Minecraft: Everything You Need To Know About Raids - TheGamer

Few features in Minecraft are as complex as that of a raid. Added in the village update of 1.14, raids heavily feature Illagers and Pillagers, the antagonistic and hostile versions of regular villagers who have allied themselves with witches. While Pillager Outposts and Woodland Mansions are one way to encounter them, raids are a great way to test your strength against a horde of them.

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Raids don't just happen randomly. There are a few set things that you must do to start a raid. You might come across some random Pillager patrols that approach your area after playing in your Minecraft world for some time. Another possibility is to come across a Pillager Outpost and go from there. If you're looking to reap the benefits and become the hero of the village, here's what you need to do for a successful raid.

What Is A Minecraft Raid?

A raid is a boss fight type of event that can be started in Minecraft once you have completed a few set tasks. During a raid, you'll fight several waves of Pillagers that attack the village you've just entered. Raids tend to have multiple waves, and in order for the next wave to start, you need to kill all hostile mobs of the current wave.

You'll also want to protect the villagers and potentially use iron to repair the local Iron Golem, which is one of your best forms of defense against some of the more dangerous Pillagers and Illagers. There's more information about the type of enemies further down below.

How To Start A Raid In Minecraft

In order to start a raid, you need to first receive the Bad Omen status effect. To get this, you need to kill an Illager captain. Captains are typically marked by their Ominous Banner flag attached to their back. You can find Illagers in a variety of locations, including Pillager Outposts, Woodland Mansions, and random patrols that might approach your spawn location.

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Once you have the status effect, you simply need to walk to the closest village. After reaching its vicinity, the raid will start immediately with a boss bar appearing at the top determining how many enemies are still alive in the current wave. Villagers will ring the bell and rush indoors to protect themselves, but they might come out in-between waves.

How Bad Omen Works In Minecraft

An important thing to note about Bad Omen in the Java version of the game is that Bad Omen status effects are stackable. Depending on how many captains you've killed, your Bad Omen might stack up to level five. If the captain you killed was in a patrol, the Bad Omen level is randomly selected between one and five. However, captains killed at Outposts only give one level each.

What this means specifically is that the higher your Bad Omen status effect is, the tougher the raid will be. Enemies have a higher chance of appearing with enchanted weapons to give you a harder time, so make sure to go in prepared if you know for a fact there's a chance you'll face a level five raid.

Types Of Enemies And Number Of Waves In A Minecraft Raid

It's not just the Bad Omen status effect that affects the nature of the raid. Your world difficulty will have a significant impact on the number of waves you need to defeat, as well as the type of enemies included in each wave.

• Easy: Three waves
• Normal: Five waves
• Hard: Seven waves

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Several different mobs can make an appearance depending on your difficulty and the wave. As the raid progresses, tougher enemies will be more abundant. Here's what you're likely to face:

• Pillager: The easiest enemy, and most abundant across all waves. They will use crossbows to fight.
• Vindicator: A tough, fast-moving enemy armed with an axe, and most common towards the middle and end of the raid.
• Witch: They throw potions and heal the Illagers and Pillagers. Witches only appear in Normal and Hard towards the middle and end of the raid.
• Evoker: The toughest Illager with the ability to summon Vexes and perform magic. Evokers only appear in Normal and Hard towards the end of the raid.
• Ravager (with or without Pillager): The mount of the Illagers, Ravagers deal huge amounts of damage and appear on all difficulties towards the end of the raid.

Each difficulty also has an additional feature, where there's a chance of the raid spawning one more additional Illager during a raid. For Easy, this likelihood is only one out of four, while for Normal and Hard it's a fifty-fifty chance, making the fight even more difficult.

The Loot Received From Raids

The best part about the raid is obviously the loot you get. These mobs are incredibly rare to encounter otherwise, so triggering a raid is a fantastic way to farm for some experience points as well as valuable items.

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All mobs will drop their usual loot, and in Bedrock the loot is chosen from a special table that includes iron-tier gear, enchanted books, and emeralds. You'll also be able to pick up the Ominous Banner.

Some of the best loot you can find is emeralds, usually dropped by Vindicators. Pillagers will drop their crossbows. However, the real treat is finding a Totem of Undying whenever an Evoker is killed.

That alone is a reason enough to begin a raid, since the only other way of finding this rare item is to travel potentially thousands of blocks away to a Woodland Mansion.

What Happens After A Raid

After you've completed the raid, if there are any villagers left in your village, they will celebrate you as their hero. You'll also gain a brand-new status effect known as Hero of the Village. While this status effect is active, villagers will throw various gifts at your feet. These gifts depend on their unique occupation, so farmers will tend to throw crops at you for example.

If a raid is too difficult for you to complete, you can also just run away. It takes about 40 minutes of real-time for a raid to simply expire, although all the Illagers still spawned within the village will be there as you return to it.

In case you'd rather not start a raid but have the Bad Omen status effect, the best way to get rid of it is to drink a bucket of milk.

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