What's the fastest way to find melons?

Question

I'm frequently finding myself in situations where I am barely hungry with 9\10 Drumsticks filled, but also with low health. I don't want to waste cooked meat on filling that last Drumstick to start my health regen. Melon slices, which fill 1 slot of the hunger bar (or one Drumstick), would be perfect for keeping me full.

Hunger has carry over saturation. The extra nourishment of eating a big item is not wasted and helps to keep you "full" longer. http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Hunger#Food_level_and_saturation_level_restoration — Chris Nava, Nov 04 '12 at 01:07
Re-edited. This should make the entire thing impossible to misunderstand, what do you think? — Ender, Nov 05 '12 at 10:47

score 17 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 28 '16 at 17:00

There are three ways to obtain melon slices:

Grow and harvest a melon block.
- Locate an abandoned mineshaft, they commonly intersect with a ravine, so ravines are a good place to look for them.
- Look for chest within an abandoned mineshaft. According to the wiki, the chests there have 13% chance to contain 2-4 melon seeds.
- Grow melon on farmland using melon seeds.
- Harvesting the fully grown melon block yields 3-7 Melon Slices.
Trade with farmer villager.
- Find an NPC village. They can only be found in desert or plains biome.
- Obtain emeralds by trading with villagers or from mining (Emerald Ore is very, very rare).
- Look for the 1 emerald for 5-8 melon slices deals offered by farmer villagers. They are the ones dressed in brown robes.
- If no villagers offer that deal, you can grow more villagers by building more houses (doors). Alternatively, you can kill villagers to make room for new villagers to spawn.
Find a jungle biome. If you explore a jungle biome enough you could find melon blocks. Break these and get 5-8 melon slices per block. From there you could craft the slices into seeds and start a farm.

It depends on your situation to determine which way is faster. Finding and exploring abandoned mineshafts will be more fun but does not guarantee you will find melon seeds. Discovering an NPC village guarantees that you will eventually have a villager that will trade melon slices. As a surplus some villagers might have some really nice trades, but it gets really, really annoying when you have a lot of villagers.

Either way, to sustain a constant supply of melon slices, the best way is to have a melon farm. As mentioned above, melon seeds can be found in abandoned mineshaft chests. They can also be crafted, 1 melon seed from 1 melon slice.

Additional Note: The 13% chance to find 2-4 melon seeds in an abandoned mineshaft chest sounds very slim, but there is a high chance that there will be more than one chest in an abandoned mineshaft. They are big places after all.

Also, you can now find melon growing naturally on the floor in jungles. (This is a fairly recent change - tested in 1.8.3) — user9876, Apr 10 '15 at 23:00
I have approx. 18 days (real gameplay time - stats are taken from the statistics page in Minecraft) on my current seed and haven't found a single melon (in a grown or seed form) anywhere. So far I have explored around 8-9 mineshafts without any luck in finding the damn seeds. I guess I'm just really unlucky! LOL Is there a chance that a village farmer sells such a thing? I have a bunch of farmers with the second tier of trade and they BUY melons and pumpkins. I really hope that I can buy melon seeds even if it costs like 20 emeralds. — rbaleksandar, May 14 '16 at 12:10

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 17 '11 at 06:06

8

Well, the only way to find Melons would be to stumble upon an Abandoned Mineshaft, and hope some of the chests have Melon Seeds. From there, Melons are extremely easy to farm: like Pumpkins, when you plant the seeds, the stalks that grow will not disappear after harvesting the melon they grow, so assuming you make a large enough farm, you will have a fairly constant supply of melons.

answered Dec 17 '11 at 06:06

Kevin Yap

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You emphasized "find". Is there another way to obtain an initial source of melons? – John the Green Dec 17 '11 at 06:07
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Sadly, no. Unlike Pumpkins, Melons don't spawn around the world, so you have to find seeds to start farming them. – Kevin Yap Dec 17 '11 at 06:08
I was expecting this answer, so you may be interested in my prepared follow up question. :D – John the Green Dec 17 '11 at 06:14
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@Kevin Y - This answer could maybe do with an update, it is also possible to buy melon slices from villagers and aquire seeds that way. – Kurley Nov 03 '12 at 11:03
Thanks for the tip @Kurley . Also since 1.8 (perhaps even earlier) so melons do spawn like pumpkins naturally but in my experience they are rarer than pumpkins. – rbaleksandar May 14 '16 at 12:12

