The specific instructions are: Vindicator Attack action of BE.
Vindicators are illagers equipped with iron axes.
Spawning
On Normal difficulty and Hard difficulty, vindicators sometimes spawn with a randomly enchanted iron axe: the chance is 0-25%, with the chance being higher when the regional difficulty is higher.
Woodland mansions
Vindicators spawn during the generation of mansions, inside particular rooms. Some rooms contain 1, others contain 3, some contain 2 accompanied by an evoker, and some can rarely spawn in the corridors.
They do not respawn after initially spawning. Vindicators generated with mansions do not naturally despawn (unless the world is switched to Peaceful difficulty [JE only]).
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.[BE only]
Raids
Vindicators can spawn during raids. They appear more frequently during later waves and at higher difficulties.
Vindicators can spawn riding ravagers.[JE only]
Drops
Vindicators drop loot only when killed by a player or tamed wolf. When they die, they drop :
- 5 and an additional 1–3 per naturally-spawned equipment.
- 0–1 emeralds 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 iron axe, which increases by 1 percentage point per level of Looting.
- 1
Ominous banner, if they spawn as a raid captain.
In Bedrock Edition, if a vindicator spawns as part of a raid, it drops:
- 0-1 Emerald
Additionally, In Bedrock Edition, vindicators have a 65% chance of dropping the following on Easy and Normal difficulties, and an 80% chance of dropping them on Hard difficulty:
- 0-1 Emerald (10⁄39 chance)
- 2-3 Emerald (5⁄39 chance)
- 4-5 Emerald (2⁄39 chance)
- 1 Enchanted Book (2⁄39 chance)
- 1 Iron Axe (5⁄78 chance)
- 1 Iron Shovel (5⁄78 chance)
- 1 Iron Sword (5⁄78 chance)
- 1 Iron Helmet (5⁄78 chance)
- 1 Iron Chestplate (5⁄78 chance)
- 1 Iron Leggings (5⁄78 chance)
- 1 Iron Boots (5⁄78 chance)
Notes:
- 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.
- They are also supposed to drop iron pickaxes, however they currently don't because of a bug. MCPE-44417
- 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
A vindicator chasing a villager.
Vindicators are hostile toward players, iron golems, adult villagers, wandering traders and snow golems.
When attacking, a vindicator raises its main hand brandishing an iron axe. It moves sprinting. While not attacking, a vindicator crosses its arms similar to a villager and does not show the axe in its hand. A vindicator follows from up to 12 blocks away. If vindicators have no weapons, they still attack players, iron golems, villagers, wandering traders and snow golems.
A mob hitting a vindicator would provoke not only that vindicator, but also all vindicators around, similar to Zombies or Zombified Piglins.
During raids, vindicators can open doors, just as villagers do.[JE only] They break wooden doors on Normal and Hard difficulties when attacking.
A vindicator disables the player's shield with its iron axe attack, even when riding a mob.[JE only] 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.
If raiding vindicators kill all the villagers in the village or all the beds are destroyed, vindicators celebrate cheering.
Like most hostile mobs, vindicators despawn in Peaceful difficulty in Java Edition.
"Johnny"
A vindicator named Johnny (using a name tag, named spawn egg, etc., or has its Johnny tag set to 1b) is hostile to every mob except ghasts and illagers.
The hostility even extends to vexes and ravagers.[JE only]
All hostile or neutral mobs, except for endermites, phantoms, guardians, slimes, magma cubes and ravagers try to attack the Johnny vindicator in return.
The Johnny tag overrides its name; the player can give the vindicator any other name and set the Johnny tag to 1b and it remains hostile in the same way as described. Conversely, the player can name the vindicator Johnny and set the Johnny tag to 0b, causing the vindicator to act as a normal vindicator.
Naming a vindicator spawn egg "Johnny" and using it on a spawner has no effect; normal vindicators spawn rather than vindicators named Johnny.[BE only]
Sounds
| Sound | Subtitles | Source | Description | Resource location | Translation key | Volume | Pitch | Attenuation distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vindicator mutters | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Vindicator cheers | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Vindicator dies | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Vindicator hurts | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 |
Data values
ID
| Name | Identifier | Translation key |
|---|---|---|
| Vindicator | vindicator | entity.minecraft.vindicator |
| Name | Identifier | Numeric ID | Translation key |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vindicator | vindicator | 57 | entity.vindicator.name |
Entity data
Vindicators have entity data associated with them that contains various properties.
