Skeleton Horse

Skeleton Horse

Health points	15 ( × 7.5)
Size	Adult: Height: 1.6 Blocks Width: 1.3965 Blocks Baby: Height: 0.8 Blocks Width: 0.6982 Blocks
Spawn	Skeleton traps
First appearances	See § History
Common drops	Bone (0–2)
Usable items	Saddle
Experience	Kill Adult: 1–3
Internal ID	JE: 28 BE: 26
Entity ID	skeleton_horse

This article is about skeleton horses. For horses, see Horse. For donkeys, see Donkey. For mules, see Mule. For zombie horses, see Zombie Horse.

Skeleton horses are undead variants of regular horses.

Spawning

A group of skeleton horsemen spawned by a "skeleton trap" horse.

Skeleton horses spawn only from "skeleton traps".

A "skeleton trap" horse is a skeleton horse spawned from a fraction of lightning strikes during a thunderstorm (0.75–1.5% chance on Easy, 1.5–4% on Normal, and 2.8125–6.75% on Hard, depending on regional difficulty). It despawns after 15 minutes if not triggered.

When a player comes within 10 blocks of the skeleton trap horse, lightning will strike it. This lightning cannot start fires or damage nearby entities. When struck, the skeleton trap horse transforms into a skeleton horseman: a skeleton riding a skeleton horse. It will also spawn three additional skeleton horsemen in the vicinity. Each skeleton is equipped with an enchanted iron helmet and an enchanted bow, and have damage immunity for 3 seconds after spawning. Skeleton horsemen move fast and maneuver exactly like skeletons, strafing when attacking and backing up when the player moves towards them.

Other notes:

• The skeleton will be wearing an iron helmet, unless it randomly spawned with some other headgear.
• The skeleton's bow and helmet will be enchanted as if on an enchantment table at level 5–22. The exact level depends on regional difficulty; on Easy it will always be a level-5 enchantment.
• The skeleton trap horse will become fully grown if it was a baby, and the breeding cooldown will be reset.
• The original horse will be tamed when struck, and the additional three horses are spawned tamed.
• The skeletons will not despawn if (PersistenceRequired is set).
• A trap horse may spawn in areas that a regular horse may not, such as the middle of an ocean.
• A trap horse can trigger normally in clear weather.

Drops

Upon death, skeleton horses drop:

• Bone (0–2)
• 1–3 experience when killed by a player or tamed wolf.

If armored, chested, or saddled, they will drop anything equipped. ^[verify]

Using a weapon enchanted with Looting increases the maximum amount of drops by 1 per level of Looting, up to a maximum of 5 at Looting III.

Usage

Tamed and saddled skeleton horses can be used as one of the fastest means of transportation in the game, though they are unable to fit through single block-wide openings. They can also be used to climb hills and jump fences, as some horses can jump high enough to clear up to five block heights, versus the player's maximum of about one (without a potion). They can be ridden in water in any depth. Skeleton horses sink in the water and can be ridden along the ocean or river floor

Skeleton horses can be pulled using a lead.

Equipment

Java Edition

In Java Edition Skeleton horses have the following slot available:

• Saddle Slot: For equipping a saddle. (available for other horse variants as well)

Saddles can be placed on a skeleton horse by holding it and then right clicking on the skeleton horse, or by accessing its inventory. A skeleton horse's inventory can be accessed by mounting the skeleton horse and opening the player inventory or by sneaking and then right-clicking on the horse.

Bedrock Edition

In Bedrock Edition, a skeleton horse has no inventory and cannot be equipped with a saddle.

Riding

See also: Transportation

Once a horse is tamed and saddled, the player can control it with standard directional controls, jump, and the mouse. The player dismounts using the dismount control.

Skeleton horses are spawned already tame. In Bedrock Edition, skeleton horses can be controlled by the player without a saddle. In Java Edition, skeleton horses can be equipped with a saddle and then controlled.

When riding a horse, the hunger bar is replaced by the horse's health in survival or adventure mode. In Legacy Console Edition, the horse health bar will still be visible on creative. It uses a slightly different heart texture than the player's health bar. The experience bar is replaced by the horse jump bar.

A player can use any item while riding a horse, including drinking or throwing potions; activating doors or redstone devices; using chests, crafting tables, and furnaces; breaking and placing blocks; and attacking with melee weapons or bows.

A ridden horse will automatically run up any one block high slope. The horse and rider can safely fit through a space as low as 2.75 blocks high. Lower clearance risks suffocating the rider if the rider's head enters a non-transparent block. The horse itself can enter gaps as low as 1.625 blocks high, but may itself take suffocation damage when clearance is less than 1.75 blocks. Horses cannot fit through a 1-block-wide gap.

The maximum speed of horses varies between 4.8375 blocks/second and 14.5125 blocks/second (compared to the player's walking speed, which is about 4.3 blocks/second). About 68% of horses are able to go faster than a minecart. A fast horse can be combined with speed potions and the Nether to make the horse easily the fastest practical way to travel in Minecraft (around 130 m/s Overworld-equivalent in the Nether). The speed of a horse has no relation to its outward appearance. Horses are very slow moving backwards, and about as fast as the player when moving sideways.

