How to Defeat Warden in Minecraft 1.21

The Warden has officially turned Minecraft into a survival horror game. Lurking deep within the walls of the Ancient Cities, this terrifying mob is way stronger than most of the mobs you’ve encountered before. It can kill you with just two hits, and even with the best armor, you’ll realize that taking on this creature with just brute force won’t be very fruitful. To make matters worse, the Warden can plunge you into darkness and force fight with limited vision.

If that wasn’t enough, the mob can give out a devastating sonic shriek attack that can tear through walls and hit you from a distance. The escape will therefore be almost impossible, but there’s no need to worry. In this guide, we will walk you through the best strategies, essential gear, and some clever tactics to defeat the warden in Minecraft 1.21.

Minecraft 1.21 Warden: Attacks, Abilities, and Where to Find Him

Before we plan to defeat Warden, we need to know where to find it. A Warden can only spawn within the deep dark biome. That too, only in and around the ancient city structure. Similar to the Ender Dragon, you can’t get it anywhere else in the survival world. If you want to find the deep dark naturally, you should search below the Y=-35 block height. That’s where we usually found the deep dark biome in our tests.

But if you want to skip to the good part, you can use cheats. Using the command “/locate structure minecraft:ancient_city” in your chat will give you the coordinates to the deep dark biome. You can then teleport in Minecraft to easily reach the Warden’s home biome. Having said that, it’s time to learn how to defeat the Warden in Minecraft to survive in the deep dark biome.

The road to defeating an enemy starts by learning about them. So, let’s go over Warden’s basic abilities and then understand its attacks.

• Warden is blind, so it has to depend on vibrations and smell to find your location.
• It can detect you through blocks.
• Even if you somehow escape it, the Warden can sniff you from a 20 blocks distance.
• It can climb on single blocks like other mobs, but it can’t break them.
• Due to a low tolerance level, even the smallest of vibrations can annoy the Warden. Once it gets annoyed, it doesn’t care if you are a baby mob or a boss, and it will attack.

Darkness Effect

As soon as a sculk sensor detects your presence, the darkness effect gets applied to you. It limits your visibility to only a few blocks surrounding you. You can try using the Potion of Night Vision in Minecraft to counter it, but its effects don’t expand over 6-7 blocks right next to you. Similarly, light sources like torches aren’t any good either.

Combat Attack

The favorite way for the Warden to kill you is with its bare hands. Even if you are wearing a full set of Netherite armor, the Warden can kill you in just two hits. However, if your armor is weaker than that, you might have to respawn even after taking a single hit.

Sonic Shriek 

If close combat doesn’t work or if the Warden can’t reach you, it uses sonic shriek as a last resort. The Warden’s chest opens up to release a long-range sonic shriek attack. It doesn’t only causes the same amount of combat damage but also can knock you off places from over 5 blocks of distance.

Interestingly, this attack passes through blocks, including even the bedrock and liquid blocks. Not to forget, this attack only targets one mob at a time. So, if there are two players next to each other, the sonic shriek will only kill the player that the Warden is targeting.

Items Required to Defeat Warden

Now that you know where to find the Warden, it’s time to get ready for the fight. Apart from having enough food and pickaxes, you need the following things to kill the Warden in Minecraft.

Armor

The first obvious preparation you need is defenses against the Warden. For that, you should get full netherite armor from head to toe. Once you have the armor, you need to put some of the best armor enchantments on it. We suggest using Protection IV on all of your items. But if you are lucky, you can also get the Swift Sneak pants enchantment within the ancient city. It will help you sneak at a faster pace.

Weapons

Most Minecraft players are habituated to taking their swords with them. But we won’t suggest direct combat with the Warden because of its high attack damage. Instead, stick with a trident or a bow to defeat the Warden in Minecraft. Alternatively, you can try using some of the best Trident enchantments, too. While the bows are easier to manage, you can prefer using them as well.

Health

Dealing with the Warden means receiving a lot of damage in the process. To counter that, you should carry with you the following items for additional health:

• Enchanted Golden Apples and Golden Carrots
• Potion of Healing
• Cooked Food items

Special Items

With armor and weapons ready, it’s time to prepare some special items to survive a Warden attack in Minecraft with ease.

• Snowballs, eggs, or arrows for distracting the Warden by throwing them in random directions.
• Potion of Night Vision to reduce the strength of the darkness effect.
• Torches to avoid getting lost in the deep dark.
• Building blocks to create distance between you and the Warden.
• Cobwebs or berry bushes to protect yourself against falling.
• Ladders (optional)

In case you are wondering, a shield doesn’t work against a Warden. So, you can skip it.

Best Methods to Defeat Warden in Minecraft

Assuming that you have everything ready, let’s enter the deep dark and defeat the Warden with the following steps:

Method 1: Using the High Ground (Tower and Arrows)

First, as soon as you enter the ancient city, you have to start sneaking. Then, find an open area connected to the city structure and make a tiny underground base there. You can use a trapdoor attached with a lever and a pressure plate for extra security. Now you can follow the steps below:

• Now, make some noise to spawn the Warden. Then quickly make a 6-block tower next to your underground base opening.
• A smart trick would be to put cobwebs on top of the tower, on its side, and on the bottom of the opening. The top one will cancel out Warden’s sonic shriek’s knockback.