- Entity data
- Tags common to all entities
- Tags common to all mobs
- Tags common to all mobs spawnable in raids
- Johnny: 1 or 0 (true/false) - if true, causes the vindicator to exhibit Johnny behavior. Setting to false prevents the vindicator exhibiting Johnny behavior, even if named Johnny. Optional.
Achievements
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Gamerscore earned | Trophy type (PS4) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PS4 | Other | |||||
| Monster Hunter | Attack and destroy a monster. | Kill a hostile mob or one of the following neutral mobs: an enderman, a piglin, a zombified piglin, a spider, or a cave spider. | 15G | Bronze | ||
Advancements
| Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Parent | Actual requirements (if different) | Resource location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | Adventure | Adventure, exploration and combat | — | Kill any entity, or be killed by any entity. | adventure/root
|
![]() | Monster Hunter | Kill any hostile monster | Adventure | Kill one of these 34 mobs:
| adventure/kill_a_mob
|
![]() | Monsters Hunted | Kill one of every hostile monster | Monster Hunter | Kill each of these 34 mobs:
| adventure/kill_all_mobs
|
History
The specific instructions are:
- Renders of unarmed vindicators before and after 20w29a
| Java Edition | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.11 | 16w39a | ||||
| 16w40a | "Johnny" vindicators are now activated by a custom tag in addition to a custom name. | ||||
The vindicators' axes are now one of their HandItems, whereas before it was purely a visual effect. This means their attack now disables shields. | |||||
| Vindicators have now been heavily buffed - their attack damage on Easy has now been increased from 3 | |||||
| 1.13 | pre5 | The entity ID for vindicators has now been changed from vindication_illager to vindicator. | |||
| 1.14 | 18w43a | ||||
| 18w45a | Vindicators can now spawn in illager patrols. | ||||
| Vindicators can now sometimes spawn as a patrol leader in illager patrols. | |||||
| 18w47a | Vindicators can now spawn as part of raids. | ||||
| Vindicators can now break doors. | |||||
| 18w47b | |||||
| 19w05a | Vindicators are now hostile toward the new wandering traders. | ||||
| 19w13a | |||||
| 1.14.3 | Pre-Release 2 | Vindicators no longer spawn as part of illager patrols. | |||
| 1.15 | 19w41a | Vindicators now have a fifth idle sound (known as "idle5"). The sound had been in the game files since 1.11, but was never heard in-game until this update. | |||
| 1.16.2 | 20w29a | The attack animation of unarmed vindicators has been changed. | |||
| Pocket Edition | |||||
| 1.1.0 | alpha 1.1.0.0 | ||||
| Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.10.0 | beta 1.10.0.3 | ||||
| Vindicators are now hostile toward the new wandering traders. | |||||
| 1.11.0 | beta 1.11.0.1 | Vindicators can now spawn as part of illager patrols and raids. | |||
| Vindicators can now spawn as raid captains. | |||||
| Vindicators no longer attack baby villagers. | |||||
| beta 1.11.0.4 | Vindicators that spawn from raids now have special drops upon death. | ||||
| beta 1.11.0.7 | Vindicators can now break wooden doors. | ||||
| 1.13.0 | beta 1.13.0.9 | ||||
| 1.16.20 | beta 1.16.20.54 | The attack animation of unarmed vindicators has been changed. | |||
| Legacy Console Edition | |||||
| TU54 | CU44 | 1.52 | Patch 24 | 1.0.4 | |
| Vindicators deal 6 | |||||
| 1.90 | |||||
| New Nintendo 3DS Edition | |||||
| 1.9.19 | |||||
Issues
Issues relating to "Vindicator" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.
Trivia
- Naming a vindicator "Johnny" causes the vindicator to become hostile toward most mobs, except other illagers and ghasts; a reference to The Shining.
- Vindicators named "Johnny" had a similar behavior from sharks in Hungry Shark series.
- Vindicators have blue eyes,[JE only] 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 to be green.
- They do the third-highest melee damage of all the non-boss mobs, first being the giant, second being the iron golem and fourth being the ravager.
- Vindicators have an unused hat layer in their texture file, similar to the illusioner's hat.
Gallery
A vindicator in a mineshaft.
- Vindicator Captain.PNG
Raid captain vindicator.
In other game
A vindicator from Minecraft Dungeons.
An Armored vindicator from Minecraft Dungeons.