A ridden horse can be made to jump, and holding the control charges for a higher leap. Horses are not affected by jump boost beacons or potions. The standard dismount control dismounts from the horse, as does going in water deeper than two blocks. Like the player, horses take fall damage when falling from heights.

It is impossible for a player to use a Nether portal while on a horse. It is possible however, to enter the portal on the horse and then dismount, sending the horse through the portal on its own, or use a lead to position the horse, then push it through the portal.

Unlike normal horses, a skeleton horse will not dismount the player when it enters water deeper than two blocks;^[verify] rather, it can be ridden underwater without the skeleton horse running out of air. When underwater, its running speed and jump will remain the same but it will have a slower rate of descent.

Behavior

All horses will roam idly, occasionally stopping to rear, swish their tails, or lower their heads as though eating the grass. Unlike sheep, the eating animation does not actually cause any grass to be consumed. If a player comes near, the horses may turn to look at them.

Skeleton horses, like most mobs, can ride in a minecart and boat. Unlike other passive mobs, horses will slowly regenerate health.

Skeleton horses cannot be bred or fed.

Taming

Skeleton horses cannot be tamed by the player, as horses spawned through skeleton traps are spawned already tame.

Statistics

See also: Tutorials/Horses

All horses have three "equine stats" which vary from horse to horse: health, (maximum) movement speed, and jump strength. These stats are created once the horse is born or spawned, and are not affected by food.

Spawned values

When spawned in any way except breeding – for instance, using commands, spawning naturally, spawning as part of a skeleton trap, or using spawn eggs – horses are assigned their stats within certain ranges, specific according to their horse type.

Health

Skeleton horse's health is always 15. Displayed hearts are health, divided by two, rounded down. A horse with an non-even number of health points (15, 17, 19, etc.) will not show the last half-heart. You may strike a horse to test this. If the horse has lost one fewer health point than the inflicted damage and did not regenerate, it has an odd number of health points, otherwise it has an even number of health points.

Movement speed

Skeleton horse's speed is always 0.2; the player's normal walking speed is 0.1. The speed listed does not include any status effect that affects the speed of a horse or a player.

See transportation to compare the speeds of various transportation methods.

Jump strength

Jump strength ranges from 0.4–1.0, tending towards the average of 0.7.

A jump strength of 0.5 is enough to clear 1 ⁹⁄₁₆ blocks, while 1.0 is enough to clear 5 ¹⁄₄ blocks.

The following derived equation can be use to calculate a horse jump height from its jump strength attribute (with an rss of 5.510e-19). This function was fit to the data found in the table below and is therefore most accurate around these values.
JumpHeight = -0.1817584952 * x^3 + 3.689713992 * x^2 + 2.128599134 * x - 0.343930367
Where x is JumpStrength

The exact jump strengths, to 15 digits, required to clear several block heights are listed below.

Jump Strength	Blocks
0.966967527085333	5.000
0.847552919762898	4.000
0.715301016726230	3.000
0.564380127487889	2.000
0.432084373616155	1.250 (player's jump height)

Data values

See also: Chunk format

Skeleton horses have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the mob.

• Entity data
  • Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template
  • Tags common to all mobs see Template:Nbt inherit/mob/template
  • Additional fields for mobs that can breed see Template:Nbt inherit/breedable/template
  •  Bred: 1 or 0 (true/false) - Unknown. Remains 0 after breeding. If true, causes it to stay near other horses with this flag set.
  •  EatingHaystack: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the horse is grazing.
  •  Tame: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the horse is tamed. (Non players mobs will not be able to ride a tamed horse if it has no saddle)
  •  Temper: Ranges from 0 to 100; increases with feeding. Higher values make a horse easier to tame.
  •  OwnerUUID: Contains the UUID of the player that tamed the horse. Has no effect on behavior.
  •  ArmorItem: The armor item worn by this horse. May not exist.
    • Tags common to all items see Template:Nbt inherit/item/template
  •  SaddleItem: The saddle item worn by this horse. May not exist.
    • Tags common to all items see Template:Nbt inherit/item/template
  •  SkeletonTrap: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the horse is a trapped skeleton horse. Does not affect horse type.
  •  SkeletonTrapTime: Incremented each tick when SkeletonTrap is set to 1. The horse automatically despawns when it reaches 18000 (15 minutes).

Video

Note: Since 1.8, bread cannot be used for breeding or feeding. Since 1.9, skeleton horses can spawn naturally.

