Tutorials/Defeating a village raid

This tutorial will show you how to defeat a village raid.

Raid basics

Raids are events during which pillagers, vindicators, ravagers, and evokers (which can summon vexes) invade a village to kill as many villagers as possible (witches also spawn but they are passive to villagers, they also attack iron golems and the player and heal other illagers with beneficial potions). They can be difficult to tackle early-game and can result in many villager deaths if not properly handled.

Equipment

• An iron sword at minimum. Sharpness and Fire Aspect allow quicker elimination of enemies, while Looting enables more loot from the pillagers and vindicators ‌.
• A full set of diamond armor at minimum. Protection ensures better survivability and reduces damage from evocation fangs that would otherwise bypass armor and shields.
• Tools, which may be useful to hide villagers underground if blocking doors is not a feasible option, to unblock houses after the raid, and so forth.
• A shield to guard against attacks and stun ravagers, except for vindicator blows, as their axes can disable shields.
• A bow or crossbow as your ranged weapon to take out raiders from a distance. Power and Flame can quickly dispatch most raiders, if not one-shot them. If you are using a bow that doesn't have Infinity or can't one-shot raiders, arrows of poison can help dispatch raiders. Punch II can be used to knock back enemies away from you.
• Plenty of nutritious food, such as steak and bread, to regenerate health.
• A water bucket for getting up or down easily; necessary for all missions regardless of difficulty! Using a water bucket can also push vindicators away from you, and they can't go against the flow of the water, allowing you to take down the vindicators quicker.
• A stack or more of expendable blocks to barricade village houses.
• Iron blocks and carved pumpkins. This can summon iron golems providing additional reinforcements to the village. Unlike golems that are spawned by villagers, they won't attack you even if you hurt them.
• A bed to set your spawn point at or near the village, in a safe house where you can regroup after getting killed.

Optional equipment

• Some ender pearls for quick escapes.
• milk, to remove negative status effects from the witches that could affect your performance.
• negative splash potions, to hinder groups of raiders.
• Positive potions such as Strength II, Fire Resistance +, Swiftness II, Regeneration II and Instant Health II to buff you up against the raiders.
• Golden apples to tank enemy attacks and provide a swift healing cover.
• cobwebs or powder snow to trap raiders.
• A lava bucket for quickly eliminating ravagers and other mobs (excluding witches, which drink Fire Resistance potions).
• Any expendable blocks (such as cobblestone, netherack or dirt) for utility purposes (such as pillaring up or blocking up enemies).
• A boat or minecart to trap any melee raiders (preferably vindicators or ravagers) to trap them so you can kill them without them chasing you (you can also do this with pillagers, but try to block or dodge the arrows).
• Bells to reveal where the raiders are if you can't find them.‌
• A totem of undying as a last resort in case you take fatal damage.

Preparation

Getting good gear

Good gear is required to start a raid. Good gear increases your chances of survivability and the victory of a raid. For armour, get the Protection IV, Unbreaking III, Mending and Feather Falling IV. For the sword, get Sweeping Edge III, Sharpness V, Fire Aspect II, Unbreaking III and Mending. For the bow, get Infinity, Power V, Flame, Punch II and Unbreaking III. For the axe, get Efficiency V, Sharpness V, Unbreaking III and Mending. Optional weapons include a crossbow enchanted with Quick Charge III, Piercing IV or Multishot, Unbreaking III and Mending, a trident enchanted with Riptide III, Unbreaking III and Mending and a shield enchanted with Unbreaking III and Mending. Shields are recommended substitute to a totem, in case this is your first time to start a raid. Be aware though that shields are disabled 100% of the time when a vindicator with an axe hits you while your shield is up for 5 seconds, so try to run away when your shield is disabled. A bunch of totems can be handy to get out of sticky situations and potions can provide beneficial effects to you.

Preparing the village

Before the raid starts, a good idea is to prepare the village before the raiders attack. There are multiple ways to do so:

Walling off the village

A solid strategy is to wall off the perimeter of the village using a strong block, such as cobblestone or wood. As there are no ways for raiders to destroy solid blocks, they will not be able to penetrate the wall, and will, therefore, be stuck attempting to pathfind around it. Once you have walled off your village, you can use ladders to scale the wall and shoot the raiders with a bow. You can alternatively use walls or fences to border your village. Be aware that pillagers can still shoot and evokers can summon their fang attack or vexes to attack both the villagers and iron golems.

