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- For other pillager-related topics, see Pillager (Disambiguation).
Pillagers are hostile illager variants that are armed with a powerful crossbow. Pillagers were officially described as a new type of illager. They are found patrolling the world in groups, raids and in pillager outposts. They will see and pursue villagers from up to 100 blocks away.
Behavior
Pillagers are armed with crossbows and attack by shooting arrows at nearby players, iron golems, villagers, and wandering traders. They shoot arrows every 3 seconds at 6 blocks away, which can lead to pillagers battling neutral/hostile mobs due to an arrow hitting the wrong target, although pillagers will never attack each other on purpose. If fully submerged underwater, pillagers will use their melee attack. However, they don't attack when they don't have any weapons. They may ride ravagers during raids. It is worth noting that pillagers move faster when appearing in raids.
If raiding pillagers kill all the villagers in a village, the pillagers will celebrate their victory by jumping and laughing.
Pillaging
- Main article: Illagers § Village and Pillage
When pillagers do a pillage this will be triggered by a bad omen effect, which happens if you kill an illager captain. If you do have a bad omen effect the raid will not trigger until you enter a village. Then you must defend the village. The raid normally has 4-6 waves of pillagers.
Illager Captain
An illager captain is as the name would suggest the captain of Illagers. These can be found at a pillager outpost with a group of 5-6 Pillagers. An Illager Captain is noticeable by having an Illager Banner. They can also randomly spawn around the player with 1-2 other pillagers. When killed, they give the player the Bad Omen status effect. They also appear in raids like other illagers.
History
Pillagers were first announced at MineCon Earth 2018, and added in the 18w43a snapshot for Java Edition 1.14; and 1.9.0 for Bedrock Edition. They were added in patch 1.90 of the PlayStation 4 Edition, though they were a Creative Mode exclusive.
Strategy
Pillagers have a similar style of fighting to skeletons. The only difference is that they reload somewhat slower, so use this as your advantage and try to strike when they hold back to reload. If confronted by many of them, a player should bring a shield for combat so the player can block and deflect incoming arrows, and maybe bring along healing/regeneration potions. A golden apple or enchanted golden apple may be useful when no food is left and the health bar is at a critical state.
Three pillagers raiding a village.
Trivia
- They are the first mob to wield the crossbow weapon. They are also the first mob that the crossbow can be obtained from.
- In Superflat worlds, pillager groups will spawn at random, more frequent when near villages.
- Pillagers will clearly say "ow" in a low tone when hit.
- In Bedrock Edition, Pillagers, as well as vindicators may drop iron (can be enchanted) armor and swords (Not on Vindicators) on death. This does not make them more durable or have an increase of attack though.
- If you use commands to summon a pillager with anything other than a crossbow, the pillager won't attack players, villagers, or iron golems.
- Even though they will not attack their allies intentionally (friendly-fire), a vindicator will try to attack a pillager if it accidentally shot an arrow on the said vindicator.
- Pillagers can shoot firework rockets on their crossbows, though they won't naturally do this and it must be done through commands.
- Pillagers are the only humanoid illager-mob that are not seen to be hiding their hands, much like how other humanoid illagers and villagers do.
- Players can edit what the pillager is holding with the /replaceitem command. For some reason, the pillager in question will still fire arrows even if the player switches the pillager's crossbow with any melee weapon. When the pillager holding the specific weapon is not in combat, it will lower its arms and walk normally, the stance will forever stay like this even if it attacks anything.
- They are the weakest and most common of the illagers.
