Wither

"New Boss: Wither! Better craft a diaper, pal."

- The Pretty Scary Update promo poster

The wither is a powerful, floating undead boss mob that shoots explosive skulls at its enemies, and is currently the only player-made hostile mob in the game.

Spawning


The wither is spawned by placing 4 blocks of soul sand in a T shape (see ), and putting 3 wither skeleton skulls on top of the three upper blocks. The last block placed must be one of the three skulls, and can be placed by the player or a dispenser. Air blocks are required on either side of the base soul sand block under the upper blocks (keep in mind that "block" refers to any block, not just those that are block shaped; therefore objects such as tall grass and flowers still prevent the Wither from spawning). The building pattern can have any orientation (including horizontal) as well as the skulls. When the wither has completely spawned, it becomes angered and creates an explosion around itself.

Like other hostile mobs, the wither despawns when the difficulty is changed to Peaceful. The wither spawning structure also fails in Peaceful difficulty; the blocks simply do nothing.

Drops
The wither drops the nether star upon death which, until picked up, cannot despawn or be destroyed by explosions. The Looting enchantment does not increase this drop. It also drops 50 experience points when killed by a player or tamed wolf.

Behavior
"This undead triple-headed creature will then immediately attempt to destroy every living thing in the vicinity, spitting out skulls from each of its three heads and inflicting a creeping corruption on their target, which turns a player’s hearts an unhealthy black. In its fury, the Wither will destroy blocks it comes into contact with - even if you survive the battle, there’s often precious little left standing nearby."

- Marsh Davies



When spawned, the wither grows larger in size as its health bar fills up. While in this state, the wither is invulnerable, and neither moves nor attacks. When this state ends (after 10 seconds), the wither creates a very large explosion centered on itself, destroying nearby blocks and dealing up to damage to nearby mobs/players. This “birth” explosion is larger than that of a charged creeper or an end crystal and is accompanied by a loud, threatening, ghastly sound that can be heard equally from across the map, and isn’t actually centered on the wither. After this, the wither attacks nearby mobs and can take damage.

The wither is immune to fire, lava and drowning damage. Suffocation is ineffective, since upon taking damage, the wither breaks any block it touches (except bedrock, end gateway blocks, end portal blocks, end portal frames, command blocks, barriers and extended pistons). Like other undead mobs, the wither is harmed by the Instant Health effect and healed by the Instant Damage effect. It is immune to all other status effects, like the ender dragon. However, it takes extra damage from weapons with the Smite enchantment.

The wither is hostile towards all mobs except the following:
 * ,, , Zombies and their variants
 * ,, Skeletons and their variants
 * Zombie pigmen
 * , Undead horses
 * Phantoms
 * Players in creative or spectator mode
 * Ghasts
 * Other withers

Hostile mobs that can be targeted by the wither include spiders and guardians.

The wither is immune to all attacks from other undead mobs except skulls from other withers. The Wither can't see players and mobs affected by Invisibility.

If the wither is idle, it simply hovers and is unable to gain altitude. On Normal or Hard difficulty, it also randomly fires blue skulls in random directions until it finds a target.

The wither has a dark purple boss health bar that appears only when a player is looking in the wither's direction, including through walls. When looking at the wither, the sky gets slightly darker. All withers display a boss bar on the screen.

Java Edition


Upon noticing a mob, the wither hovers above it and rapidly shoots wither skulls. The central head and the side heads fire independently, allowing a wither to attack up to two different mobs/players at the same time. The main head controls the Wither's movement, and has a 0.1% chance to shoot a blue wither skull instead of the default black one.

Whenever a wither kills another mob, a wither rose is planted at that mob's location. In select cases, the wither rose will drop as an item.

The wither has a passive regeneration rate of every 20 ticks (1 second), and a direct hit on a target instantly heals.

When its health drops below half, the wither gains a natural "wither armor" effect, which makes it immune to projectile damage and causes it to fly at the same height as its target. The armor disappears if it regenerates above half health.

Bedrock and Legacy Console Editions
Upon noticing a player or mob, the wither flies to a random location and hovers in place. It shoots 3 black wither skulls and a blue wither skull before flying to another location.

At half health, it causes a large explosion that spawns 3-4 wither skeletons (except on Easy difficulty), as well as gaining "wither armor". Instead of flying to a random location, it dashes towards its target, destroying most blocks and damaging mobs in its path. It also fires up to 4 skulls per burst. It has different birth and death animations, both of which involve the wither spinning and exploding.

Wither Skull
The wither shoots explosive projectiles called wither skulls, which look like extra heads of itself, at its target. There are two types of wither skulls: a fast-moving black one, and a slower blue one. Black wither skulls explode with a blast radius of 1, the same as a ghast's fireball, and cannot break blocks with a blast resistance above 20. The blue wither skull has the same explosion strength, but moves slower and treats most blocks as having a blast resistance of no more than 4, making it more destructive to the terrain.

If either type of wither skull hits a player or mob, it inflicts the wither effect, which turns the player's hearts black and drains health, similarly to poison.

Like other harmful status effects, the wither effect can be cured by drinking milk or using a totem of undying.

In Bedrock Edition and Legacy Console Edition, the blue skull can be deflected by hitting it with hand or throwable entities (similar to ghast fireballs).

Entity data
Wither skulls are also entities that have associated entity data.

Data values
Withers have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the mob.

Trivia

 * According to Jeb, the wither was inspired by Terraria, which has a summonable boss mechanic. The name itself is inspired by poison spell in another game made by Jeb called Whispers in Akarra.
 * There is a painting showing the soul sand and wither skeleton skull formation needed to spawn a wither.
 * The wither does not take damage from undead mobs' attacks.
 * If the wither is damaged by the Void, it frantically attempts to fire blue skulls.
 * Above half health, the Wither always attempts to stay a few blocks above the mob it is targeting. This means that attempting to build or climb up to hit the Wither using a sword is essentially impossible.
 * If the wither is after a blaze and the blaze tries to fly up to it, the wither attempts to keep rising above the blaze, thus making both of them rise higher until they hit a ceiling or until the blaze despawns.
 * Although the wither is 3.5 blocks tall, 3 blocks wide, and 1 block thick, its hitbox is only 3.5 blocks tall, 1 block wide, and 1 block thick.
 * The true dimensions of the wither are: 2.844 blocks tall (varies), 3 blocks wide and 1.719 blocks long (also varies).
 * Summoning the Wither in a small underground room at the end of a long tunnel can make the fight easier, as the Wither does not have as much space to maneuver. Back up along the tunnel and the Wither needs to destroy blocks continuously to chase after you, hopefully allowing you time to shoot arrows to whittle down its health.
 * A variant of the wither called the Friendly wither was in two of the April fools updates.
 * The wither spawn structure can be built any way, such as downward or horizontal, however the wither always spawns at the foot of the structure.
 * The wither appears on four sides of chiseled red sandstone.
 * Withers have the greatest natural health of all vanilla mobs in Minecraft, making it brawnier than even the ender dragon. The wither, however, is slower and deals less damage than the ender dragon.
 * The wither's smaller heads shoot targets slightly slower than the main head. the interval for smaller heads is 2-3 seconds, while the main head's always 2.
 * An enemy called the Wither Storm appears in Minecraft: Story Mode. It was created by replacing the center block of soul sand with a Command Block.
 * Despite not having visible feet, withers are still capable of making footstep sounds.
 * In Java Edition 3D Shareware v1.34, withers drop red keys.