Tutorials/Defeating a village raid

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

Raid basics
Raids are events during which, s, , and s (which can summon ) invade a village to kill as many as possible ( also spawn but they are passive to villagers). 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 spoils from the pillagers and vindicators.
 * A full set of iron 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 vex attacks, as well as vindicator blows as their attacks cannot 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.
 * 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.

Optional equipment

 * Some Ender pearls for quick escapes.
 * , to remove negative status effects from the witches that could affect your perfomance.
 * , to hinder groups of raiders.
 * or to recover quickly. If you have iron golems when you're hurt go to the iron golem and throw a healing splash potion at your feet, healing both you and the iron golem so you can heal two mobs at the cost of one potion.
 * to tank enemy attacks and provide a swift healing cover.
 * to trap raiders.
 * A Lava Bucket for quickly eliminating Ravagers and other mobs (excluding witches, which drink ).
 * Some blocks (you can use any block you want) to pillar jump and attack melee raiders easier (this is not recommended with pillagers, as they can shoot you off the pillar with their crossbow).
 * A, , , or 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).

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Iron Golems
Build as many iron golems as you can to help you defeat the raid 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 accidently shooting the golems, as they won't fight back since they're player built, but try not to shoot them. 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 and throw a splash potion of healing at your feet, which heals both you and the iron golem at the cost of one potion.

Equipment
Grab your best equipment if you want to kill the raiders quicker. Make sure your equipment is above half durability so it won't break while half way through the raid.

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  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.

Starting the raid
The only way to trigger a raid is through the 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.

$$, 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 status effect and determine their locations. .

Prioritize s, s and es. 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
$$, 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.

$$, as Bad Omen is not cumulative, there are no additional waves, and additional illagers do not spawn as well. s do not ride s.

Wave 1: There are only s. 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 s and s. 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.

Wave 3: There is a and some s. 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 es, s, and s. 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 s, s, an, and a riding a  ($$ there is an additional ). 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. Kill the other raiders as per normal.

Wave 6: There is only one, but many s and s. Try to single out the evoker first as es 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 and  riding a  each. s 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.

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 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.

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. Since this trap destroys most mob loot, it's not a recommended trap.

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.