Tutorials/Defeating a woodland mansion

Woodland mansions are quite dangerous to deal with for unprepared players, as they are inhabited by Illagers (evokers and vindicators).

For prepared players however, they can yield great bounty once explored and defeated.

Finding a mansion
Locating the mansion can be difficult, as they are very rare and generate thousands of blocks away from the spawn point. Remember they only generate in roofed forest biomes, where it is dark enough for mobs to spawn. You should bring at least 3 stacks of torches with you.

Aside from stumbling upon it by coincidence while exploring, there are two ways for locating Woodland Mansions.

One way is to use a woodland explorer map, which will lead you to the mansion. Explorer maps can be bought from cartographer villagers for 16-28 emeralds and one compass.

Another way is to use the /locate command if cheats are enabled. If not, then the above method is the only one

After getting the woodland explorer map, check for a small white dot on the edges of the map. If the dot is on an edge, travel the opposite direction. For example, if the dot is showing on top, travel South instead of North. It is the same with the dot on the corner; if it is in the north-east direction, move south west. The smaller the dot, the further away the mansion is located from the player.

Recommended Equipment

 * A few golden apples (optional but can be very, very helpful to have)
 * A full set of armor; preferably enchanted
 * Ideally diamond, but iron can also work (if you are good enough at combat)
 * A powerful sword. Ideally a diamond one with preferably Sharpness III+, or Smite IV+ to deal with the large amounts of Zombies and Skeletons that often spawn.
 * Again, an iron sword can also work but this is only true if you a skilled in combat.
 * An axe (any kind but more durable ones are recommended)
 * A shield (will come very handy for blocking most of the damage one may sustain in a fight.
 * Building blocks (to build barricades and walls); preferably they should be easy to break, even without tools.
 * Plenty of food, preferably foodstuffs that restore a lot of saturation. This includes:
 * Steak
 * Cooked porkchop
 * Golden carrot
 * Torches (A least three stacks or so, not only will they be needed for lighting up the mansion but also the path to it as well).
 * A few doors (optional, but it pays to be prepared, you can use them to create an improvised "safe room" by walling of a section of a larger room or corridor and adding a door to it.)
 * Wood (can be broken up into wood planks which can be further broken up into other raw materials for crafting, in emergencies, a wooden sword crafted from this material can potentially save your life).
 * Potions (optional but can be quite helpful from time to time).
 * Strength (increases damage dealt, allows you to kill enemies faster).
 * Resistance (reduces incoming damage, improves survivability, works great in tandem with armor).
 * Invisibility (Be the ghost of the mansion, sneak past enemies without them knowing you were ever there).
 * Remove all armor when in use and put it back on when the potion wears off
 * Important note for invisibility potion users. Mobs will not attack you unless you directly touch them when using the invisibility potion. Your player model will disappear, rendering you fully invisible. If you wear any one piece of armor, mobs will be able to see you if you are at most 1 block away from them. For every additional piece of armor you equip, this distance will increase by 3, for a maximum view distance of 13 blocks if you are wearing a full set[1](compared to 16 blocks without the effect). Also, having an item in your hand will also count as "armor" in this statistic.
 * Healing (useful for patching up yourself in between or during a fight, can sometimes even be a lifesaver)
 * Regeneration (improves survivability in general, allows faster recovery from injuries)
 * A bow and arrows (optional, if not using iron tools, arrows can be tipped or spectral)
 * A shulker box or two to hold and transport loot in (optional but can be good thing to have if you like hoarding stuff you find).

Getting in

 * Method 1 - Gentleman's entrance

Self-Explanatory. Go through the front door.


 * Method 2 - Breaking and entering

Make your own door:

Use an axe to get in through a wall (or if you are feeling sneaky, go in through the floor or if you are feeling bold, try cutting your way in through the roof!).

Navigating the Mansion
When inside a mansion, always watch yourself and stay on guard. If you can, take two players. The mobs spawning in a mansion will quickly kill a player who is not paying attention, even with good equipment. Vindicators deal hefty amounts of damage, Evoker's fangs are not affected by armor, and creepers are a common problem in the poorly lit structure. This makes awareness extremely important. There are two styles of advancing through the mansion, both of which are founded on good philosophy. The first method is to take the mansion floor-by-floor, killing all mobs and looting the chests, lighting up the way as you go. This method will reduce the spawning of hostile mobs in the first floor, which has no windows and therefore is subject to greater levels of darkness than other floors. Another good method is to immediately enter the second floor and find an evoker. Killing it will give you a totem of undying, and provide you with a bit more security. The best way to be prepared in a mansion is to look at each room before entering - what does it contain? The most dangerous room, by far, in a mansion is the conference room, a room with a U-shaped table. This room always spawns 5 vindicators and an evoker. The second is a map room, which consists of a large carpet art piece on a table resembling a map, surrounded by chairs. This room spawns 2 vindicators and an evoker. The two rooms previously mentioned only occur on the second and third floors.


