How to Tame a Nautilus in Minecraft: Pufferfish and Odds

To tame a nautilus in Minecraft, feed it a pufferfish or a bucket of pufferfish. Each feed has a 1 in 3 chance of working, so bring six to eight.

The nautilus is a neutral ocean mob added in the Mounts of Mayhem drop (Java 1.21.11 and Bedrock 1.21.130) on December 9, 2025. Once tamed and saddled, it becomes an underwater mount that keeps you from drowning.

The in-game mob borrows from the real nautilus, a marine mollusk with a coiled, chambered shell, according to Wikipedia. This guide applies to Java Edition 26.3 and Bedrock Edition 26.50 on PC, console and mobile, checked in October 2026.

What you need to tame a nautilus in Minecraft

How to tame a nautilus in Minecraft, step by step

Feed the nautilus pufferfish until hearts appear, then add a saddle to ride it.

1. Find a nautilus. Swim down in any ocean biome to between Y 38 and Y 58, where they spawn in groups of one to three.
2. Collect six to eight pufferfish by fishing or with a water bucket.
3. Hold a pufferfish and swim close. A nautilus follows players holding fish within 10 blocks.
4. Use the pufferfish on the nautilus. Repeat until hearts appear.
5. Use a saddle on the tamed nautilus, or sneak and use it to open its inventory.
6. Mount it. While you ride underwater you get Breath of the Nautilus, which pauses your oxygen bar.

How many pufferfish it takes to tame a nautilus

Three pufferfish is the average. With a 1 in 3 chance per feed, six pufferfish give you about 91% odds of success.

These figures are our own calculation from the Minecraft Wiki’s 1 in 3 taming chance. Every failed feed uses up one pufferfish.

Where to find a nautilus in Minecraft

Nautiluses spawn in every ocean biome between Y 38 and Y 58, in groups of one to three, per the Minecraft Wiki. PC Gamer notes they don’t appear near the surface.

In Java Edition, the wiki’s spawn table gives cold and frozen oceans the largest nautilus share (50% of water creature spawns) and lukewarm oceans the smallest (about 14% to 17%). In Bedrock, every ocean biome has the same weight.

Pufferfish lean the other way. Catch them in a warm or lukewarm ocean first, then head to a cold ocean to find the nautilus.

How to ride a tamed nautilus

You can sit on a tamed nautilus without a saddle, but you need one to steer.

• Riding underwater gives Breath of the Nautilus, which pauses your oxygen bar.
• Hold the jump control to charge a dash that launches you about 12 blocks and recharges every 2 seconds.
• Top swim speed is 6.5 meters per second, per the Minecraft Wiki.
• It roams up to 32 blocks from where it was tamed, or 16 blocks when saddled.
• On land it crawls at under 1 meter per second and takes suffocation damage.
• After you interact with it once, it stops despawning.

PC Gamer notes that you still have to resurface eventually, though the effect stretches your time underwater a long way.

How to heal and breed a nautilus

Any fish or bucket of fish heals an adult nautilus and breeds two at full health. Cooked salmon heals the most (12 health points) and pufferfish the least (2).

A baby takes 20 minutes to grow up. In Java, each fish cuts the remaining time by 10%; in Bedrock, it takes 10 fish.

How to tame a zombie nautilus

Kill the drowned riding it first. Mojang’s notes say a zombie nautilus spawns with a trident-wielding drowned rider and is hostile only while a hostile mob rides it.

G-Portal’s guide says pufferfish tame it once the rider is gone. Mojang’s notes only say it behaves like a nautilus, so the exact method is not officially confirmed.

A coral variant spawns in Warm Ocean biomes. It can be ridden, but Mojang says it can’t be bred.

Why your nautilus won’t tame

1. Bad luck. Two in three feeds fail, and six misses in a row happen about 9% of the time.
2. Wrong fish. Only pufferfish tames it; cod, salmon and tropical fish only heal or breed it.
3. You hit it. An untamed adult is neutral and retaliates with a dash attack if provoked.
4. Bedrock pufferfish shortage. PC Gamer says Bedrock pufferfish can’t be caught in jungle, sparse jungle or bamboo jungle biomes.
5. It’s tamed but won’t steer. Check the saddle is in its saddle slot.

A few pages claim a nautilus can’t be tamed. They confuse the mob with the older nautilus shell item, while Mojang’s 1.21.11 notes confirm pufferfish tame it.

Nautilus taming on Java vs Bedrock

Will Minecraft 26.4 change nautilus taming?

The 26.3 changelog has no nautilus entry. Java 26.4 is in snapshots with Ice Caves as its headline, planned for the fourth quarter of 2026, so recheck the taming chance and spawn weights when it ships.

Mojang ships these drops for free several times a year. Microsoft has owned the game since it agreed to pay $2.5 billion for Mojang in 2014, as reported by Bloomberg.

FAQ