Warden

A warden is a hostile mob summoned by sculk shriekers in deep dark biomes. It attacks by swinging its arms downward, dealing the highest melee damage of all mobs, and can also release an undodgable ranged sonic boom attack that ignores blocks and almost all damage-reducing items, including enchanted armor. Wardens are completely blind, and rely on vibrations, smell and touch to detect players and mobs to attack, and can therefore be evaded via, diversions and wool.

Spawning
Wardens do not use standard mob spawning mechanics. They are instead spawned when a player activates naturally generated sculk shriekers four times instead and if there isn't already another warden within 24 blocks of it. A warden spawns by emerging from the ground near the shrieker that summoned it, taking about 6.7 seconds to do so and being completely invulnerable until fully emerged.

The warning count for sculk shriekers is specific to each player rather than each sculk shrieker. This means that the player can activate four different shriekers in different locations and a warden emerges after the fourth activation. The light level does not have an effect on warden spawning.

Up to 20 attempts are made to spawn a warden within a 11×13×11 cubic area, which is centered on the shrieker. During each attempt, the game picks a random column from the y axis, then the game picks the topmost block in that column with a top surface with full collision and the block above must have no collision (the spawning warden cannot collide with any existing entities or liquids; wardens must not have water inside their spawn block, where their feet go, but they can spawn with water in the second and third block. For example, a pressure plate with water flowing on top is still a valid location).

$$, the warden spawning can be toggled on or off with the game rule.

Drops
Wardens drop a single upon death. They also drop experience if killed by either a player or a tamed wolf.

Behavior
After spawning, wardens wander randomly around the world and move toward nearby vibrations originating from players, mobs and non-mob sources including projectiles and minecarts. The warden also periodically sniffs the area around it, allowing it to zero in on targets even if they don't create vibrations. As wardens sniff, pick up vibrations or are touched by other players or mobs, wardens become increasingly agitated.

Idle
The warden can fit inside of any space that is 1 block wide and 3 blocks tall, allowing it to chase players and mobs through small corridors.

Wardens are immune to damage from fire or lava and do not take knockback. They pursue through blocks that are usually avoided by other mobs, including rails, powder snow, cactus or magma blocks.

The warden, whether angered or not, gives 12 seconds of Darkness to all players within a 20 block radius of it every 6 seconds. The souls in its chest make a low heartbeat that occurs in tandem with the Darkness effect. The heartbeat speeds up as the warden becomes increasingly agitated. The warden prefers to track down the most suspicious targets, rather than the ones closest to it.

The warden listens to all vibrations within a 16 block radius, except those from other wardens, armor stands, dying mobs and players in Creative or Spectator mode. Like with sculk sensors, they cannot detect a player who is sneaking and is also walking, falling or shooting a projectile. The warden has a 2-second cooldown between detecting vibrations. The warden is aware of all targetable entities within a 49×51×49 box around itself. If the warden has a targetable entity, is not investigating any disturbances and is otherwise idle, it will pathfind towards the closest entity, prioritizing players over mobs. While pathfinding, the warden can begin a 'sniff' behavior and animation. This takes around 4.2 seconds and has a 5-10 seconds cooldown.

Suspense
Wardens keep track of how angry they are at each suspect as a number from 0 to 150. When the warden notices a vibration, it adds anger to the mob that caused the vibration. It adds 10 anger if the vibration was from a projectile or 35 anger for other vibrations. However, if two projectiles are heard by the warden within five seconds, it instead adds the full 35 anger toward that player/mob. Wardens do not add anger toward a mob/player if the projectile was shot from more than 30 blocks away, although the projectile does count toward the counter of two projectiles. Anger decays at a rate of 1 per second and immediately clears if the targeted player switches to Creative or Spectator modes, the target or warden leaves the dimension, or if the target dies.

The warden adds 35 anger toward any mob that directly touches it. This effect has a 1-second cooldown.

