Wither

Wither

Health points	300 ( × 150) 600 ( × 300) [Pocket Edition only]
Armor points	4 ()
Attack strength	Easy: 5 () Normal: 8 () Hard: 12 ()
Size	Height: 3.5 Blocks Width: 0.9 Blocks
Spawn	Built by player - 10 second spawn cooldown.
First appearances	See History
Common drops	Nether Star (1)
Experience	50
Internal ID	PC: 64 PE: 52
Entity ID	wither

This article is about the boss mob. For the skeleton, see Wither Skeleton. For the status effect, see Status effect#Wither.

“	New Boss: Wither! Better craft a diaper, pal.	„
	—The Pretty Scary Update promo poster

The wither is a boss mob.

Spawning

The wither build configuration.

Withers are spawned by placing soul sand in a T shape (as shown in the image to the left), and putting 3 wither skeleton skulls on top of the three upper blocks. The last block placed must be one of the three wither skeleton skulls; it cannot be one of the soul sand blocks, similar to the two golems. The skull that triggers spawning can be placed by the player or by a dispenser. Air blocks are required on either side of the base soul sand block under the upper blocks. The building pattern can be configured upright, sideways, or upside-down; the wither skeleton skulls can also have any orientation.

Like other hostile mobs, the wither despawns when the difficulty is changed to Peaceful. The wither spawning structure will also fail in Peaceful difficulty: the blocks will simply stay and not move, without creating a wither.

Drops

The wither drops 1 nether star upon death which, until picked up, will stay on the ground and never despawn. The Looting enchantment does not work on the wither, meaning only 1 nether star is dropped by the wither. It also drops 50 experience when killed by a player or tamed wolf.

Behavior

	“	This undead triple-headed creature will then immediately attempt to destroy every living thing in the vicinity, spitting out skulls from each of its three heads and inflicting a creeping corruption on their target which turns a player’s hearts an unhealthy black. In its fury, the Wither will destroy blocks it comes into contact with - even if you survive the battle, there’s often precious little left standing nearby.	„
		—Marsh Davies

The difference between the wither boss bar and the ender dragon boss bar.

When spawned, the wither will temporarily flash blue and grow larger in size as its health bar fills from half to full. While in this state, the wither is invulnerable, and will not move or attack. When this state ends, the wither will create a very large explosion centered on itself, destroying nearby blocks. This explosion does not damage the wither itself, but it will damage nearby mobs/players. A ghastly sound is played when the explosion occurs. This sound is not centered around the wither, instead it can be heard equally from all areas of the map, and can also be heard by other players throughout dimensions. After this, the wither can be attacked and can also act freely.

The wither is immune to fire, lava and drowning damage. Suffocation is ineffective, since upon taking damage, the wither will break any block that comes into contact with it (except bedrock, end gateway blocks, end portal blocks, end portal frames, command blocks, barriers and piston extensions). When withers break nearby blocks after taking damage, a loud crunch^{[Java Edition only]} or the blocks' breaking sound(s)^{[Console Edition only]} are heard.

The Wither going on an Enderman killing rampage.

The wither is hostile to the player and all mobs except undead mobs (

Skeleton,

Undead Horse,
Wither,
Wither Skeleton,


Zombie,
Zombie Pigman). Upon noticing a mob, the wither attacks them with a projectile called the “wither skull”. Each head fires independently, allowing a wither to attack up to three different mobs/players at the same time.

The wither has a dark purple boss health bar which is only shown when a player is looking in its direction, and can also be seen through walls. When looking at the wither, the sky gets slightly darker. All withers will display a boss bar on the screen. In Console Edition, only one boss bar will be shown, and it will be a pink color (similar to the ender dragon's bar).

If the wither is calm, it simply hovers and is unable to jump. On Normal or Hard, it will also randomly fire blue skulls from one of its smaller heads in random directions at an interval of 2-3 seconds until it finds a target.

When its health drops below half (150 ( × 75)), the wither will gain the "wither armor" effect, which makes it immune to arrows. While in this state, the wither will only fly at the same height as its target. If it regenerates above half health, the armor will disappear, and the wither is able to fly high again.

Like other undead mobs, the wither is harmed by healing potions and healed by harming potions; however, it is unaffected by any other status effect. It also regenerates 1 () every 20 ticks (1 second). The wither is unaffected by all attacks from undead mobs except its own wither skulls and other withers' wither skulls.

