Throughout the Minecraft universe, there are creatures large and little, friendly and harmful, and mixes of the two. Knowing what you’re up against can help you stay alive for a long time Mobs in Minecraft.

We’ve looked at Minecraft’s biomes and structures, and now it’s time to look at the critters that fill the world. Although Minecraft can appear to be empty at times, it’s rare to find yourself on a map without encountering some form of monster. Even if you’re in the middle of an apparently barren desert, a few swings of your pickax will generally reveal hidden caverns full of critters beneath the sand.

Minecraft mobs provide you the opportunity to interact (such as with villages and taming animals), eat (such as with the passive food-providing mobs), and battle (you’ll come across a number of hostile creatures big and tiny).

Mobs in Minecraft 

These creatures are classified as “mobs” in Minecraft and are separated into four categories: Passive, Neutral, Utility, and Aggressive mobs.

You are not imagining it if you get the definite impression that the balance of friendly-to-hostile animals is skewed heavily in favor of hostile ones while playing. Aggressive mobs spawn in fractions of a second, but passive mobs (such as animals) spawn in roughly half a minute.

The game asks “Should I produce an aggressive mob near the player?” every 1/20th of a second, whereas it only asks “Should I spawn a passive mob near the player?” once every 20 seconds only (and only during daylight on the surface). Because of these probabilities, you will encounter considerably more hostile mobs than passive mobs.

In Minecraft, there are a lot of passive creatures, and some of them are more useful than just providing ambiance or food.

Mobs abound in Minecraft’s environment, and as you explore the places around you, you’ll come across a slew of them. Unfortunately, some of these mobs are hostile, and approaching them without protection can be extremely dangerous.

Passive mobs

Mobs that aren’t active

Passive mobs are monsters that will never attack the player under any conditions. Pigs, for example, may be bred to effectively farm them, and some passive mobs can be bred to make more of them. With the exception of bats, passive mobs always spawn at the greatest lit elevation available for the chunk they’re spawning on.

This means that a cow will never spawn in a well-lit cave beneath a plains biome, as the cow will always spawn on the surface grassland above.

1. Pigs

Pigs live in tiny herds of three to four members and spawn in grassy/forested environments. They produce 1-3 uncooked pork chops when killed (but if killed by fire, they drop cooked pork chops).

Players can not only hunt them for food, but they can also breed them (by feeding them carrots) to produce more pigs and saddle them to ride them like a little and slow horse. If you want to get anywhere with a small and slow horse, you’ll need to lead it with a carrot and a stick.

2. Sheep

Sheep spawn in grassy/forested areas in groups of 2-8 animals and provide the player with wool (useful for crafting items like a bed). Shearing a sheep will leave the sheep alive and yield 1-3 blocks of wool, however killing a sheep will yield one block of wool.

Although wool is useful, if you’re in a sheep-heavy habitat, it can be aggravating (as they produce nothing the player can eat).

Sheep can be produced by providing wheat to them. Although white sheep account for over 80% of all naturally generated sheep in the game, sheep can also spawn in black, brown, grey, light grey, and, very rarely, pink colours.

You can dye sheep additional colours outside the basic hues, such as yellow, blue, and green, and the dyed sheep will stay that colour (producing as much of the coloured wool was you wish to shear from them).

3. Chickens

Chickens create several different types of droppings. A chicken will drop 0-2 feathers and one plate of uncooked chicken when slaughtered (cooked chicken if killed with fire). They will lay a chicken egg every 5-10 minutes if left alive. Eggs can be harvested and utilised in recipes, or they can be used to create new chickens.

Spawning chickens is a lot of fun: you throw the collected eggs around like baseballs, and each one that breaks has a chance to produce a chick.Seeds can be used to breed chickens (such as wheat, melon, or pumpkin seeds). Chickens lay their eggs in grassy or forested environments.

4. Cows

Cows, like other agricultural animals, spawn in groups of two to eight in grassy/forested areas. Cows, like chickens, are a versatile species that can provide both food (1-3 raw beef when slaughtered, steaks if killed by fire) and milk (if milked with a pail) as well as 0-2 leather units when slain.

Wheat can be used to breed them, and if you have wheat in your hand, they will cheerfully follow you. You can easily convince the entire herd to follow you if you walk slowly enough.

5. Mooshrooms

Mooshrooms are mutant cows that have the same body model as cows but only spawn in herds of 2-8 mooshrooms in the Mushroom biome, which is rare. If slain, they generate leather and meat (steak if murdered with fire), and they can be milked with a pail, just like cows.