Setting traps

Once you have walled off your village, you can set traps outside of the perimeter to deal damage. Lava traps and cobweb traps can slow down and damage the raiders, and iron golems can dispatch of them rather quickly. Holes surrounding the outside of the wall can also be used to trap the raiders and prevent them from progressing any further. A moat is also helpful with water, lava or just a deep ditch. Raiders will not walk off edges so an easy way to get them in a hole is to make steps down. Raiders will path-find into the hole but not walk out (to deal damage you can add magma, lava, wither roses, or sweet berries.)

If you're playing in a desert village, try to grab all the cacti in the area around the village and place them around strategic points around the village with a height of 2-3 blocks. Don't worry, the ravagers in the raid cannot break the cacti.

Blocking villager doorways

A very effective strategy is to wall off entrances to villager houses; this way, there is no way for the raiders (other than Vexes) to access the villagers inside the houses, effectively keeping them safe while you deal with the raiders. An easy way to get the villagers into their houses to begin with is to ring a bell. Have some villagers hidden underground. If possible, have a dispenser that splashes them with invisibility.

If the raid is in a desert village, block the windows as well, no matter how high they are since desert village houses don't have any windows for covering but only a thin slot in some and probably a tall window if a potted cactus is there.

Ringing the bell to get all villagers back into their houses

Ring the bell couple times when the raid bar starts generating so villagers that don't hear the first bell can go back into their houses safely. Immediately seal the doors (or windows if you're in a desert village) so the raid mobs cannot open the doors or attack from the windows.

Iron Golems

Build as many iron golems as you can to help you defeat the raid, defend the village and assist you in battle. They can also provide a distraction to the raiders, so you can kill the illagers while they're attacking the golem. Don't worry about accidentally shooting the golems, as they won't fight back since they're player built (unless you have cheats on and summoned the iron golems), but try not to shoot or hit them, as they lose health if you have a strong weapon. Throw healing splash potions or regeneration potions at them or use iron ingots on them after the raid.

If you're hurt during the raid quickly find your iron golem (or multiple iron golems if you have more than one) and throw a splash potion of healing at your feet, which heals both you and the iron golem at the cost of one potion.

If you accidentally hit a naturally spawned iron golem (or one you summoned) and the iron golem starts attacking, go find some raid mobs and make the iron golem attack the raid mobs as a distraction. Use the time to calm down the iron golem (staying away from the iron golem for a minute or turning the gamemode to creative and back to survival).

Preparing yourself

Equipment

The minimum equipment to at lest fight off a village raid is a full diamond armor with a shield in your offhand. However, vindicators, vexes and ravagers still does a ton of damage even with just unenchanted armor so it's much better if you apply Protection IV on the armor pieces. Even though if the damage is reduced by 64%, be careful if you're fighting multiple mobs at once, as their combined firepower can eventually overwhelm you.

Good spawn point in the village

Make sure you set your spawn in the village so if you die you can get back to the village before the raiders kill all of your villagers. Using a bed or the command /spawnpoint can help you set your spawn point in your desired location. A spawn point around the middle of the village is a good place since all the places around the village is around the same distance from you.

Milk

Get plenty of milk before the raid or breed cows and let them wander around the village so you can grab some milk from a nearby cow along the path if you're out. Milk saves you from negative status effects from splash potions if witches spawn in the raid. If you're playing on easy difficulty you don't have to worry about this one.

Food

Bring plenty of healthy food such as bread, pumpkin pie, or all any type of cooked meat (such as steak, cooked porkchop, cooked chicken, cooked mutton, cooked rabbit, cooked cod, or cooked salmon) because they restore the most hunger points in case you lose too many hunger points and cannot run if your hunger points are at 6 (three ham bars).

Avoid foods that cannot stack or food that have to be placed (such as cake or any type of stew or soup) because you cannot eat them efficiently.

Healing from golden apples and enchanted golden apples

If you have a good supply of gold, use them to craft golden apples, as they can heal you pretty fast, give you temporarily 2 extra hearts and fill your saturation. You can additionally use a god apple, as they give stronger effects and a 20% damage reduction and fire resistance for 5 minutes. However, god apples are very rare so it's better to use normal golden apples instead of them.

