Leads are one of the most underused items in Minecraft. They are useful tools that allow players to leash and lead passive and neutral animals, golems and some monsters. In this article, we are going to showcase the top 4 best uses for leads in Minecraft.

To get a lead, players can either loot them from woodland mansion chests or craft them using strings and slime balls. The former can be found by breaking cobwebs, while the latter drops from slimes.

Table of Contents

1. Craft balloons

Balloons are entities that float upward when placed. In Bedrock and Education edition, players can craft balloons using a lead, six pieces of latex, helium, and a color ingredient. Overall, they are excellent decorations for your bases and can even carry a mob into the air.
Players need one lead to craft one balloon.

Players can craft up to 16 different colored balloons, based on the dye they use.

2. Transporting mobs and keeping pets

Using a lead on a mob ties the lead to the mob, allowing it to be moved by the player. While players can hold multiple mobs by leads at once, they need to prepare one lead for each mob.
Players can transport mobs around much faster by using leads.

This allows players to move mobs to specific locations and build farms at whichever place they want. Furthermore, moving mobs with leads is much faster than luring them using food, as the mob is forced to walk faster than their normal speed.

Additionally, leads can be used to keep untamable mobs as pets. For example ocelots, foxes and axolotls cannot be tamed but players can keep them around as pets by leashing them to a fence post. These leashed mobs retain their original function: ocelots can scare away creepers while foxes and axolotls would fight other mobs.

3. Aesthetics

Players usually don't want mobs to move around too much. However, building a fence around them looks pretty ugly in builds. This is where leads come in - they allow players to immobilize whichever mob they want. A mob tied to a fence tends to stay within 5 blocks of the fence post.

Leashes allow players to keep pets that normally can't be tamed at all.

It is important to know that a lead does not prevent mobs from despawning if they normally would despawn. To prevent despawn, players need to craft and use a name tag.

4. Attaching a boat

While boats would stay in one spot when they are placed, any mobs or flowing water can push them away. If you are building a dock, having a leash to tie boats to the dock is a must. It ensures that the boat stays attached.

Attaching a lead to boats allow players to keep them at the same spot.

Furthermore, this also helps with aesthetics - the dock with a boat attached looks better than the dock without one.

>>> Read more: Top 5 Uses For Nether Quartz In Minecraft