Wither

The wither is an undead boss mob that floats and shoots explosive skulls at players and mobs. It is currently the only directly player-made hostile mob in the game.

The fight varies across editions; the Bedrock wither has twice as much health and different attacks as its Java counterpart.

They drop a large amount of experience and the nether star, a crafting ingredient for beacons.

Spawning


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

- The Pretty Scary Update promo poster

The wither is spawned by placing 4 blocks of soul sand or soul soil 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 (non-solid blocks such as tall grass and flowers still prevent the Wither from spawning). The building pattern can have any orientation (including horizontal and upside-down) as well as the skulls; the wither always spawns at the foot of the pattern. When the wither has successfully spawned, it is 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.

If the last skull block is placed below y=2 in any dimension, the wither will not spawn.

Drops
The wither always drops one 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 when killed by a player or a 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 gruesome 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 moving 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 toward all mobs except:


 * ,, , Zombies and their variants
 * ,, Skeletons and their variants
 * Zombie pigmen
 * , Undead horses
 * Phantoms
 * Players in creative or spectator mode

The wither is immune to all attacks from other undead mobs except the explosion of skulls from other withers.

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 world 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 black wither skulls. The central head and the side heads fire independently, allowing a wither to attack up to three 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 either planted or dropped as an item at that mob's location; however it may be destroyed by other wither skulls.

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

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

Bedrock Edition
Upon noticing a player or mob, the wither flies to a random location and hovers in place. It shoots 3 black wither skulls and one 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 toward its target, destroying blocks and damaging mobs in its path. It also fires up to 4 skulls per burst: three black skulls followed by one blue skull. It has different spawn and death animations, both of which involve the wither exploding.

Wither roses always drop as an item when the Wither kills a mob.

The sky light level drops to 11 from the moment the wither spawns until it is dead, preventing zombies, skeletons, and drowned from burning in sunlight.

Wither Skull
The wither rapidly fires explosive projectiles called wither skulls, multiple skulls a second, 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 4. 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 0.8, 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. However, the poison effect drains the player's hearts till 1 half heart, but the Wither status effect can kill the player, unlike poison.

Like other harmful status effects, the wither effect can be cured by drinking milk.

The blue skull can be deflected by hitting it with hand or throwable entities (similar to ghast fireballs).

ID
Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

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.
 * 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).
 * A variant of the wither called the Friendly wither was in two of the April fools updates.
 * The wither appears on the 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.
 * According to Quinn, Marketplace Partner Manager, the wither's name is "Simmons?", similar to the Ender Dragon's name being "Jean?"
 * The name is a pun for "summon", as the wither is a utility boss mob.
 * Wither skulls spawned through do  magic damage upon a direct hit, as opposed to the usual  mob attack damage.