Patrol

A patrol (officially a pillager patrol) is a rare, naturally-spawning group of pillagers.

Spawning[edit | edit source]

Patrols spawn as a group of 1 to 5 pillagers in Java Edition or 2–5 illagers in Bedrock Edition, one of which is the raid captain. The raid captain wears an ominous banner on its head. The other illagers follow the captain around.

The raid captain always spawns as a pillager, unless commands are used.

In Java Edition, patrols never spawn if /gamerule doPatrolSpawning is set to false.

Conditions[edit | edit source]

Patrols spawn naturally after the world age reaches 100 minutes (5 in-game days), then after a delay of 10–11 minutes, an attempt is made to spawn a patrol with 20% chance of success. After an attempt is made, the delay is reset.

Patrols spawn in any Overworld biome except mushroom fields, although a patrol may wander through the biome after spawning.

Patrollers do not spawn in Peaceful difficulty.

Java Edition[edit | edit source]

Patrols can spawn on any non-fluid block with a motion-blocking material, with the exception of leaves. They can spawn during the day on blocks with a block light level of 8 or lower. If a player is within a 5 by 5 by 5 subchunk cube around a village, patrols do not spawn.

The game picks a random location 24–48 blocks along each of the X and Z axis away from the player to try to spawn the patrol's captain. If a pillager cannot spawn at the chosen position, it gives up and does not spawn anything. If the captain can spawn, the game tries to spawn the value of localDifficulty (rounded up) more pillagers, with each pillager spawning within a 4-block radius square around the previous pillager.

Bedrock Edition[edit | edit source]

In Bedrock Edition, patrols spawn around 24–48 blocks away from the player (or more than 48 blocks away if the player is in a village). Additionally, patrols can spawn in biomes where common monsters cannot spawn such as in:

• river
• frozen river
• snowy plains
• snowy mountains
• legacy frozen ocean

Patrols spawn on solid blocks at light level 0–7^[verify] at the surface.

Commands[edit | edit source]

Java Edition[edit | edit source]

Players can summon raid captain and patrol members via command with Nbt

Summon raid captain

/summon pillager ~ ~ ~ {PatrolLeader:1b}

Summon Patrol members:

/summon pillager ~ ~ ~ {Patrolling:1b}

Bedrock Edition[edit | edit source]

Players can summon raid captain and patrol members via command within spawn event.

Summon patrol captain:

/summon pillager ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ minecraft:promote_to_patrol_captain

Summon patrol members:

/summon pillager ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ minecraft:spawn_as_patrol_follower

Summon unused vindicator patrol captain:

/summon vindicator ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ minecraft:promote_to_patrol_captain

Behavior[edit | edit source]

Patrols seek villages, wander around, and attack nearby players, adult villagers, iron golems and wandering traders. The patrol members' heads turn to follow a player or villager-like mob who looks at them or attracts their attention. A player or villager-like mob who approaches within 10 blocks of the patrol provokes them into loading their crossbows and attacking, and pursuing if the player flees. The pursuit lasts until either of the parties dies or gets 10 blocks away.

Witches that join the patrol assume the patrol's behavior.^[1]

In Java Edition, any illagers, ravagers, or witches that did not spawn with the patrol can join the patrol if sufficiently near a patrol captain. Evokers and illusioners who join a patrol wander around but do not seek out targets as other illager members in the patrol. They still do cast spells to attack mobs, however.

If a "Johnny" vindicator joins a patrol, all patrol members assume the Johnny vindicator's aggressive behavior, attacking any non-illager mob, which includes witches and ravagers (which are not illagers in Java Edition), except baby villagers and ghasts.

In Bedrock Edition, when one of the patrol members is attacked, it alerts nearby patrol members within 10 blocks to attack the same target as a swarm. The attacker can be any mob and doesn't need to be a player, and the distance between attacker and patrol can be up to 64 blocks away from alerted patrol members. This means that a llama who accidentally spits on a patrol member can provoke all of the members of the patrol at once. Vindicator patrol members target and attack the player without prior provocation.

A patrol spawned by a player might not function properly; instead, causing some of the patrol members to wander around. One of the ways to fix this is to reduce the size of the patrol to around 5 members. Another way is to make the captain move, as the rest of the patrol members can move along with it and follow it around. Witches might not function properly in a patrol because the witch is not an illager.

Just like normal pillagers, when a patrol pillager's arrow hits another pillager, the hit pillager does not retaliate.

The raid captain always drops an ominous banner, known as the illager banner in Bedrock Edition, upon death.

Ominous Bottles[edit | edit source]

When a raid captain that spawns as part of a patrol is killed by a player or tamed wolf, it drops 1 ominous bottle of a random level, unaffected by looting.

History[edit | edit source]

Issues[edit | edit source]

Issues relating to "Patrol", "Pillager patrol", or "Illager patrol" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

Trivia[edit | edit source]

• The idea of pillagers appearing in patrols was decided based on wanting pillagers to not be "hidden away," giving the player a sense of life in the world outside of their personal area.^[2]
• In Bedrock Edition, it is possible for patrols to spawn directly inside villages.
• Although vindicator patroller and captain no longer spawn in Java Edition and Bedrock Edition, the vindicator captain still can be still found in the game data pack and summoned via command.

Gallery[edit | edit source]

Renders[edit | edit source]

• 

  Render of a patrol.

Screenshots[edit | edit source]

• 

  A patrol captain riding a ravager (before 18w46a).

• 

  An ominous banner (before 18w46a).

• 

  A patrol looking at a nitwit villager secretly at night.

See also[edit | edit source]

• Vindicator
• Raid

References[edit | edit source]

Navigation[edit | edit source]