Patrol



A patrol or pillager patrol is a rare, naturally-spawning group of pillagers. On Hard difficulty $$, a patrol can include vindicators.

Spawning
Patrols spawn as a group of 5 pillagers $$ or 2–5 illagers $$ (all pillagers except in Hard difficulty, which has a 20% chance for any pillager to spawn as a vindicator instead), one of which is the patrol captain. The patrol captain wears an ominous banner, known as the  illager banner in Bedrock and Education Editions, on its head. The other illagers follow the captain around.

The patrol captain always spawn as a pillager captain, unless using commands. The patrol captain can also spawn on a ravager before 18w46a.

$$, patrols never spawn if is set to false.

Conditions
Patrols spawn naturally after the world age reaches 100 minutes (5 in-game days), then after a delay between 10–11 minutes an attempt is made to spawn a patrol with 20% chance of success. After an attempt is made, the delay is reset.

Patrols spawn in any Overworld biome except mushroom fields and its variants, although a patrol may wander into a mushroom biome after spawning.

If a patrol spawns in peaceful difficulty, the pillagers instantly despawn.

Java Edition
Patrols can spawn during the day on blocks with a block light level of 7 or lower. If a player is within two chunks of a village, patrols do not spawn. The game picks a random location 24–48 blocks away from the player to try to spawn the patrol's captain. If a pillager cannot spawn at the chosen position, it gives up and does not spawn anything. If the captain can spawn, the game tries to spawn  (rounded up) more pillagers within a 4-block radius.

Bedrock Edition
$$ patrols spawn around 24–48 blocks away from the player (or more than 48 blocks away if the player is in a village). Additionally, patrols can spawn in biomes where common monsters cannot spawn such as in:

Patrols spawn on solid blocks at light level 0–7 at the surface, like monsters.

Commands
To spawn an illager (for example, the patrol captain):

To spawn patrol members:

The members can be any illager or a witch. A ravager spawned as a patrol member is immobile and does not attack, even when hit.

Behavior
Patrols seek villages, wander around, and attack nearby players, adult villagers, iron golems, snow golems and wandering traders. The patrol members' heads turn to follow a player or villager-like mob who looks at them or attracts their attention. A player or villager-like mob who approaches within 10 blocks of the patrol provokes them into loading their crossbows and attacking, and pursuing if the player flees. The pursuit lasts until either of the parties die or get 10 blocks away.

$$, any illagers, ravagers, or witches that did not spawn with the patrol can join the patrol if sufficiently near a patrol captain. Evokers and illusioners who join a patrol wander around but do not seek out targets as other illager members in the patrol. They still do cast spells to attack mobs, however. If a "Johnny" vindicator joins a patrol, all patrol members assume the Johnny vindicator's aggressive behavior, attacking any non-illager mob.

$$, when one of the patrol members is attacked, it alerts nearby patrol members within 10 blocks to attack the same target as a swarm. The attacker can be any mob and doesn't need to be a player, and the distance between attacker and patrol can be up to 64 blocks away from alerted patrol members. That means a llama accidently spitting on a patrol member can provoke the all the members of the patrol. Vindicator patrol members attack the player and target directly without prior provocation.

A patrol spawned by a player might not function properly, instead causing some of the patrol members to wander around. One of the ways to fix this is to reduce the size of the patrol to around 5 members. Another way is to make the captain move, as the rest of the patrol members can move along with it and follow it around. Witches might not function properly in a patrol since the witch is not an illager.

Just like normal pillagers, when a patrol pillager's arrow hits another pillager, the hit pillager does not retaliate, although the vindicator might attack the pillager that hit it.

The patrol captain always drops an ominous banner, known as the illager banner in Bedrock Edition, upon death.

Bad Omen
Upon killing a patrol captain (either directly or when a tamed wolf kills it), the player receives the effect for 100 minutes (displayed as infinite $$), which has no consequences unless the player enters a village. Upon entering a village, the effect is removed from the player and a raid spawns nearby after about five seconds. $$, the level of the Bad Omen determines the chance of enchantment on raid member's weapons, and additional waves. The number of waves depends on the difficulty. In Bedrock Edition, killing multiple pillager captains does not grant another level of Bad Omen, and does not increase the chance of raiding mobs yielding enchanted weapons. The Bad Omen effect can be removed by drinking milk, entering a village, waiting until the effect is over, or the player's death.

Trivia

 * The idea of Pillagers appearing in patrols was decided based on wanting Pillagers to not be "hidden away," giving the player a sense of life in the world outside of their personal area.
 * In Bedrock Edition, it is possible for patrols to spawn directly inside villages.