 * Focus on the most dangerous mobs first. Kill "very dangerous" mobs first (vindicators and evokers etc.), then target "semi-dangerous" mobs (creepers and witches etc.) then kill all "less dangerous" mobs (zombies and spiders etc.).
 * Don't bother looking in the chests in storage rooms: they have nothing in them and looking through them leaves you vulnerable to ambushes.
 * If you plan to make the mansion your home, make sure to light up every room to prevent hostile mob spawning. Be particularly careful not to accidentally set anything on fire or let any creepers sneak up on you.

Vindicators
Vindicators have 24 HP, slightly higher than that of most other mobs, but they hit hard, dealing a total of 19 damage on Hard difficulty. Their fighting style is the most simplistic out of all Illagers, they simply pull out an axe and try to run up to the player and hit them.
 * It is advised to attack them with a sword/axe and a shield. However, it is impossible to defend damage from an axe after 1.11.1.
 * Quickly attack them until they die.
 * They drop emeralds and have a chance of dropping their axe as well. In such a case, the dropped axe can also be used as a weapon.
 * However, if renamed to "Johnny", they will attack any mob in sight, making them useful for mob farms.

Evokers
Evokers have them same amount of health as Vindicators (24 HP) but inflict far less damage, at just six damage at any difficulty. This doesn't mean, however, that they are less dangerous.

Evokers have a more unconventional fighting style. Upon seeing a player, they will run towards them until they are within 16 blocks of them. On getting within this radius they will most likely summon their offensive fang attack, summoning 16 fangs in a line towards the player. If the player moves towards them, they will cast a defensive fang spell, summoning a ring of fangs around them to repel attackers, assuming they have not attacked recently, otherwise they will run from the player. For this reason, it is best to use a bow in open space, and use a sword only if the evoker is cornered.
 * Try to keep a fair distance between the player and the evoker. The evoker has a defensive fang attack that deals damage in a small radius around the evoker.
 * The evoker has a second offensive fang attack, where it summons a line of fangs out of the ground to attack the player.
 * It can also summon vexes as support enemies, which makes killing him quickly important.

Vex

 * The vexes are summoned by evokers and act as support enemies. To prevent them from possibly swarming you, quickly kill the evoker before it can summon any, preferably from a distance in order to avoid the evoker's other attacks.
 * Vexes should be killed first if dealing with evokers from a distance as they can pass through walls and attack you from unexpected angles.
 * If in close contact with an evoker, kill the evoker first and then the vexes, the evoker's death will prevent any more vexes from being summoned.
 * It is best to attack when they are charging toward you, as their movements are otherwise very unpredictable.
 * If the vex disappears, do not worry, as it will despawn within 2 minutes of its summoning.

Loot
The mansion is made up of several rooms and some of them contain chests with loot in them.

The majority of the chests found in the mansion contain the same loot as chests found in a Dungeon would contain, however, there are some exceptions to this rule. Two of the rooms that can generate in the mansion are the large and small storage rooms. These rooms contain shelves which house either 42 single chests in the Small storage room or 13 double chests (26 single chests) in the Large storage room. Despite the amount of chests present, they are all empty.
 * The chest generated in the "Allium room" will contain 8 Alliums.
 * The chest generated in the "Sapling farm room" will contain 28 Dark Oak Saplings.
 * The trapped chest generated in the "Fake End portal room" will contain 2 Ender Pearls (Note that this chest is linked to two blocks of TNT which will ignite if the trap is sprung).
 * The chest generated in the "Tree chopping room" will contain an Iron Axe enchanted with Efficiency I.

Aside from chests, there are also several valuable blocks that the player can scavenge from the mansion's rooms, for example: the "Obsidian room" and the "Lava room" both contain a Diamond Block, the "Illager statue room" contains a hidden Lapis Lazuli block, a lot of the furniture can dismantled into loot and the Jail rooms contain Redstone circuitry, just to name a few.

Post-Exploration
After the mansion is looted, you can turn it into a home, burn it down, or systematically dismantle it to get extra resources.

If you are planning on turning it into a home, make sure to light up all rooms and clear out any residual hostile mobs (if there are any left).