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 03 '13 at 21:19

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I think you can find melons in jungles and of course mine shafts

answered Nov 03 '13 at 21:19

user58884

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To clarify, Melons are newly part of terrain generation in jungles in 1.7, or the 13w36a snapshot. If you have an existing world, you will need to explore new terrain to find them in jungles. – SingleNegationElimination Nov 04 '13 at 18:44

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 28 '23 at 14:52

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As of version 1.4.2, there are quite a few ways to acquire melon seeds. As listed by the Minecraft Wiki, you can find Mellon seeds by either finding one in an abandoned mineshaft chest, trading with a villager, or 'crafting' a melon slice you already have.

Note that the Minecraft Wiki is outdated most of the time, but from my experiences, these are currently the only way to acquire melon seeds as of version 1.4.2.

edited Nov 28 '23 at 14:52

Community

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answered Nov 03 '12 at 12:12

Not entirely illogical - getting seeds from melon slices can help grow a melon farm from a few stalks to inventory filling in short order. (Plus that's where the seeds tend to actually be :P) – Trent Hawkins Nov 03 '12 at 13:12
I agree, but still: if you have no melons, and you are searching for some, you will not find any melon slices to get the melon seeds from if you are on a regular singleplayer world. – Nov 03 '12 at 18:33
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Villagers only trade Melon Slices, not Seeds. – w1nger1 Nov 05 '12 at 03:35
A melon slice placed in a crafting table/grid will produce a melon seed. – Timtech Jul 27 '13 at 21:35

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 04 '12 at 17:04

Melons could be challenging to find, depending on your world's seed and your luck. If you do find one, you can start a melon farm by planting seeds and harvest your own melon.

Usually, people use melon mainly for brewing purposes. It is rarely that a player would eat a melon slice to fill its hunger. This is because the hunger bar has another "hidden" bar, so even if you are only "slightly hungry" and eat a big steak, the steak will not go waste. Here's why:

There are four fields in level.dat which are related to hunger:

foodLevel ranges from 0 to 20 and is represented by the player's Food Bar.

foodSaturationLevel is an invisible additional hunger variable that is depleted before main foodLevel value. Eating any food will also add some to this variable. Note that this cannot exceed foodLevel. The Food Bar jitters when this equals 0.

foodTickTimer increases with every tick when foodLevel is either greater than 17 or equals zero. When foodTickTimer reaches 80, it resets to zero and then heals or deals one point of damage to the Health Bar, respectively.

foodExhaustionLevel ranges from 0.0 to 4.0 and increases with every action the player takes. When the exhaustion level reaches above 4.0, it will be subtracted by 4.0 and subtracts 1 point either from foodSaturationLevel or, if foodSaturationLevel equals zero, from foodLevel.

As you can see, if your foodLevel just went down from full (20) to "slightly hungry (19)", it implies that your foodSaturationLevel has went down to 0. Now suppose you eat a slice of melon, you'll restore food points plus a mere 1.2 foodSaturationLevel. When you eat a steak, however, you'll restore 12.8 foodSaturationLevel, which means you will get hungry again much later.

score 2 · Answer 6 · edited Apr 07 '12 at 11:30

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You can only find melon seeds in abandoned mine shaft chests and dungeon chests.

edited Apr 07 '12 at 11:30

badp

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answered Apr 07 '12 at 10:50

unknown

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you cannot find melon seeds in dungeon chests. – Ender Nov 04 '12 at 14:58
You used to be able to, though. – Timtech Jul 27 '13 at 21:35

score -4 · Answer 7 · edited Nov 03 '12 at 08:48

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Melons are always on top of hills. When I look for melons, they are always on top of the first hill I find.

edited Nov 03 '12 at 08:48

badp

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answered Nov 03 '12 at 08:39

Lovechick

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Hi Lovechick, and welcome to Arqade! I think your answer is wrong though, as melons don't spawn naturally in minecraft. Are you sure you aren't thinking of pumpkins instead? – MBraedley Nov 03 '12 at 13:24

What's the fastest way to find melons?

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