When it finishes sniffing, the warden adds 35 anger to the nearest mob or player within 6 blocks horizontally and 20 blocks vertically, a cylindrical volume centered on the warden.

Once a warden reaches 80 anger with a target, it roars for 4.2 seconds, adds another 20 anger, and pursues the target. In this angered state, the warden chases the target normally despite being blind. The warden also enters its hostile state and adds 100 anger if directly attacked by a mob. If the attacking player or mob is within 5 blocks, it skips its roaring animation altogether and immediately gives chase.

The warden is biased toward player vibrations, attacks and contact - even if a warden is angrier at another mob, it still attacks the player first as long as they have angered the warden as well. This is not true of any other mob.

After 60 seconds of being "calm" and not detecting any vibrations or sniffing any mobs, it burrows back into the ground and despawns, unless the warden has been named. If the warden is floating on a liquid, it instead immediately despawns without any burrowing animation. During its emerging/burrowing animation, the warden can take damage only from, though it can still be pushed by entities, pistons or liquids. Named wardens do not dig or despawn.

Attacks
The warden's melee attack has a cooldown of 0.9 seconds and disables shields for 5 seconds, dealing to  health points depending on the difficulty. If a warden cannot reach its target, it switches to its ranged attack: a sonic boom. It does so when the following are true:
 * It has been 10 seconds since the warden detected the target
 * It has been 5 seconds since the warden last used a melee or ranged attack
 * The target is within 15 blocks horizontally and 20 blocks vertically of the warden.

The sonic boom aims directly at the target, making it impossible to dodge, passing through blocks and other mobs without damaging them. The warden takes 1.7 seconds to charge and unleashes the attack, which instantly hits the target as long as the target is within attack range. The attack takes an additional 1.3 seconds to cool down before the warden can use melee attacks again for a total of 3 seconds. The sonic boom is visible via green-blue particles that are projected out of the warden's chest. This attack bypasses shields, armor, enchantments, blocks and even the wither armor of the wither. Only the Resistance status effect can reduce this attack's damage.

Sounds
Wardens use the Hostile Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.



ID




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






 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Advancements
Killing a warden doesn't count for the Monster Hunter advancement nor is it needed to receive the Monsters Hunted advancement.

