Piglin Brute

A piglin brute is a hostile and stronger variant of piglins that appears in all types of bastion remnants. They always attack the player regardless of their wearing golden armor and cannot be bartered with, distracted or scared into retreating.

Spawning
A small number of piglin brutes spawn in bastion remnants only upon generation and in some rooms. They do not have a baby variant.

Piglin brutes spawn with a golden axe, occasionally with enchantments. They never spawn with armor and do not equip armor from the ground, although they can still be equipped with armor via dispensers or commands.

Drops

 * A piglin brute has 8.5% chance of dropping a with a random item durability, increased by 1% with each level of Looting, with a total 11.5% chance with looting III.
 * experience points are dropped upon death if killed by a player or a tamed wolf.

Behavior
Piglin brutes attack players, wither skeletons, and withers within 16 blocks and are not distracted by golden items or blocks. They also attack any mob that attacks any piglin, or piglin brute, either by accident or purposefully. Examples include retaliation for attacks by snow golems and iron golems. Other mobs that accidently shoot another piglin or another piglin brute causes the piglin brute to become hostile toward that mob.

Piglin Brutes are tied with Vindicators for being the mob that does the single highest amount of raw melee damage in the game, dealing an alarming 19 points of damage, on hard difficulty. This makes them pose a serious threat, even to well-prepared and heavily armored players. Strong armor (at least diamond) and a strong weapon is mandatory to quickly deal with Brutes, as even one Brute is a massive threat to players.

Piglin brutes spawn in all difficulty settings. In Peaceful difficulty, piglin brutes despawn or are passive only toward players.

Behaviors shared by both piglins and piglin brutes:


 * Can open wooden doors.
 * Call nearby piglins and other piglin brutes once attacked by a mob or a player, no matter whether the player wears golden armor or not.
 * Are not naturally immune to fire or lava.
 * Join in hunts.
 * Turns into a zombified piglin when in the overworld or the end for more than 15 seconds.

Behaviors specific to piglin brutes:


 * Piglin brutes attack players on sight.
 * Piglin brutes do not retreat from soul fire items nor from zoglins or zombified piglins.
 * Piglin brutes do not do a "victory dance".
 * Piglin brutes are not alerted by opening/mining of containers or the breaking of gold-type blocks, or if the player doesn't wear gold armor. Instead, they attack the player on sight.
 * Piglin brutes do not follow players that hold a gold item or a gold-related, unlike piglins. This includes holding a gold item in creative mode.
 * Piglin brutes cannot barter, as the player cannot use a gold ingot on them.
 * Piglin brutes pick up regular or enchanted golden axes only if walking over them. Unlike piglins, piglin brutes ignore all other golden items or gold ingots, meaning they cannot equip armor. However, they can still be equipped via dispensers or commands.
 * Piglin brutes do not ride hoglins, unlike baby piglins.

Like regular piglins, piglin brutes cannot swim; they sink in water and eventually drown. They also burn in fire or lava.

Zombification
When in the Overworld or the End, piglin brutes transform into zombified piglins after 15 seconds. Upon transformation, the spawned zombified piglin has the Nausea effect for 10 seconds. This Nausea effect is purely cosmetic. When turned into a zombified piglin, a piglin brute keeps its axe.

Piglin brutes summoned in the overworld with no AI do not zombify and do not pick up items.

Commands for keeping a piglin brute alive in the overworld
If you want to keep a piglin brute in the overworld but don't want the piglin brute to zombify then you can copy these commands that keeps the piglin brute alive and doesn't shake!

The piglin brute loses its weapon when its spawned using that command, if you want the piglin brute to keep its weapon when spawned, the command below spawns a piglin brute with its golden axe and does not zombify.

Note that this only works in 1.16 Java Edition, as Bedrock Edition doesn't have NBT commands.

ID




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

Trivia

 * Piglin brutes were created late in 1.16's development, so they were pushed to a minor release as the developers did not want to add a new feature so close to release.
 * The golden arm guard is meant to work as a "protection" and is the reason behind their high health.
 * Piglin brutes have no pupils, unlike Overworld pigs.
 * Sounds that are used by the piglins are lower-pitched when used by the piglin brute (like the sound).
 * Piglin brutes were made to trigger normal piglins when attacked, as to encourage players to avoid or maneuver around them.