In Console Edition, the wither can still see players when they are covered by a Potion of Invisibility and not wearing armor.

Pocket Edition

In Pocket Edition, the wither has a different behavior. At half health, it spawns 3-4 wither skeletons (except on Easy difficulty) and causes an explosion. The wither will not regenerate past half health again, and, in this state, will do a "dash attack." It will make its body flat and dash towards its target like a missile, destroying most blocks in its way. The wither have a behavior to check nearby mob or player that has highest attack damage that can deal to it, and will prioritize to attacking that mob or player. It also has different birth and death animations, both of which involve the wither spinning and exploding.

Wither skull

Wither Skull

Internal ID	PC: 19 PE: 89
Network ID	PC: 66
Entity ID	wither_skull

The wither shoots wither skulls, which look like extra heads of itself launched as projectiles, leaving a trail of smoke, and can keep up a fairly constant barrage of them. Wither skulls explode with the same force as a ghast fireball. If a wither skull hits a mob/player on Normal or Hard difficulty, it inflicts 40 seconds of Wither II effect (which drains their health and turns their hearts black), while healing the wither for 5 () health. If the player or mob already has the Wither effect, the remaining time of the effect is lengthened instead of rewritten, which means players can suffer from the Wither effect for minutes after they are hit by a lot of wither skulls in succession.

There are two types of wither skulls: a fast moving black one, and a slow moving blue one. The black wither skull cannot break blocks with a blast resistance above 20, like a ghast's fireball. They are also the same speed. The blue wither skull is shot primarily on Normal or Hard difficulty, when the wither is idle (meaning that no players/mobs are within its aggro range). On average, 0.1% of the shots by the main head (when the wither has a target) are blue skulls as well.

Although the blue wither skull has the same explosion strength as the black skull and are much slower (33% the speed of black skulls), it treats all blocks (except bedrock, end portal, end portal frame, command block, structure block, structure void and barrier) as having a blast resistance of no more than 4, making it much more destructive to the terrain, and allowing the wither to break out of almost all forms of containment. Unless the blue wither skull was shot by the main head during its attack on a target (~0.1% chance), the blue wither skull would be sent in a random direction.

A blue wither skull.

Wither skulls are also entities which have associated entity data. Their entity ID is wither_skull.

• 
  Entity data
  • Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template
  • 
     direction: List of 3 doubles. Should be identical to Motion.
  • 
     life: Increments each tick when the projectile is not moving; resets to 0 if it moves. Has no effect, though is still saved/read
  • 
     power: List of 3 doubles that acts like direction but without resistance

Data values

See also: Chunk format

Withers have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the mob. Their entity ID is wither.

• 
  Entity data
  • Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template
  • Tags common to all mobs see Template:Nbt inherit/mob/template
  • 
     Invul: The number of ticks of invulnerability left after being initially created. 0 once invulnerability has expired.

Achievements

Main article: Achievements

Icon	Achievement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)	Availability				Xbox points earned	Trophy type (PS)
				Xbox	PS	Pocket	Nintendo
<span class="sprite" style="background-image: ;background-position:-752px -141px;background-size:1128px auto;height:47px;width:47px">	The Beginning?	Spawn the Wither	Be within a 100.9×100.9×103.5 cuboid centered on the Wither when it is spawned.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	20G	Bronze
	The Beginning.	Kill the Wither	Be within a 100.9×100.9×203.5 cuboid centered on the Wither when it drops the nether star.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	40G	Silver

Advancements

Main article: Advancements

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Internal ID
	Withering Heights	Summon the Wither	Spooky Scary Skeleton	Be within a 100.9×100.9×103.5 cuboid centered on the Wither when it is spawned.	minecraft:nether/summon_wither

