Tutorials/Defeating a village raid

This tutorial will show you how to defeat a village raid.

Raid basics

Raids are events during which pillagers, vindicators, ravagers, evokers (which can summon vexes) and witches invade a village to kill as many villagers as possible. They can be difficult to tackle early-game and can result in many villager deaths if not properly handled.

Equipment

• An iron sword at minimum. Sharpness and Fire Aspect allow quicker elimination of enemies, while Looting enables more spoils from the pillagers and vindicators ‌.
• A full set of iron armor at minimum. Protection ensures better survivability and reduces damage from evocation fangs that would otherwise bypass armor and shields.
• A shield to guard against vex attacks, as well as vindicator blows as their attacks cannot disable shields ‌
• . A bow or crossbow as your ranged weapon to take out raiders from a distance. Power and Flame can quickly dispatch most raiders, if not one-shot them.
• Plenty of nutritious food, such as steak and bread, to regenerate health
• A water bucket for getting up or down easily; necessary for all missions regardless of difficulty!
• A stack of expendable blocks to barricade village houses

Optional equipment

• Some Ender pearls for quick escapes
• Milk, to remove negative status effects that could affect your perfomance.
• Splash potions, to hinder groups of raiders.
• Regeneration or healing potions to recover quickly.
• Golden apples to tank enemy attacks and provide a swift healing cover
• Cobwebs to trap raiders

Preparation

Preparing the village

Before the raid starts, a good idea is to prepare the village before the raiders attack. There are multiple ways to do so:

Walling off the village

A solid strategy is to wall off the perimeter of the village using a strong block, such as cobblestone or wood. As there are no ways for raiders to destroy solid blocks, they will not be able to penetrate the wall, and will, therefore, be stuck attempting to pathfind around it. Once you have walled off your village, you can use ladders to scale the wall and shoot the raiders with a bow. You can alternatively use walls or fences to border your village.

Setting traps

Once you have walled off your village, you can set traps outside of the perimeter to deal damage. Lava traps and cobweb traps can slow down and damage the raiders, and iron golems can dispatch of them rather quickly. Holes surrounding the outside of the wall can also be used to trap the raiders and prevent them from progressing any further. A moat is also helpful with water, lava or just a deep ditch. Raiders will not walk off edges so an easy way to get them in a hole is to make steps down. Raiders will path-find into the hole but not walk out.(to deal damage your can add magma, lava, wither roses, or sweet berries)

Blocking villager doorways

A very effective strategy is to wall off entrances to villager houses; this way, there is no way for the raiders (other than Vexes) to access the villagers inside the houses, effectively keeping them safe while you deal with the raiders. An easy way to get the villagers into their houses to begin with is to ring a bell. Have some villagers hidden underground. If possible, have a dispenser that splashes them with invisibility.

Starting the raid

The only way to trigger a raid is through the Bad Omen effect, which is obtained after killing an illager captain. Illager captains wear ominous banners on their heads and appear as part of patrols and pillager outposts, the latter of which can spawn several over time.

In Java Edition, if multiple raid captains are killed in succession, the Bad Omen level will stack to a maximum of V, increasing the likelihood of pillagers and vindicators wielding enchanted weapons. When the level of Bad Omen is higher than I, the resulting raid has an additional wave with a raider composition identical to that of the last wave.

To begin the raid, walk into a chunk comprising at least one villager and one claimed bed with the Bad Omen effect. Raiding illagers will then spawn within 64 blocks of the registered village; this depends on the render distance as well. Villages in the Nether cannot trigger raids, and can hence be safely visited even with Bad Omen.

Defeating the raid

Once the raid starts, your immediate priority should be to locate the raiders and swiftly kill them.

If there is a village bell, it can be right-clicked and will attempt to affect any nearby raiders with the Glowing status effect and produce a resonating sound if successful.‌

Prioritize ravagers, evokers, and, in Java Edition, witches. Ravagers deal heavy damage and destroy leaves and crops. Witches heal other raiders.^{[Java Edition only]} Evokers spawn vexes which deal heavy damage and can pass through walls.

Once the current wave has been defeated, the next one will start shortly. This process will repeat until every wave has been defeated.

Post-raid

Once the raid has been defeated, any player in the village boundary will be awarded the Hero of the Village advancement and be affected with the Hero of the Village status effect for 60:00.

Villagers will throw gifts at nearby players once the raid has been defeated.‌

Waves

In Java Edition, the number of waves depends on the difficulty. If the Bad Omen level is higher than I, an additional wave spawns with an identical raider composition as the last wave.

There are three waves on Easy, five waves on Normal, and seven waves on Hard difficulty. Depending on the difficulty, up to 2 additional pillagers and vindicators may spawn per wave, and an additional witch may spawn on the third wave onwards.

In Bedrock Edition, as Bad Omen is not cumulative, there are no additional waves, and additional illagers do not spawn as well. Vindicators do not ride ravagers as well.

How to defeat the raid (Step-by-Step)

Wave 1:

There are only pillagers. If you have walled the village, you should shoot them from far away, or block and hit them. You can use crossbow techniques, such as the Machine Gunner, to kill pillagers and get the "Who's the Pillager Now" advancement.

The machine gunner is loading the hotbar with loaded crossbows, and rapidly fire one, select the next hotbar slot and fire another crossbow.

Wave 2:

There are pillagers and vindicators. If you walled the village, target the pillagers first. If the village is not protected, target the vindicators first and make sure they don't break down doors.

Wave 3:

There is a ravager and some pillagers + vindicators. Kill the ravager before it destroys too much. Kill the other mobs.

Wave 4:

There are witches, pillagers, and vindicators. Kill the witches first by shooting them or spam clicking. Kill the pillagers/vindicators using one of the above methods.

Wave 5:

There are pillagers, vindicators, an evoker, and a pillager riding ravager. In BE there is no pillager but a ravager. Kill the evoker first, as it will summon vexes. Kill everything else.

Wave 6:

There is only one evoker. There are a lot of pillagers and vindicators. Kill the evoker and deal with everything else. Don't let the evoker summon vexes.

Wave 7:

There are pillagers, vindicators, evokers, and mounted illagers. Kill the evokers first, then kill the ravagers. Kill everything else.

Notes

Tutorials/Defeating a pillager outpost