Stray

Strays are variants of skeletons that spawn only in frozen, ice, or snowy biomes.

Spawning
Skeletons spawned directly under the sky in Snowy Tundra, Snowy Mountains, Ice Spikes, Frozen River, Frozen Ocean, Deep Frozen Ocean and Legacy Frozen Ocean biomes have an 80% chance of being strays.

Strays do not spawn naturally from monster spawners, even when exposed to direct sky $$. $$, 1% of spiders and cave spiders can spawn as a spider jockey with 80% chance to be a stray spider jockey or stray cave spider jockey. When a skeleton is kept inside powder snow it converts into a stray after 45 second.

The stray has its own spawn egg in the creative inventory.

Drops
Strays drop:
 * 0–2 s. The maximum drop is increased by 1 per level of Looting, for a maximum of 0-5 bones with Looting III.
 * 0–2 s. The maximum drop is increased by 1 per level of Looting, for a maximum of 0-5 arrows with Looting III.
 * 0–1 (if stray was killed by the player or tamed wolf). Each level of Looting increases the chance of this drop by 50% of the previous chance, resulting in a maximum of 93.75% with Looting III.
 * 1 Wither Skeleton Skull if killed by a charged creeper.
 * Any picked-up equipment has a 100% chance of dropping and drops with the same damage level it had when picked up.
 * Any naturally spawned equipment (including the bow) has an 8.5% chance of dropping (9.5% with Looting I, 10.5% with Looting II and 11.5% with Looting III). It is usually badly damaged and has a chance of being enchanted.
 * Strays drop when killed by a player or tamed wolf, and an extra, if the stray has equipment.

Behavior
Strays behave the same as normal skeletons, however, they shoot tipped arrows that inflict for 30 seconds on any target that they hit. When strays are underwater, they do not shoot arrows. Instead, they use melee attacks that inflict Slowness. Strays themselves are not immune to Slowness inflicted on them.

Strays make similar noises to skeletons, with an echoing effect.

ID




Entity data
Strays have entity data associated with them that contains various properties.

Trivia

 * When explaining the origin of the stray, Jeb stated, "They’re based on a concept that emerged from a game jam the Bellevue team had, where they were just adding a bunch of stuff to Minecraft - whatever they wanted. Jason Major made a bunch of cool mobs and I thought these particular ones fitted [sic] really well with what we were already planning."
 * Strays and other variants of a skeleton do not know how to use a crossbow, despite the same using method as a bow.
 * In current snapshot editions of Minecraft despite being built for cold biomes they still take freezing damage from powder snow it is possible this will change as more snapshots release, when this was brought up on the bug tracker it was marked as invalid, as the developers have yet to state there intent the post was considered feedback.