However, in addition to the typical cow-like item drops, the mooshrooms can also be sheared (dropping five red mushrooms) or “milked” (producing mushroom stew) using a dish. The mooshroom is the most flexible monster in the game due to the huge variety of drops it can provide. Wheat can be used to breed mushrooms.

6. Horses

Plains/savannah biomes are where horses (and, to a lesser extent, donkeys) spawn. If they are slain, they lose 0-2 leather units and, in rare situations, a saddle, horse armor, or chest if they have any additional equipment. Because most horses only produce a tiny amount of leather, it’s more feasible to tame and saddle them in order to use them as transportation.

Simply click on a wild horse to tame it and ride it. You’ll be thrown off by the horse. Rep the procedure until the horse is no longer agitated. You can also use a saddle to rapidly tame a horse. A saddle is required to direct the horse’s movement once tamed, regardless of how you tame the horse.

Horses can be mated with golden apples or carrots, while a horse bred with a donkey produces a mule, which, like the donkey, can be provided with a chest to aid in material movement. Given the relative cost of producing golden apples and carrots (which are essentially the base fruit/vegetable coated in gold), you’d have to be dead intent on breeding horses to go through with it, but hey, no one said operating a horse ranch was cheap.

7. Ocelots

Ocelots are a type of wild cat that may be found in the Jungle biome. When they’re out in the wild, all ocelots are the same color: tan with brown markings.

However, uncooked fish can be used to tame wild ocelots. After being fed raw fish, the wild ocelot will transform into a domestic cat with one of three colour patterns allocated for cats. Ocelots/cats are immune to fall damage and are great at keeping Creepers (an aggressive mob creature we’ll meet shortly) at bay.

Cats will walk around and follow the player unless they are told to sit (by right-clicking on them). Cats in Minecraft, like cats in real life, enjoy jumping up on beds, chests, and other raised surfaces.

8. Bats

Bats mate in caves and other large enclosed dark locations where they can mate naturally. Despite your instinct to smash them away, the bats are absolutely harmless, unlike in other video games. They’re also rather useless because they don’t drop anything, can’t be tamed, and give no experience when slain.

They are useful, though, because they are loud and can indicate the presence of a nearby cavern. When digging mineshafts, keep an ear out for bat squeaks, which usually signal a nearby cave system. The only flying passive mob is bats.

9. Squids

Squids can be found in any biome where there is water. Despite its name, the squid body model resembles an octopus more than a squid.

Squids are fully passive and will drop 1-3 ink sacs when killed. These sacs can be collected and used to make colours and more advanced craftable objects like books and quills.

10. Villagers

Villagers are the game’s only human (or, more accurately, human-like) characters, and they spawn in villages. Each villagers’ job is denoted by the colour of their robe or apron; brown-robed villagers are farmers, white-robed villagers are librarians, purple-robed villagers are priests, black-aproned villagers are blacksmiths, and white-robed villagers are butchers.

You can trade with villagers by right-clicking on them; their occupation has a big influence on what they’ll trade with you. Villagers frequently exchange items for emeralds or emeralds for stuff, for example, twenty raw chickens for five emeralds.

Although the trade system frequently favors the villager, we encourage checking trades whenever you’re near a village because it’s possible to grab higher level/hard-to-obtain stuff pretty readily. We routinely encounter farmers who are willing to exchange emeralds for stacks of wheat (we assume they are independently affluent and merely want additional farmhands because we always offer them wheat from their own fields).

Although people reproduce if the village’s population lowers (you’ll occasionally see little miniature child-size villagers roaming around), they have no gender-distinctive traits and, save for their dress color, all appear the same.

Villagers will seek shelter indoors at night to avoid hostile mobs, but their Artificial Intelligence engine (AI) is terrible. Zombies are drawn to villagers and will flock to them once the sun sets, but you can’t count on the villagers to keep them away (and they have no mechanism to attack the zombies).

If you want to keep a village alive so you can trade with the villagers you need to do one of two things. First, you need to avoid the village at night; stay at least 128 blocks away to keep the mobs from spawning in the village. Second, if you wish to live in the village, you need to fortify the village with walls and lots of torches. If you completely light the interior area of the village no hostile mobs will spawn there.

Killing a villager yields no drops and is strongly advised against. Not only is murdering defenseless and villagers bad form, they’re are very slow to repopulate their villages so you’ll deprive yourself of valuable trading partners if you murder everyone in town.

Utility mobs

Mobs with purpose.While we’re on the subject of villages and villagers, let’s take a look at the tiniest mob group, which only has two members: utility mobs. Utility mobs are so named because, as the name suggests, they provide a utilitarian purpose for the player.