Trivia

 * Although the warden is supposed to be blind, spectating it reveals that it still has normal vision.
 * The concept for the warden was originally planned for the Nether Update as a "blind piglin that could only respond to sounds" that could be found within a "new biome".
 * Brandon Pearce considers the warden as something entirely new as it isn't a boss or a mini boss or a regular enemy but a force of nature: "when a tornado is barreling towards you, you don't try to kill it - you run away! The warden is exactly the same."
 * Brandon's thought process on finally giving the warden a drop after he was heavily against it was the warden should never drop something that is important or hard to get that would be worth going through the trouble of fighting it. In this case, fighting a warden is not worth a sculk catalyst. This change was only made for renewability farms and tech players.
 * When Chi Wong was working the warden's digging animation he wanted to make sure the timing was right and make sure whilst it was going down, it's not going down like an elevator, but it actually digs, and the feeling Chi wanted to convey with it is it has tons of rage, anger, and annoyed and it wants to go down.
 * The warden is the most concepted and worked through mob in Minecraft in terms of sound design.
 * When Brandon was first developing the warden, sound design was very important to him, and the warden was designed with that in mind.
 * While designing the warden, Brandon wanted to hear the player's "heartbeat" as the warden got closer for anticipation but he thought that it felt out or place and didn't make sense to hear the player's heartbeat. His solution was for something else to make the heartbeat, and thus the warden gained a heartbeat. It was also a design choice to mimic some really interesting sound design without breaking immersion. It also adds more to the warden itself and lore reasons as to why a warden has a heartbeat.
 * Some previous names being considered for the warden were the shade, the stalker and the hollowed.
 * The shade was a vaguely humanoid translucent mob with glowing eyes. It was meant to be a more ambient mob, which would stand in darkness with only its eyes visible and would slowly fade away as the player approached it. It would also imitate the noise of other mobs, making it sound as though they were right behind the player. Rather than an iteration on the warden, by then called the "stalker", the shade had come to be a completely separate mob to the stalker, though in some concepts it was meant to be sort of complementary, living in the ancient cities and helping the stalker by tricking players into alerting it. It was eventually scrapped due to a feeling that it would grow to become annoying rather than creepy, and so the team could better focus on developing the stalker.
 * The stalker iteration was tall and asymmetrical with a glowing core, sometimes referred to as a chest crystal. It occurred in totems throughout the deep dark. The stalker would stand completely still to trick players into taking its core and aggravating it, and could transform into a form one block high form to prevent players from escaping through small tunnels. This iteration, specifically its appearance and transformation mechanic, felt clunky and was deemed more goofy than scary, so it was scrapped by the Mojang Studios gameplay developers. The vibration-sensing aspect, which was developed in this version, however, was passed down to and refined in the later iterations.
 * The hollowed was designed with the intent of inciting trypophobia and had white flesh with holes in it. According to Brandon Pearce, its design was an experiment to see how far the boundaries of Minecraft  could be pushed and to try and draw a line as to what would be acceptable. The design had to ultimately be toned down multiple times due to said methaphorical line being crossed and after many back-and-forths between the developers, the directors and art team, a design similar to the current one was landed on.
 * The warden also had a number of other mechanics and abilities planned:
 * If the player managed to get out of the warden's attack and pathfinding range but still be within its detection range, the warden would use a "mind-altering" attack that would cause the player to move erratically (walking forward would cause the player to go backwards, etc.) and deal damage overtime. The mechanic was eventually scrapped due to being deemed too complicated.
 * The warden would destroy blocks or burrow through them. The former was rejected due to the developers wanting to limit the number of "destructive" mobs there are in the game and the latter was rejected due to being too difficult to implement.
 * The warden could hide the player's hunger bar and health bar.
 * Brandon Pearce wanted the warden to be immune to damage to discourage players from fighting it, but he didn't think that would work for a sandbox game.
 * The warden would originally burn when exposed to daylight.
 * In the bedrock beta/preview 1.18.30.32 the warden would dig back down when exposed in daylight but it was changed so the warden doesn't dig back down but stays when exposed to daylight in beta/preview 1.19.0.20.
 * The warden and sculk were inspired by Lovecraftian horror as the developers wanted to make something that wasn't in the traditional scary like jumpscares and etc. but in a mysterious and unknown scary.
 * In the fifth episode of Minecraft Now, it was revealed by Jasper Boerstra that the warden went through over 175 different concept iterations and they have explored everything because they wanted the warden to be something really special and also for it to be scary, beautiful, ugly cute and have some empathy.
 * In the sixth episode of The Secrets of Minecraft, it was jokingly revealed that the warden's personal names are "Jonathan" and "William", depending on the scene, similar to how the player, the ender dragon or the wither all have personal joke names. "Warden" itself was also jokingly broken down into "War! Dens!" in the description.
 * "Jonathan" can be seen on a blackboard for name suggestions alongside "the stalker" and "the hollowed".
 * It jokingly explained that the name "warden" was the result of calling it "William" and spelling it wrong.
 * In the tenth episode, both names were used when Narrator spotted the warden behind him. He mistakenly called the warden Jonathan before correcting himself as William, foreshadowing Jonathan Minecraft from the eleventh and final episode.
 * Brandon Pearce stated in a tweet that the souls in the warden's chest is important to its lore.
 * Brandon also stated that the warden is inspired by the mystery heard at the end of the music disc "11".
 * Coincidentally, in the spin-off game, Minecraft: Story Mode, there is an unrelated character also named the warden.
 * The warden is called Blu Shrek in the lolcat language referencing Dreamwork's Shrek.