History

Official release
1.4.2			12w34a		The wither was introduced into the game, but it does not spawn naturally. Left unfinished by Jeb and hidden in the code, it was discovered through the presence of its skin in the /mobs/ folder. Withers could only be spawned with edited monster spawners, mods, or hacks, and could crash the JVM.
			12w34b		When its health is taken down to half, it will gain wither armor, making it immune to arrows.
					Projectile firing rate and movement speed increased.
			?		At PAX, Dinnerbone revealed that it would be possible to spawn withers by arranging wither skeleton skulls in some way.
			12w36a		Withers can now be spawned by arranging soul sand in a T shape and placing three wither skeleton skulls on top.
					The wither now drops 20 experience and a nether star upon death.
			12w37a		Wither will make a massive explosion upon its creation after its health is fully charged.
					When there are no targets, the wither will sometimes shoot blue wither skulls, which move slower and can destroy any block besides bedrock.
			12w38a		Added sound when withers break blocks.
			12w42b		Experience dropped is increased from 20 to 50 points.
			1.4-pre		Various new sounds for the wither.
1.4.4			1.4.3-pre		The oversight where withers can be created in peaceful difficulty has been fixed. Before this update, attempting to spawn the wither in peaceful resulted in a waste of soul sand and skulls.
					Withers can no longer destroy end portals, which are supposed to be unbreakable.
1.5			13w05a		Withers cannot ride minecarts anymore.
1.7.2			13w37a		Added achievements for spawning and killing the Wither.
1.8			14w04a		You can now spawn withers by dispensing the wither skulls.
			14w11b		The hitbox of the wither was changed.
			14w20a		Withers no longer break barriers.
			14w25a		Withers now move while invulnerable due to MC-57569.
					Withers can now be built sideways and upside-down instead of just upright.
					Barriers can be broken by withers again.
1.8.1					Barriers cannot be broken by withers.
1.9			15w46a		Withers no longer move while they are invulnerable.
			15w49a		Withers no longer travel through portals.
1.11			16w32a		The entity ID is changed from WitherBoss to wither.
					The projectile entity ID is changed from WitherSkull to wither_skull.
			16w40a		Tags xTile, yTile, zTile, inTile and inGround were removed from the wither skull entity data.
					The life tag is no longer used for anything, but still saved/read.
1.12			pre3		Withers can no longer break piston extensions or end gateways.
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.16.0			build 4		Added the wither.
					As a version exclusive, when the Wither is at 50% health ,it spawns 4 wither skeletons. It has a new animation and it has new sounds when spawned and killed. It also has twice the amount of health the Wither has in the Java Edtion.
Pocket Edition
1.0.2					Wither skulls can now be deflected with a sword.
1.1			build 1		The entity ID is changed from wither.boss to wither.
Console Edition
TU19	CU7	1.12	Patch 1		Added withers.

Issues

Issues relating to “Wither” are maintained on the issue tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia

• According to Jeb, Wither was inspired by Terraria which has summonable boss mechanic, the name itself inspired by poison spell in another game made by him called Whispers in Akarra.
• There is a painting showing the soul sand and wither skeleton skull formation needed to spawn a wither.
• The wither can see players/mobs under the Invisibility potion effect.
• The wither does not take damage from undead mobs' attacks or from drowning.
• If the wither is damaged by the Void, it will frantically attempt to fire blue skulls.
• If the wither is after a blaze and the blaze tries to fly up to it, the wither will attempt to keep rising above the blaze, thus making both of them rise higher until they hit a ceiling or until the blaze despawns.
• Although the wither is 3.5 blocks tall, 3 blocks wide, and 1 block thick, its hitbox is only 3.5 blocks tall, 1 block wide, and 1 block thick.
  • The true dimensions of the wither are: 2.844 blocks tall (varies), 3 blocks wide and 1.719 blocks long (also varies).
• A variant of the wither called the Friendly wither was in two of the April fools updates.
• The wither spawn structure can be built any way, such as downward or horizontal, however the wither will always spawn at the foot of the structure.
• The wither appears on four sides of chiseled red sandstone.
• Withers have the greatest natural health of all vanilla mobs in Minecraft, making it brawnier than even the ender dragon. The wither, however, is slower and deals less damage than the ender dragon.
• The wither's smaller heads shoot targets slightly slower than the main head. the interval for smaller heads is 2-3 seconds, while the main head's always 2.
• An enemy called the Wither Storm appears in Minecraft: Story Mode. It was created by replacing the center block of soul sand with a Command Block.

Gallery

• 

  The withering effect after being damaged by a Wither Skull.

• 

  The "wither armor" that blocks arrows.

• 

  A larger image to show how to summon the wither.

• 

  A friendly wither, an April Fools mob. Notice the regular wither too.

• 

  The pit created after the wither has charged.

• 

  A bunch of ender dragons flying around, as well as a few withers, some with wither armor doing battle with the Ender dragons.

In Other Media

• 

  Wither Storm, a variant of Wither as it appears on Minecraft: Story Mode.

References

Entities

View at: Template:Entities/content [edit]