Potions

In a raid, you can also bring potions (it's best to prepare them before the raid rather than brewing them when the raid has started) to heal yourself and damage enemies as potions can be effective. Brew negative potions as splash potions (either a harming potion, a poison potion, a slowness potion, or a weakness potion) to throw at your enemies. Be sure to watch out because if you splash yourself with the potion then it can be bad. Poison potions and weakness potions don't work on witches, since they are immune to poison and don't use melee attacks. Use harming potions to finish them off instead (or your weapons) and watch out for any potions thrown from the witch.

In the meantime, you can also brew positive potions to heal yourself (either a regeneration potion, a healing potion, a strength potion, an invisibility potion, a slow falling potion, a swiftness potion, or a fire resistance potion to counter vex swords with Fire Aspect) or give yourself some beneficial effects and if you have enough gunpowder you can use splash potions to heal yourself quicker. You can also heal any villagers or iron golems that are damaged using the positive splash potions or you can also give them positive effects (swiftness works for them as they can get to their enemies quicker and escape quicker and invisibility works for them as well because they can be undetected). Be sure not to heal any enemies when throwing the potion, since they are supposed to be killed.

You can throw a same healing or regeneration potion at any of your allies when they are in a group because that conserves the potion. Throwing a harmful splash potion at a group of raiding mobs can also help conserve the thrown potion.

Note: If you play Java Edition and is on hard difficulty, think twice before starting a high-level raid, particularly if you aren't very confident with your capabilities. Even with a full set of enchanted netherite equipment, you may get killed if you don't have the proper tactics, skills and potions that are necessary for tough combats. In Bedrock Edition this is usually not as big a problem since Bedrock Edition still uses older combat mechanism, but can still be very risky.

Starting the raid

The only way to trigger a raid is through the Bad Omen effect, which is obtained after killing an illager captain. Illager captains wear ominous banners, also known as illager banners on their heads and appear as part of patrols and pillager outposts, the latter of which can spawn several over time.

In Java Edition, if multiple raid captains are killed in succession, the Bad Omen level will stack to a maximum of V, increasing the likelihood of pillagers and vindicators wielding enchanted weapons. When the level of Bad Omen is higher than I, the resulting raid has an additional wave with a raider composition identical to that of the last wave. This does not work in Bedrock Edition.

To begin the raid, walk into a chunk comprising at least one villager and one claimed bed with the Bad Omen effect. Raiding illagers will then spawn within 64 blocks of the registered village.

Defeating the raid

Once the raid starts, your immediate priority should be to locate the raiders and swiftly kill them before they kill any villagers, which can wipe out your village easily if they don't get back to their houses in time.

Ring the village bell to alert villagers and afflict any nearby raiders with the Glowing status effect and determine their locations. ‌.

Prioritize ravagers, evokers and witches. Witches heal other raiders ‌, ravagers destroy crops, and evokers spawn vexes which deal heavy damage and pass through solid walls and floors.

Once the current wave has been eliminated, the next one will start shortly. This process will repeat until every wave has been defeated.

Post-raid

Once the raid has been defeated, any player in the village boundary will be awarded the Hero of the Village advancement and be affected with the Hero of the Village status effect for 60:00 or 3 in-game days.

Villagers will throw gifts at nearby players once the raid has been defeated.‌

Waves

In Java Edition, the number of waves depends on the difficulty. If the Bad Omen level is higher than I, an additional wave spawns with an identical raider composition as the last wave.

There are three waves on Easy, five waves on Normal, and seven waves on Hard difficulty. Depending on the difficulty, up to 2 additional pillagers and vindicators may spawn per wave, and an additional witch may spawn on the third wave onwards.

In Bedrock Edition, as Bad Omen is not cumulative, there are no additional waves, and additional illagers do not spawn as well. Vindicators do not ride ravagers.

Wave 1: There are only pillagers. Simply charge up to them and dispatch them with your sword, blocking any arrows, or snipe at them from a distance if they are still grouped together. If they are in a line or a clump, it's best to use a crossbow enchanted with multishot or piercing, so you can shoot them all from a distance.

