Talk:Bone

can it be used to color wool white or not? Bone_Meal#Uses says it can not color wool, only sheep. --Schulz 08:06, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I fixed it. It can only color a sheep. - Asterick6 06:53, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

It is proven that if you put a bone item in the head armor slot it renders in front of the face rather than above the head like other items.

This was taken on snapshot 16w33a, but also happens in 1.10.2

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Ajloveslily (talk) 16:13, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Which can be changed via resource packs. Hence why it's not allowed via style guide. Skylinerw (talk) 16:21, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

The text says "In Bedrock Edition, salmon, cod, pufferfish, and tropical fish have 25% chance to drop 1-2 bones upon death. The maximum drop is increased by 1 to 2 per level of Looting, for a maximum of 2-8 bones with Looting III."

But the table says that looting has no effect on the bone drop rate for fish.

Which is it? ~Anachronist (talk) 05:32, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

The table is wrong, there's a clear effect of increase of bone drops with looting.

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Ayaan 09:44, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

@Ayaan: That's cool, how did you make that? Some sort of automatic fish killer contraption?

With a larger sample size, quantities in the table could be more refined. Right now it's hard to tell, from those tables in your screenshot, how the numbers in the article should be revised. ~Anachronist (talk) 21:46, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment! :)

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Unfortunately, this was done manually 🤣 so I had to do this by hand for an hour.

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The screenshot shows each fish and its drop. With this, we can confirm that fish do drop bones around 25% of the time regardless of looting levels.

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As well, it shows how much bones drop on average for each looting level. Unfortunately the sample size is still too small as according to the wiki, Looting III should drop 2-8 bones, but I've not gotten a 2, 3 or 8 bone drop.

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For the next test, I will disregard any fish that does not drop a bone as they're not really relevant.

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As well, I think I messed up on one result on Looting I as I somehow got a 5 bone result (and a 4 bone result) but that may be because I wasn't paying attention due to it be manual.

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If you have any suggestions on how I can improve the method either through redstone or command blocks, it would be greatly appreciated. :D 👁 Image
Ayaan 09:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I would like to add I haven't taken consideration of the size of the salmon. I'm not sure if this will affect the results.

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I will do a test (soon!), I'm just quite busy this morning lol 👁 Image
Ayaan 09:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

As well, whilst an automatic killing contraption is insanely easy to do, it's the organising part which is the most difficult. I don't want bones to be in the same stack if they're not dropped by the same fish! 👁 Image
Ayaan 10:00, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I get it now. Each slot represents the drop from one fish.

In that case, I'd say the entire Looting description is wrong in this article. Because your minimum drop goes up with Looting level, the rule seems to be 1-2 multiplied by Looting+1. So you get 1-2 with no Looting, 2-4 at Looting I, 3-6 at Looting II, and 4-8 at Looting III. Your results are consistent with that formula except for that error you mentioned with Looting I.

Based on this, I doubt you would ever see 2 or 3 bones drop with Looting III, I'll bet it's always 4-8. ~Anachronist (talk) 16:08, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

It looks like we will never get a bone drop with a stack of 8.

With Looting 3, all salmon that drops a bone, only drops 4, 5, 6 or 7 bones.

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Ayaan 18:56, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, there's a known bug with database queries, being discussed at Minecraft Wiki:Admin noticeboard#Bugs in trading related templates. I fixed the drop tables in cod, salmon, pufferfish, and tropical fish because that's where the data for drops on this page is coming from. I cleared the server cache of each page so they'd refresh. Now only cod appears here in this article.

Also, the drop formula wouldn't allow 4-7 for Looting III, it has to be 4-8 due to the normal Looting progression formula. I suspect that if you tried long enough, you'd get a fish dropping 8 bones with Looting III, but the distribution is likely non-uniform, making the chance very small. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:09, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Update: As I was typiing that, the table fixed itself, and now shows everything. The drops for small/medium salmon is still at 1, because your tests above don't make the distinction but I suspect that it's 1 for no looting and increases by 1 for each level. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:15, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you :) Do you recommend me to do any tests? 👁 Image
Ayaan 20:28, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

The only glaring problem still is the small/medium salmon. If you can figure out how to test that, it would be great.

How are you testing this? What I'm thinking is creating a flat world, digging several 1-block deep 2x2 holes, filling them all with water, and putting salmon spawn eggs in each, getting rid of the large salmon when they appear, then killing the small and medium ones. ~Anachronist (talk) 16:45, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Pretty much been doing that. The only problem is that I'm unsure how to spawn (small, medium, large) salmon using commands. I'm sure there's a method.

It's quite tedious to do it through spawn eggs. 👁 Image
Ayaan 17:51, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Maybe with a command block? I used one once for a lightning strike test but never tried it with mobs. Like every 30 seconds spawn a salmon, if it's large or medium then kill it and throw away the loot, if it's small then put the loot in the chest. Wait for the next spawn. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:00, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Minor nitpick but why is the FIRST part of explaining the uses of a bone the tiny easter egg that's only accessable through commands? I tried moving it down but grabbing it/copy pasting in mobile is kinda finicky Shipoopro (talk) 11:15, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Fixed, it made absolutely no sense so thank you for bringing this up.--Capopanzo (talk | contribs) 16:49, 29 November 2025 (UTC)