History

Java Edition
4 April 2013					Jeb hinted at adding horses when Minecraft hit 10,000,000 sales.
1.6.1			13w16a		Added horses, assisted by DrZhark (John Olarte), creator of the Mo' Creatures mod, whose horses were a baseline for Minecraft's Horse models.
			13w16b		Made horses slower and reduced horses from gliding so much.
			13w18a		Removed horse saddles. Horses are now ridden using the saddle
			13w19a		Enabled access to the donkey and mule inventories by sneaking and interacting.
			13w21a		Added new GUI for horses, to control saddle/armor/inventory.
			13w22a		Added new sound effects for horses, donkeys, mules, skeleton horses, and zombie horses.
1.7.2			13w36a		Horses spawn in savannas.
					Skeleton and zombie horses are now available without third-party tools, with the introduction of the /summon command.
1.8			14w26c		Horses can no longer be fed bread for taming, healing, or growing.
					Wheat's acceleration of baby horse growth was reduced.
1.9			15w38a		Added "skeleton trap" horses.
					There is a chance (depending on regional difficulty) that a lightning strike will spawn a "skeleton trap" skeleton horse.
			15w43a–44b		Drops changed several times. The end result is that undead horses now always drop 1 of their item (bone or rotten flesh), not affected by Looting.
			15w47b		Added sounds for horses eating food given by a player.
1.10			16w20a		Added Spawn eggs for Zombie Horses, Skeleton horses, Donkeys and Mules.
			pre2		Removed spawn eggs for Zombie Horses, Skeleton Horses, Donkeys and Mules.
1.11			16w32a		Horses now have different IDs: horse, donkey, mule, zombie_horse and skeleton_horse
					Unused Variant ids result in a white horse rather than an invisible one.
					Re-added spawn eggs for Zombie Horses, Skeleton Horses, Donkeys and Mules.
					Skeleton trap horses' chance to spawn during lightning strikes is reduced to 1⁄5 of what it was.
			16w38a		Undead horses now drop 0–2 of their item (bone or rotten flesh), affected by Looting.
1.13			17w45a		Added a new model for Horses, Zombie Horses, Skeleton horses, Donkeys and Mules.
			17w46a		The new model was slightly tweaked.
			18w03a		Updated the horse model again, also slightly altered the texture.
			18w19a		Skeleton horses will now sink in water, due to being an undead mob. Zombie horses, curiously, do not.
					The player can now ride skeleton horses when underwater.
			18w22a		Changed the creamy horse texture.
			pre2		Zombie horses now sink in water.
					Updated zombie horse and skeleton horse models to fix serious Z-fighting.
Upcoming Java Edition
1.14			19w08a		Updated texture
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.15.0			build 1		Added horses, mules, donkeys, skeleton trap horses and zombie horses.
Pocket Edition
1.1			alpha 1.1.0.0		The entity ID for skeleton horse and zombie horse is changed from skeletonhorse to skeleton_horse, zombiehorse to zombie_horse.
Bedrock Edition
1.2.6			beta 1.2.6.2		Added the new (1.13) model for Horses, Mules, and Donkeys.
1.2.9					Horses will no longer open their mouths when bucking the player off or taking damage.
1.5			beta 1.5.0.0		Skeleton horses can now be ridden underwater.
1.8			beta 1.8.0.8		Skeleton and zombie horse foals now have a chance of being spawned using a spawn egg.
Legacy Console Edition
TU19	CU7	1.12	Patch 1		Added horses.
TU22	CU10	1.15			Added quick move to the horse inventory.
TU31	CU19	1.22	Patch 3		Baby horse growth can be accelerated using wheat.
TU43	CU33	1.36	Patch 13		Added sounds for horses.
TU46	CU36	1.38	Patch 15		Added "skeleton trap" horses.
TU60	CU51	1.64	Patch 30		Added the new horse model.
New Nintendo 3DS Edition
0.1.0					Added Horses.

Issues

Issues relating to "Skeleton horse" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia

• Dr. Zhark appears in the credits after the End Poem as the creator of the horses.
• On multiplayer, it is possible to easily figure out which of two horses (owned and ridden by different players) is faster. Each rider needs to apply a lead to the other horse, then play 'tug of war'. The stronger horse will be faster.
• It is possible to summon a rideable skeleton horse using the command /summon skeleton_horse ~ ~ ~ {Tame:1, SaddleItem: {id: saddle, Count:1}} which will spawn a horse wearing a saddle, which the player can then mount. Like a donkey there is no armor slot, but also no way to equip a chest.
• In the Bedrock Edition the horses can be transported in a boat by riding the horse and jumping into the boat then dismounting (leaving the horse behind in the boat) and activating the boat from underneath / underwater. Attempting to activate the boat in order to pilot it from above will result in the player being mounted on the horse again rather than being placed inside the boat to pilot it.

Gallery

• 

  A skeleton horse spawned in.

• 

  Skeleton horses spawned from a trapped skeleton horse.

• 

  A skeleton horseman consisting of a skeleton and a skeleton horse.

• 

  A player riding a skeleton horse, having killed the skeleton rider

• 

  A player riding a skeleton horse underwater. It can run and jump.

• 

  A skeleton horse interface, with no place for horse armor

• 

  Skeleton horse with saddle‌^{[Java Edition only]} in survival after defeating the skeleton horse trap.

See also

• Horse
• Donkey
• Mule

References

Entities

View at: Template:Entities/content [edit]