Wave 2: There are pillagers and vindicators. Melee tactics are enough for now, but always fall back to ranged combat if you’re facing many illagers at once. You can also pillar jump to kill the vindicators easier or trap them in boats.

Wave 3: There is a ravager and some pillagers. You may need to use hit-and-run tactics against the ravager, as it can resist knockback. Alternatively, get to high ground and pelt it with arrows. Using a lava bucket on the ravager might also work, just try to lure it into an open area so you don't burn any houses down. Kill the pillagers as per normal.

Wave 4: There are witches, pillagers, and vindicators. Catch the witches by surprise and quickly strike them until they die, such that they do not throw harmful potions that make you vulnerable. Another way to kill the witches is to get the pillagers and vindicators to chase you, and when you run into the witch, quickly move out of the way so the witch will throw the harmful potions into the pillagers and vindicators. The pillagers and vindicators will fight back at the witch, allowing you to shoot the witch without the witch targeting you alone. It's best to quickly locate the mobs in this raid, since they might separate when in the village.

Wave 5: There are pillagers, vindicators, an evoker, and a pillager riding a ravager (In Bedrock Edition there is an additional ravager). Shoot the pillager mount from a distance or fling the pillagers off the ravager with a fishing rod before closing in on the ravager. Corner the evoker into a small space (while dodging its fangs) for melee combat, or snipe at it from a distance. Ignore any vexes that spawn since killing the evoker will prevent more from spawning and they will despawn by themselves. Kill the other raiders as per normal.

Wave 6: There is only one evoker, but many pillagers and vindicators. Try to single out the evoker first as vexes can be troublesome to deal with. Kill the other raiders as per normal, but be especially careful to not get swarmed.

Wave 7: It’s a massive raiding party consisting of almost all raiding illager types, including an evoker and vindicator riding a ravager each. Vindicators constitute the majority of raiders. Be careful and try to single out illagers to reduce group sizes. Snipe at the mounted evoker first to make the ravager less of a threat and defeatable with melee strategies. As with the third wave, attack the witches quickly, and by surprise, to avoid potion chaos. You can also make the witch throw the harmful potions at the other raiding mobs to pose a distraction. Use a water bucket or a lava bucket to dispatch vindicators without getting hit by large hordes.

Traps

Using any traps while you're getting chased is a better idea since you know where the mobs are chasing you. Putting traps around the village before the raid is not a good idea as villagers and iron golems can run into them and you cannot guaranteed 100% that the raid mobs will pass that location.

Water bucket trap

This is not really a trap, but it slows down mobs since they cannot push against the flow of the water unlike the player. Placing a water bucket at the raiding mob's feet slows them down, allowing you to take the raid mobs down using a bow from a safe distance. Pillagers will try to use melee attacks when in water, so you can kill the pillagers with ease.

Be careful of ranged mobs, such as pillagers and evokers (and witches if the water bucket distance if not too big) because they can still snipe you from a distance, even when getting slowed water.

Lava trap

The best place to use this trap is away from the village houses, since many of them can catch fire from the lava. Putting cobblestone around the village houses allows you to use this trap anywhere. Dump a bucket of lava if you're away from the mobs and stand behind the lava. The raid mobs that see you goes towards you and gets burned in the lava between you and the mobs. Since this trap destroys most mob loot, it's not a recommended trap in Bedrock Edition.

Cobweb trap

Place cobwebs in a line in front of you so the mobs get stuck there. Shoot them safely with a bow or kill them with your axe or sword. This trap won't work for pillagers, since they can still shoot from cobwebs. While in the cobwebs, evokers can also summon vexes or evoker fangs that can still attack the player. Make sure you kill the ranged mobs before moving to melee mobs, as the ranged mobs can still shoot.

Boat trap

Place boats between you and the vindicators to trap them inside. This allows you to focus on the other mobs instead of getting high damage from the vindicators. After the other mobs have been killed, shoot at the vindicators from a distance or get close enough where you can hit them but they can't hit back. Boats also trap other mobs but not the ravager.

Wall trap

This isn't really a trap but what it will do causes the mobs' AI to mess up, and they'll try to funnel through one place, making them an easy kill. Beware of ravagers and evokers though, since a ravager has a wider range of attack and evokers can either summon their fangs or their vexes to attack you.

Notes

Tutorials/Defeating a pillager outpost