1. Golems of Iron

Iron golems can be found in the wild, albeit occasionally. They naturally spawn in large communities with at least 10 residents and 21 “houses.” We put houses in quotation marks because, according to the Minecraft village algorithm, a house isn’t a complete construction as you and I might think, but rather a door attached to one. As a result, butcher homes (which have two doors) are recorded as two dwellings in some localities.

Iron Golems can also be made by stacking four iron blocks on the ground and placing a pumpkin on top of them. The crafting table was utilised to conveniently arrange the blocks for reference in the screenshot above, but the actual golem must be built on the ground. Don’t worry, we’ll get to building tables, blocks, and structures soon enough.

Iron golems guard communities and will fight anyone who attacks a villager (player or mob).

2. Golems of the Snow

Snow golems are the only mob in the Meet the Mobs lesson that can only be found if you make them yourself.

If you encounter a snow biome, you can collect snow, stack it, then top it with a pumpkin to construct a snowman. He’ll roam aimlessly around the area where he was formed, throwing snowballs at enemy monsters (you can also collect snow from the trail he leaves behind).

Don’t worry, we’ll get to the topic of crafting supplies and pumpkin locations soon enough.

Neutral Mobs

While passive mobs will never attack you (you can beat up cows and villagers all day long without fear of retaliation), neutral mobs will remain uninterested in you until you provoke them. What constitutes provocation varies depending on the mob type.

1. Wolves

Wolves are found in packs of 1-8 in the Forest and Taiga biomes, as well as their variations. By default, the wolves are utterly unafraid of the player, and you can approach them at any time. Only if you strike them in some way will they attack. Be aware that attacking one wolf will elicit attacks from the rest of the pack.

It is possible to tame wolves by giving them a bone. They take on the appearance of canines and wear a crimson collar (much like ocelots turn from wild cats into domestic cats). The collar will change to match the colour of the expended dye unit if you click on the dog with dye (such as a squid ink sac).

Tamed dogs will stick close to the player and attack anything he or she assaults or is attacked by. Large groups of tame dogs can be difficult to control, but they’ll defend you valiantly.

When you right-click on a dog, it will sit and stop following the player. When wolves are slain, they just drop experience.

2. Spiders/Cave 

Spiders are a type of spider that lives in caves.In high light, spiders are neutral, but in low light, they are aggressive. If you come across a spider during the day, unless you irritate it by hitting it, you can safely stroll past it without fear of assault. Spiders, on the other hand, will attack on sight at night or in dark dungeons.

When killed, both spiders and cave spiders drop 0-2 string and 0-1 spider eyes.

Regular spiders breed at night on The Overworld’s surface and in dark caverns at any time of day. Cave Spiders are a smaller version of the spider that can only be found in Abandoned Mineshafts via a mob spawner (a small fire-filled cage). Cave Spiders bite is lethal, and they can easily overpower an unprepared player.

3. Endermen

Endermen are a towering, long-limbed creature that can be found in both The Overworld and The End at night/at low light levels. They’re known for their eerie looks (they have glowing purple eyes and teleport throughout the earth at random) as well as their aversion to being observed.

You can provoke an Enderman in a variety of ways, including fighting it, but you can also aggravate them simply by staring at them. They will become upset and begin teleporting and assaulting you if you stare at their faces or upper bodies from a distance of 64 blocks or fewer.

Endermen will teleport swiftly to avoid suffering damage when exposed to light (such as daybreak) or water (such as rain or chasing a player into an area with water).

Endermen drop 0-1 Ender Pearls when slain, an exotic in-game substance required to reach The End.

4. Pigmen Zombie

In The Overworld, Zombie Pigmen are incredibly rare, as they only spawn when lightning strikes a herd of pigs. They aren’t hostile toward the player until they are attacked, just like wolves, but if you attack them, they and their nearby family will quickly swarm on the player.

They spawn often in The Nether, while being relatively rare on The Overworld. Zombie Pigmen drop 0-1 pieces of decaying flesh and 0-1 gold nuggets when killed. They are extremely unlikely to drop a gold ingot or a golden sword.

Aggressive Mobs

Aggressive mobs, unlike our previous two mob categories, will always attack on sight, regardless of the situation, and will usually aggressively seek out close players.

1. Zombies

These green-skinned thugs are by far the most prevalent mob in the game. You can expect to run into them as soon as the sun sets or as soon as you enter a dark tunnel. They trudge forward, growling, moaning, and otherwise grumbling as they search for players (or villagers) to devour.

