How to Make Paper in Minecraft?

Paper is a key ingredient in Minecraft, and while the recipe is simple, you may need some help with the basic concepts. It doesn’t require anything difficult to find or grind, and you can craft it or loot it in the early game.

Paper allows you to craft banners, books, cartography table blocks, empty maps, and firework rockets. Notably, it’s essential for mapping your world, and it’s also an initial step to craft the Enchanting Table, which needs books and bookshelves.

We’ll guide you through the paper recipe, and all of the items you can craft with paper.

Minecraft Paper Ingredients

You need three sugar canes to craft paper, and you can do so on the Crafting Grid or the Crafting Table. The result would be three papers, but you need to put the three canes in the middle row.

Sugar Canes are common blocks. These are plants that may have up to four blocks in height. They grow near any water sources in the Overworld, and you can pick them up with your hands.

Canes can spawn in any biome, but they are more common in swamps (twice the spawn rate) and desert biomes (six times the spawn rate).

Generally, you’d want to scour banks of rivers cutting through deserts and swamps. You’d also want to find beaches (where turtles live) and coasts on taiga, plains, and forest biomes.

You could also loot paper in chests. Here’re the chances to find it in the Java or Bedrock Editions.

Java Edition
Location	Chance
Stronghold’s Library Chest	89.4%
Village’s Cartographer’s Chest	61.2%
Shipwreck’s Supply Chest	46.4%
Shipwreck’s Map Chest	89.4%
Bedrock Edition
Stronghold’s Library Chest	88.3%
Village’s Cartographer’s Chest	61.2%
Shipwreck’s Supply Chest	46.4%
Shipwreck’s Map Chest	89.4%

How to Farm Sugar Crane?

Given how sugar canes are the main ingredient for paper, perhaps it would be best to farm it somewhere safe.

You can farm it by picking it up, placing the cane on your action bar, and putting it on the ground. You can plant it on dirt, coarse dirt, rooted dirt, grass, podzol, sand, red sand, mycelium, moss block, and mud blocks.

However, water, frosted ice, or a waterlogged block needs to be adjacent to these blocks. You can cover the adjacent water with an opaque or transparent block like pink glass.

Lastly, you can use Bone Meal on sugar canes to make them grow instantly. Bone Meals are only available on Bedrock Edition, and you can loot it from fish mobs.

What Can You Do With Paper?

Paper is a key ingredient to create banner patterns, books, empty maps, and fireworks.

Banner patterns are items you can use to customize banners on looms. There’re six patterns in Java and eight patterns in Bedrock.

To make one of these, you have to combine a piece of paper and a specific item in the crafting menu. For example, a paper plus a Wither Skeleton Skull for the Skull Charge banner pattern.

These are the banner recipes available:

Paper + Vines: Bordure Indented Banner Pattern (Bedrock only)
Paper + Bricks: Field Masoned Banner Pattern (Bedrock only)
Paper + Creeper Head: Creeper Charge Banner Pattern (a Creeper face)
Paper + Oxeye Daisy: Flower Charge Banner Pattern (a flower on the banner)
Paper + Golden Apple: Thing Banner Pattern (former Mojang Studios’ logo on the banner)

The next thing you can craft with paper is a book. The recipe is three papers and one piece of leather on the Crafting Table. You can make leather by mixing four rabbit hides in the crafting grid, which you can loot from rabbits.

The next recipe is an empty map, which is the result of mixing 8 pieces of paper and a Compass on the Crafting Table. The Compass needs to be in the center, but you can also swap the Compass for the 9th piece of paper to get the same result.