode is on, so no hostile mob ever drops anything, and the world border is 2500 blocks in each direction, so a biome hunt has a hard edge. BingoMC sorts items into tiers rather than ranking them, so the ordering below is ours, but the tiers are the server's.

What The Pools Say About Difficulty

BingoMC grades every card item into easy, medium, hard, or grindy, with a separate nether pool that can be switched on alongside any of them. A pool entry is either one material or a whole category of related materials that resolves to one random member. Counting entries, the pools are not the sizes you would expect.

• easy: 63 entries, 23 single items and 40 categories.
• medium: 79 entries, 39 single items and 40 categories.
• hard: 60 entries, 16 single items and 44 categories.
• grindy: 28 entries, 18 single items and 10 categories.

Grindy is by far the smallest pool, which is why a grindy card is also merged with hard and why a quarter of it is reserved for medium items. Without those rules a 5x5 grindy card would need 25 entries out of a pool of 28. It also means the grindy entries repeat across games more than any other tier, so these are the items regular players learn by heart.

Grindy requires a rank. Everything in the hard pool shows up in ordinary voted public games, so the hard entries at the bottom of this page are the ones most players actually meet.

The Ten Slowest Items

This is our ranking, not a server one. It is ordered by how long the item takes from a fresh spawn, assuming BingoMC's default world rules.

1. NETHERITE_INGOT (grindy). Four ancient debris, smelted into four netherite scrap, plus four gold ingots. Strictly everything ancient debris needs, and then some. If this lands on your card, treat the rest of the line as the plan and this slot as the tiebreaker.
2. ANCIENT_DEBRIS (grindy). Nether only, deep, never exposed to open air, and it needs a diamond pickaxe. So the real cost is diamonds first, then a portal, then the mining.
3. RESPAWN_ANCHOR (grindy). Six crying obsidian and three glowstone. Crying obsidian means finding a ruined portal and bringing a diamond pickaxe, and the glowstone means a trip to the nether anyway.
4. GRASS_BLOCK (grindy). The block is everywhere and you still cannot have one: breaking it gives dirt. You need silk touch, which means an enchanting table, lapis, and the levels to spend. The cheapest item on the card by materials and one of the most expensive by setup.
5. CHIPPED_ANVIL and DAMAGED_ANVIL (grindy, two separate entries). An anvil is three iron blocks and four ingots, 31 iron in total, and a fresh anvil does not count. You have to use it until it degrades, or drop it. Two of the eighteen grindy singles are this same job at different stages.
6. ENCHANTED_BOOK (grindy). Either the full enchanting setup, or luck from fishing and loot chests. Pairs well with GRASS_BLOCK, because the enchanting table covers both.
7. PRISMARINE_CRYSTALS (grindy). An ocean monument, which has to be inside the border, and then the swim. Peaceful mode removes the guardians, so the obstacle is finding it, not surviving it. The whole PRISMARINE category is grindy for the same reason.
8. NAUTILUS_SHELL (grindy). Drowned do not spawn on peaceful, so this is a fishing rod and patience. Unlike most grindy items you can do nothing to speed it up, which is why it feels worse than it looks.
9. COBWEB (grindy). No spiders on peaceful, so the only route is a mineshaft, a stronghold or a woodland mansion, and you need shears or a sword to pick it up rather than destroy it.
10. LODESTONE (hard). The surprise. Lodestone sits in the hard pool, not grindy, but its recipe needs a netherite ingot, which BingoMC itself grades grindy. It is the single hardest thing that can land on an ordinary hard card.

Every Grindy Single Item

These are all 18 single-item entries in the grindy pool, straight from the item pools, with the short reason each one is in there.

The Grindy Categories Are Worse Than They Look

A category takes one slot on the card and resolves to one random member, so you do not get to choose which one you are chasing. The five largest categories anywhere in BingoMC's pools are all in the grindy tier.

• WAIT (24 materials). The server named this one honestly. Candles, eggs, cake, pumpkin pie, honeycomb, honey bottle. Nothing in it is rare and nothing in it can be rushed: chickens lay on their own schedule and bees fill a hive on theirs.
• STRING (23 materials). Bows, crossbows, bundles, a loom, a fishing rod, scaffolding, a dispenser. All string crafts, and peaceful mode means there are no spiders, so the string has to come out of cobwebs, a fishing rod, or a loot chest.
• PALE OAK (22), MANGROVE (19) and CHERRY (18). Three biome-locked wood sets, all grindy, all of them a search for one specific biome inside a 5000 by 5000 block world. Finding the biome is the whole task. Once you are standing in it, any of the 22 pale oak materials is a few seconds of work.
• PUFFERFISH and TROPICAL FISH (2 each). The small ones are not a relief. Both resolve to either the fish or its bucket, so either way you are fishing or carrying a bucket to warm water.
• BEETROOT (3) and POTATO AND CARROT (5). Village crops. Easy once you have found a village, and a long walk until you have.

Hard Items That Punch Above Their Tier

Most games are not grindy. These are the entries from the hard pool that cost the most on a normal hard card.

• LODESTONE. Needs a netherite ingot. See above.
• SADDLE. Cannot be crafted at all. Chest loot or fishing, and nothing you do makes it faster.
• OBSIDIAN category. Obsidian or an enchanting table, so diamonds for the pickaxe either way, and the table also wants obsidian and a book.
• DIAMOND HEAVY and DIAMOND TOOLS. A diamond block or a piece of diamond armour is up to nine diamonds for one slot. DIAMOND TOOLS is kinder, but you still do not get to pick which tool.
• LUSH CAVE. Seven materials including an axolotl bucket and a spore blossom, all of them inside a lush cave you have to find first.
• BANNERS (16 materials). Wool plus a stick plus one specific dye, and you do not choose the colour. A brown banner means cocoa beans, which means a jungle.
• ARMADILLO. Armadillo scute or wolf armour, and wolf armour is made of scutes, so both halves of the category are the same animal hunt.

Why Peaceful Mode Changes The List

BingoMC games run on peaceful, so hostile mobs never spawn. That quietly removes the normal route to several materials and is the reason a few otherwise ordinary items sit in the grindy pool.

• String has no spiders behind it, so it comes from cobwebs, fishing or loot.
• Nautilus shells have no drowned behind them, so they come from fishing.
• Prismarine has no guardians behind it, so it comes from the monument itself.
• Cobwebs are structure loot rather than a mob by-product.

It cuts the other way too. Nothing can kill you except the world, keep inventory is on, and there is no night, so a long trip to a monument or a pale garden is safe. The cost of a hard item on BingoMC is time, not risk. The full rule list is on how Minecraft bingo works.

How Often You Actually See Them

You never get a card made only of these. Each difficulty is merged with the one below it, so a grindy card draws from grindy plus hard, and a quarter of the card is reserved for the pool two steps easier. A grindy 4x4 card always contains 4 medium items, and a hard 4x4 card always contains 4 easy ones.

That matters for how you play a hard card. There is always an opening line that does not start with a nether trip, and in a normal game you only need one row, column, or diagonal. Reading the card for the cheapest line is usually worth more than being fast at any single item, which is where Minecraft bingo strategies picks up.

Useful Links

• Bingo Item Pools
• How Minecraft Bingo Works
• Minecraft Bingo Strategies
• Lockout Bingo
• How To Join BingoMC
• BingoMC Discord