Vindicator

A vindicator is an illager equipped with an iron axe. Vindicators appear in woodland mansions and participate in raids, as well as pillager patrols.

Spawning
On Normal difficulty and Hard difficulty, vindicators sometimes spawn with a randomly enchanted iron axe: the chance is 0–25%, and is higher when the regional difficulty is higher.

Woodland mansions
Vindicators spawn during the generation of mansions, in groups of 1–3 inside particular rooms, sometimes accompanied by an evoker. Rarely, vindicators can spawn in the corridors and hallways.

They do not respawn after initially spawning. Vindicators generated with mansions do not naturally despawn unless the world is switched to Peaceful difficulty.

Vindicators are sometimes neutral if naturally spawned in a woodland mansion, which means that the vindicator does not attack the player on sight, but only after the player attacks it.

Patrols
Patrols consist of 2–5 illagers, with all illagers always being pillagers on Easy difficulty and Normal difficulty. On Hard difficulty, 80% of them are pillagers and 20% of them are vindicators.

In Java Edition, any vindicators can join a patrol if sufficiently near a patrol captain.

Raids
Vindicators can spawn during raids. They appear more frequently during later waves and at higher difficulties.

Vindicators can spawn riding ravagers.

Java Edition
$$, if a player spawns a vindicator with a spawn egg or using a command, the vindicator has a chance of becoming an illager captain, with a Ominous banner attached above its back.

Drops
A vindicator drops loot only when killed by a player or tamed wolf:
 * and an additional per naturally-spawned equipment.
 * 0–1 when killed by the player. The maximum increases by 1 for every level of Looting, for a maximum of 0-4 with Looting III.
 * 8.5% chance of dropping their normal or enchanted, which increases by 1 percentage point per level of Looting.
 * 1 Illager Banner.png Ominous banner($$), or illager banner $$ if they spawn as a raid captain.

$$, if a vindicator spawns as part of a raid, it drops:
 * 0-1

Additionally, $$, vindicators have a 65% chance of dropping the following on Easy and Normal difficulties, and an 80% chance of dropping them on Hard difficulty: Notes:
 * 0-1 ($$ chance)
 * 2-3 ($$ chance)
 * 4-5 ($10/39$ chance)
 * 1 ($5/39$ chance)
 * 1 ($2/39$ chance)
 * 1 ($2/39$ chance)
 * 1 ($5/78$ chance)
 * 1 ($5/78$ chance)
 * 1 ($5/78$ chance)
 * 1 ($5/78$ chance)
 * 1 ($5/78$ chance)
 * 1 ($5/78$ chance)
 * Iron equipment from raid drops always has a 50% chance of being enchanted with a random enchantment at level 5-19.
 * Iron equipment from raid drops is always damaged.
 * These drops are also affected by the Looting enchantment.
 * The enchanted book has a level 30 enchantment, may be treasure enchantment.
 * Emeralds are both a regular raid drop and an additional raid drop.
 * With Looting III enchantment, a vindicator spawned from a raid can drop up to 16 emeralds upon death, but the chance is 3.328% on Easy or Normal, and 4.096% on Hard.
 * It is possible for a vindicator spawned from a raid to drop both its naturally-spawned iron axe and a second iron axe from its additional raid drops (in Easy and Normal difficulty 0.3536% chance, 0.3952% chance with Looting I, 0.4368% chance with Looting II, and 0.4784% chance with Looting III, while in Hard difficulty 0.4352% chance, 0.4864% chance with Looting I, 0.5376% chance with Looting II, and 0.5888% chance with Looting III).

Behavior
Vindicators are hostile toward players, iron golems, adult villagers, baby villagers, wandering traders, and snow golems.

$5/78$, vindicators attack the player regardless of distance, unlike most other illagers, who attack the player on sight. The vindicator can stare at a player from a long distance away. This also applies for other mobs, if the vindicator was named "Johnny".

When attacking, a vindicator raises its main hand brandishing an iron axe. It sprints, moving faster than villagers. When not attacking, a vindicator crosses its arms similar to a villager and does not hold its axe.

If the vindicator has no weapons (its axe), it still attacks players, iron golems, villagers, wandering traders, and snow golems, except the axe doesn't appear in the vindicator's hand when the vindicator raises its hand. A vindicator's axe can break, just like pillager crossbows.

When idle, the vindicator prefers to stand in dark corners, moving around occasionally.

A mob hitting a vindicator would provoke not only that vindicator, but also all vindicators nearby, similar to piglins, piglin brutes, or zombified piglins.

During raids, vindicators can open doors, just as villagers do. They break wooden doors on Normal and Hard difficulties when attacking.

If raiding vindicators kill all the villagers in the village or all the beds are destroyed, vindicators celebrate by cheering.

Like shulkers, and evokers, vindicators are passive in Peaceful difficulty.

Like most hostile mobs, vindicators despawn in Peaceful difficulty in Java Edition.

In Bedrock Edition, if a pillager arrow accidentally strikes a vindicator, the vindicator retaliates against the pillager and the pillager fights back. This does not occur in Java Edition, as all illagers are friendly to each other, even when accidently hit.

Vindicators look at the player in creative mode like villagers do, but they might break the line of sight with the player after looking for a while or when it sees a target.

Damage
Vindicators are tied with piglin brutes for dealing the single highest amount of raw melee damage in the game, dealing an alarming damage on Hard difficulty. This poses a serious threat even to well-prepared and heavily armored players. Due to the fact multiple vindicators spawn in a location, they make mansions, raids, and also patrols dangerous even for seasoned players.

A vindicator disables the player's shield for 5 seconds with its iron axe attack, even when riding a mob. For this reason, a player may not survive trying to land a melee attack on a vindicator that rides a ravager during a raid in Hard difficulty.

"Johnny"
A vindicator named Johnny (using a name tag, named spawn egg, etc., or has its  tag set to  ) is hostile to every mob except illagers, evokers, illusioners, pillagers, ravagers, other vindicators, ghasts,, and players in Creative or Spectator mode

The hostility even extends to armor stands, baby villagers, vexes and ravagers.

All hostile or neutral mobs, except for ender dragons, endermites, elder guardians, phantoms, guardians, goats, slimes, magma cubes, and ravagers try to attack the "Johnny" vindicator in return.

The  tag overrides its name; the player can give the vindicator any other name and set the   tag to   and it remains hostile in the same way as described. Conversely, the player can name the vindicator Johnny and set the  tag to , causing the vindicator to act as a normal vindicator.

Naming a vindicator spawn egg "Johnny" and it on a spawner has no effect; normal vindicators spawn rather than vindicators named "Johnny".

ID




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

Trivia

 * The "Johnny" easter egg is a reference to the movie The Shining, where the main character says "Here's Johnny!" while breaking a door with an axe.
 * Vindicators have blue eyes, unlike other illagers, who have green eyes. During the Texture Update, the eyes of vindicators and illusioners were changed to green, but in 18w47b, the color of the vindicator's eyes were changed back to blue.
 * The eyes on Bedrock Edition remain green.
 * Vindicators have an unused hat layer in their texture file, similar to the illusioner's hat.
 * The hat layer is also seen in the witch and evoker's texture file but unused.
 * The hat models also used to exist in the nitwit, librarian, and priest's texture before the Village & Pillage update.