When zombies are killed, they drop 0-2 bits of rotten flesh, as well as carrots, iron ingots, potatoes, iron swords and shovels, and random armor. When zombies are exposed to sunlight, they will burn; if you leave your shelter in the morning and see random pieces of rotten flesh laying around, you’ve discovered the remnants of some unfortunate zombie scorched by the morning sun.

There are various types of zombies. Zombie Villagers have the same appearance as typical villagers, however they are green. The zombie villagers, unlike typical zombies, can be turned back into humans by using a weakening potion on them and feeding them golden apples. It’s rarely worth the effort, given how difficult it is to “treat” and restrain the sick villager during the process.

Baby Zombies are only one block tall, move quickly, and don’t burn in the sun. They can climb ladders (whereas typical zombies would only use ladders if they come into contact with them) and are occasionally spotted riding chickens (an extremely rare variant known as the Chicken Jockey).

2. Creepers

Although zombies are the most common violent mob in Minecraft, Creepers are the most well-known. Creepers have four squatty legs and are armless/handless humanoids. They move very silently (with the occasional rustling sound) or creep up on players before self-detonating in a TNT-like explosion that inflicts severe damage on the player and breaks surrounding blocks, making them particularly annoying when near bases and other player-created structures.

Creepers drop 0-2 mounds of gunpowder when slain. If they burst before you kill them, they don’t drop any piles. Surprisingly, if you can convince a Skeleton to kill a creeper by attracting the skeleton’s attention and then moving the creeper between you and the skeleton, the creeper will drop a rare music disc for you.

Creepers, like other hostile mobs, spawn in the dark, however unlike skeletons and zombies, creepers do not burn in sunlight and will roam until killed by a player or despawned by the in-game timer.

3. Skeletons

Skeletons, another popular mob, spawn in the dark and are always armed with a bow. Skeletons are the most useful source of bones in the game if you’re trying to tame a pack of wolves, as they drop 0-2 bones and 0-2 arrows when they die (if you run about outside your shelter soon as dawn breaks, you’ll often discover piles of bones just sitting there, no battle required).

When the player kills the skeleton, it will drop arrows and bones, but there is a chance it may also lose its bow (and an even slighter chance the bow will be enchanted). It may even drop armour on rare occasions.

Skeletons roam around with a little rattling sound and will seek out players within 16 blocks, firing their bow at anyone within eight blocks. In order to approach the player, skeletons are adept at overcoming inclines, staircases, and other obstacles. They are capable of climbing ladders, but they do it infrequently.

The Spider Jockey is an uncommon skeleton variant in which the skeleton is riding a spider.

4. Slimes

 Slimes are the most irritating hostile mob in the game. They’re slow and easy to destroy, but they also make a really unpleasant noise when struck, and when killed, they divide into tiny slimes. The largest cube breaks into smaller cubes, which split into smaller cubes, and so on.

They appear in “slime chunks,” which spawn at random underground. One of every 16 map chunks is chosen to act as a microbiome, allowing slime to spawn. Slimes will spawn in that chunk if there is an appropriate cave or aperture. Slimes can also be found in the swamp environment, outside of caverns.

They drop slimeballs when killed, which are used to produce equipment such as animal leashes and sticky pistons.

5. Silverfish

Silverfish are little insects that may be found in Minecraft, and they are the game’s smallest mob. Strongholds and the Extreme Hills biome are the only places you’ll find them. As a result, players who are uninterested in end-game strategy can go years without facing them, as extreme hills biomes are uncommon and Strongholds are hard to come across.

They spawn from a specific monster spawner in the portal room in Strongholds, and “monster eggs” stone blocks hidden in the ground in the aforementioned biome that split open and reveal silverfish when broken in the Extreme Hills biome. Attacking a revealed silverfish may summon nearby silverfish (if any are present), potentially resulting in a vicious (and frequently lethal) swarm.

6. Witches

Witches are highly hazardous, especially when contrasted to other lighter mobs like zombies and skeletons. They spawn at night in The Overworld’s dark caverns and chambers. They utilize hurled potions to hurt the player and regular potions to heal/help themselves aggressively.

Despite their strength and ability to swiftly take out an unprepared player, witches drop a lot of loot, making witch hunting a profitable endeavor. Glass bottles, glowstone dust, gun powder, redstone, sugar, sticks, and spider eyes, as well as potions, have a chance to drop 0-6 of each item upon death.

Given the relative difficulty of obtaining some of the earlier components, as well as the time and work required to ramp up to making potions in the game, fighting a witch is frequently worthwhile.

All of the creatures you’ll encounter in The Overworld, friendly and unfriendly, are represented by the witches and their companions we mentioned earlier.