by MORGAN Jack - Published 7 months ago

Minecraft Warden Guide: Mechanics Explained

Minecraft 1.19, known as the Wild Update, introduced many features, including the deep dark biome, a challenging and rewarding underground environment.

The deep dark's primary danger is the Warden, a powerful guardian of the biome and its treasures. This guide explains the Warden's mechanics to help you survive encounters with this formidable foe.

Updated September 14, 2024 by Jacqueline Zalace: The Warden can be a terrifying encounter in Minecraft. This guide has been updated with additional information on facing this enemy, including tips on avoiding the Warden.

What Is The Warden?

The Warden is a hostile mob that only spawns in the deep dark. It has a massive 250 hearts of health and deals significant damage, up to 22.5 hearts in hard mode.

While blind, the Warden compensates with exceptional smell and hearing. It is highly sensitive to vibrations and will track towards any sound it hears. The Warden can also detect players' scents, making it more likely to target them.

How Does The Warden Appear?

Unlike regular mobs, the Warden's spawn is not random. Instead, it's triggered by Sculk Shriekers, the Sculk blocks with four white corners, when they detect vibrations.

How Do Shriekers Work?

Sculk Shriekers activate when they receive vibrations from player actions, such as walking, placing or destroying blocks, or opening chests. These vibrations can be detected directly by the Shriekers or indirectly through Sculk Sensors. Even if you don't see a Shrieker nearby, you're not safe if there are Sensors in the area.

As the name implies, Sculk Shriekers emit a piercing scream upon activation. This scream results in players within range experiencing 12 seconds of the "darkness" effect, causing temporary blindness. However, the most significant consequence of activating a Shrieker is summoning the Warden.

How Do Shriekers Summon The Warden?

The Warden summoning mechanism is complex. A hidden counter tracks the number of Shrieker activations. Activating three Shriekers only leads to repeated blindness, but activating a fourth Shrieker spawns the Warden.

This hidden counter is independent of individual Shriekers. It doesn't matter if you activate the same Shrieker four times, or four different Shriekers.

After the counter reaches four, any subsequent Shrieker activations have the potential to spawn a Warden if certain conditions are met. The Warden's spawning conditions are as follows:

There must be **no other Warden within 48 blocks**.
The **light level must be less than 11.**

If these conditions are met, any additional Shrieker activation will spawn another Warden, regardless of how many Wardens have already spawned.

Fortunately, the counter can decrease. For every ten minutes without activating a Shrieker, the counter decreases by one. If you go 40 minutes without triggering any Shriekers, the counter resets to zero, allowing you to activate three Shriekers again without summoning the Warden while exploring the Deep Dark.

The Warden's Anger Level

While scary, summoning a Warden doesn't immediately mean death. It spawns blind, only knowing a Shrieker was activated and unable to see who triggered it. Thus, the Warden spawns in a calmer state.

Calm State

A summoned Warden will be calm and default to wandering randomly.

It also has a passive heartbeat effect that inflicts constant darkness on nearby entities, like a continuous Shrieker blindness.

The Warden's Anger Meter

The calm state changes when the Warden detects vibrations. It can hear vibrations within a 16-block radius and will pathfind towards them, including sounds from players, mobs, projectiles, and minecarts.

Another hidden counter affects the Warden's state, controlled by vibrations. Each vibration you produce increases the Warden's anger towards you. Actions like walking, running, placing blocks, throwing projectiles, opening chests, all create vibrations.

There are other ways to increase the Warden's anger. Every five to ten seconds while calm, it sniffs the surroundings and adds 35 anger to the nearest player or mob, so stay away. Bumping into it also adds 35 anger, and attacking it adds a massive 100 anger, instantly enraging it.

Angry State

Once enraged, the Warden's sense of smell takes over, locking onto the person who enraged it like a bloodhound and pursuing them relentlessly, ignoring all other vibrations. At this point, it essentially pathfinds as if it can see its target.

What Attacks Does The Warden Use?

The Warden's default attack is a melee strike that occurs every 0.9 seconds, dealing between eight and 22.5 hearts of damage (depending on your difficulty settings) and disabling your shield for five seconds. This attack is already formidable, but the Warden also has a special move it can use to hunt down elusive prey.

If you are hiding behind a wall or on a pillar, the Warden charges up its sonic boom attack. This is essentially a sound-based laser that has a 20-block range and goes through walls.

The sonic boom attack hits for three to seven-and-a-half hearts of damage, depending on difficulty, but that's not the whole story. The sonic boom also bypasses all armor and enchantments, meaning that on hard mode, even if you have full Netherite armor with Protection IV, the Warden's sonic boom will knock three-quarters off your health.

To make matters worse, the Warden has a whopping 250 hearts, meaning that even if you can somehow survive its onslaught long enough to fight back, any damage you deal will just be a drop in the ocean of its massive health pool.

Tips To Avoid The Warden

Sneak Around

Ideally, you'll want to avoid summoning the Warden in the first place. You can do this by sneaking around instead of running or walking, and by placing wool around the Sculk Sensors to block the vibrations.

Distract The Warden

Throwing snowballs or other projectiles will send the Warden off to investigate where they landed, allowing you to run in the opposite direction. Once the Warden hears you make more noise, it will change directions though.

We suggest taking a few stacks of snowballs with you, ensuring that you don't run out.

Have An Escape Plan

Pillaring up can quickly increase the distance between you and the Warden since it cannot follow you up a pillar, but this won't get you out of the area entirely. Because of this, we suggest that you have an escape route planned. You will end up blind so make sure you know which direction to run in if required.

If you pillar up make sure you are quick and get high enough, otherwise you risk being sonic boomed off the top!

Can You Defeat The Warden?

The short answer is yes, but this is a difficult process. If you aren't up to the task, then we highly suggest fleeing. If you do want to fight the Warden, we suggest bringing the following items.

**Potion of Night Vision**
**Food (Golden Carrots are a great option)**
**Enchanted Netherite Armor and Weapons**
**Wool**
**Blocks (for pillaring when necessary)**
**Torches**
**Snowballs**
**Long-ranged Weapon (Crossbow or Bow)**

If you are on a server with other players, try to coordinate a group to fight the Warden together. This can make the process go a bit smoother. As mentioned earlier, the Warden has 500 HP, or the equivalent of 250 hearts. For reference, the Ender Dragon has 200 HP, which is less than half.