• Meanwhile, the bottom ones can help you have a safer fall. You can find other useful tips and tricks to avoid fall damage in Minecraft via the linked guide.

• Once you are at the top, look at the Warden and attack it with arrows.
• It would be better to use some of the best bow enchantments while doing so. We suggest using Power V or Punch II.

• Warden’s preference for the fight is a combat attack. So, it won’t use sonic shriek until it has tried to hit you multiple times by hand.
• But when it’s finally ready to attack you with sonic shriek, you can either stay on top of the tower and quickly heal.
• Or you can jump into your base opening, heal yourself, and make another opening to come out.

If you are experienced with combat, you can repeat the above-mentioned steps to defeat the Warden. With proper skills, you can even use these steps without netherite armor. But if traditional combat seems too taxing to kill the Warden, we have other options, too.

Method 2: Use End Crystals

End crystals are found in the end dimensions, and they work to heal the Ender Dragon there. But when broken, they do a huge, damaging blast. This blast, when multiplied, can kill the Warden.

Now, you can easily craft an end crystal by combining seven glasses with an eye of Ender and a ghast tear on a crafting table. You need at least 8 end crystals to kill the Warden.

Once you are ready, you need to place an obsidian block and then put an end crystal on top of it. When the Warden gets close to it, you just need to break it and place another crystal. You need to repeat this process 8 times to kill the Warden. But do make sure to wear armor with the blast protection enchantment.

Method 3: Trap Warden Underground

If you don’t want to fight a Warden, you can trap it and slowly kill it. To do so, the easiest route is to create a cobweb trap. Here, you can create a small pit with cobwebs in it. Then, place trapdoors on top of the cobwebs. Once the Warden steps on the trapdoor, use a pressure plate or a lever to activate that door. It will open up and trap the Warden.

When the Warden is deep in the cobweb, you can easily kill it with the best sword enchantments. Just make sure to run away whenever it’s about to use the sonic shriek attack. You can also put wool carpet around the area to dampen your vibrations and throw off his aim.

Other than using cobwebs, remember that using any other elements, like lava or water, will not be useful at all. The Warden is immune to drowning and lava damage. It can walk on top of lava and water. Even if it spawns at the bottom of the liquids, eventually Warden floats to the top and then walks on the liquid. So, unless you are fast enough to get Warden in a hole, pour the liquid and then close the top area before it attacks you, then using lava or water isn’t the most reliable idea

Method 4: Spawn a Wither

Fighting both the Warden and the Wither can easily overwhelm you as a player, but what if we make them fight each other? You just need to spawn the Wither within the ancient city and hide before it notices you. Wither’s vibrations will make the Warden spawn, and both of them will immediately go after each other.

Due to the closed space, Warden is going to win most of the time. But irrespective of the results of this fight, the surviving mob is going to be low in health points. So, you can easily swoop in and finish the survivor to get loot from both mobs without even making an effort to fight one properly. So, in the fight between Warden and Wither, the winner is always going to be you, the player.

Method 5: Use Iron Golems

If you want a safer mob to fight the Warden, you can use Iron Golems. This mob will fight against all hostile mobs by default. So as soon as it notices the Warden, it will attack the creature. But, as you might have guessed, one Iron Golem isn’t enough to defeat a Warden.

In our testing, we found that a single Warden can defeat more than 8 Iron Golems in one-on-one combat. But if attacked in a group, 6 Iron Golems are enough to corner a Warden. Even with such great results, the practical problems of respawning Iron Golems underground using carved pumpkins and iron blocks make this solution tough to implement in survival gameplay.

Can You Stop Warden from Spawning Again?

Now that we know defeating Warden isn’t a huge task, it still is pretty tiring. So, until you find a reason to kill the Warden, you can use the following tricks to survive the Warden by preventing its spawn.

• Prevent Detection from Soul Shrieker: Warden only spawns in the deep dark biome’s ancient cities, and that too only if you alert a soul shrieker. It gives a player 2 chances of making a noise. As long as you can carefully slip by a soul shrieker without alerting it, you are practically safe within the ancient cities in the deep dark biome.

• Destroy the Soul Shrieker: Once you can slowly slip past the soul shrieker, use your regular pickaxe to destroy it. If you have the silk-touch enchantment, you can even pick up the soul shrieker by mining it. Although placing it back in the deep dark biome can summon a Warden.
• Let the Warden Despawn: If nothing else works, the best way to defeat a Warden in Minecraft is to let it despawn. If the Warden doesn’t detect any activity for more than 60 seconds, it automatically despawns. But they will immediately reset the time cycle if you or any other mob in the area makes an activity.

Moreover, during this time, the Warden keeps trying to “smell” you and find your location. So, if you are not hidden properly behind other blocks, the Warden might find you even if you are stationary.

And with that, these were the five best methods in our guide to easily kill and defeat the Warden in Minecraft. So, do you know any other methods to kill the Warden in Minecraft? Tell us in the comments section!