Minecraft is filled with all sorts of different and unique mobs, with each new update adding new mobs to the game. These mobs can be passive, neutral, or hostile towards the player and play a big role in the overall gameplay. From cows, chickens, pigs, and sheep that are useful in the early game to blazes, shulkers, and bosses like the Wither or the Ender Dragon that are essential to the game’s progression. However, there are certain Minecraft mobs that players can befriend and get attached to.
Those are pet mobs, consisting of cats, donkeys, horses, llamas, mules, parrots, trader llamas, and wolves. In this guide, we are going to teach you how to tame a wolf into a dog, an amazing Minecraft pet that has various important uses.
What is a wolf in Minecraft?
Wolf is a neutral mob that can get aggressive if the player attacks one of the nearby wolves. They spawn and live in packs. You can tame and domesticate these fluffy creatures and turn them into a dog. A tamed wolf or a dog presents a loyal friend and support in battles against hostile mobs. Also, once tamed, you can breed wolves with their favorite food.
Resources You Need to Tame Wolfs
The only item you need to tame a wolf in Minecraft is bones. The most reliable way to get bones is by killing any type of skeleton — be it regular skeletons, wither skeletons, skeleton horses, and strays. You can also find bones in chests in the following structures:
- Dungeons
- Ancient Cities
- Desert Temples
- Jungle Temples
- Woodland Mansions
All of the structures listed above have a high chance of generating bones in chests, but the jungle temple has the highest probability. Make sure to bring at least a few bones if you’re looking to tame a single wolf.
Where to Find a Wolf in Minecraft
Now, to answer your next question, the wolf mob spawns naturally in the forest biomes in Minecraft. These include:
- Forests
- Taigas
- Groves
- Old Growth Taigas
- Snowy Taigas
- and all their variants (except in the Flower Forests)
The wolf mob usually spawns in packs of four with 10% being pups. Moreover, once you find the wolves, don’t hit any of them, not even accidentally. Wolves, just like bees and zombified piglins, will gang up on you and attack you if you hurt a single mob in the group. If you do accidentally tap one, you’ll realize very quickly that they are angry, since they start growling and their eyes turn red and, honestly, they look quite scary.
Tame a Wolf in Minecraft: A Step-by-Step Guide
Once you have found a wolf and have obtained bones, it’s time to tame the mob and bring that cutie with you.
- First, place the bones on your Minecraft hot bar and select them.
- Then, simply walk up to a wolf and right-click it with the bones.
- You’ll see the black particles appear if the wolf wasn’t tamed instantly.
- So, you can just continue right-clicking it with its favorite snack. Every bone has about a 1 in 3 chance to tame a wolf, so it’s basically random.
- Once you tame the wolf in Minecraft, heart particles will appear above its head, indicating it now loves you.
- The tamed dog will then sit if you’re playing the Java version of Minecraft.
- You can “tell it” to stand up by right-clicking it again. Also, you can do the same to “tell it” to sit again.
- The dog’s collar is red by default, but you can use any of the color dyes in Minecraft to change the collar’s color.
- If you get far away from the dog, no worries, as it will teleport right back to you if it’s standing.
Why Should You Even Tame a Wolf?
Is it actually worth it to tame a wolf in Minecraft? Even if you traveled far with your elytra and you have to take it back to your base with breaks so it catches up to you? Well, we can tell you that it definitely is worth it. So, let’s go over every reason why your Minecraft dog is useful.
- Wolfs Attack Skeletons Automatically
Since you use bones to tame a wolf in the first place, skeletons and their variants are frightened of these furry animals. Not only that, but if your doggo is standing, it will automatically attack any skeleton in range, without being attacked first. This can be a great way to ensure no pesky skeleton sneaks up on you. However, tamed wolves don’t auto-attack other hostile mobs.
- Attack Any Mob or Player the Owner Attacks
Not only will your loyal doggos protect you, but they will also help you in battle. If you are hunting hostile mobs for various drops during nighttime, consider bringing your tamed wolf with you. If standing, they will attack any mob and even another player that their owner is attacking. They don’t deal a lot of damage individually, but a whole pack can be rather deadly.
Furthermore, wolves in Minecraft do have the same amount of HP as the player when you tame them but still do make sure their health is topped up. Also, the Minecraft Mob Vote 2023 contender, armadillo, will drop scutes that you can use to make armor for wolves, making them even stronger. So, is the armadillo worth voting for in this year’s vote?
You can tell how much health your dog has based on the angle between their tail and hind legs. If its tail is low, they’re low on HP and vice versa. To heal your dog, you can right-click them with any type of meat (raw or cooked) and even those poisonous to the player, like rotten flesh, raw chicken, and pufferfish (feeding your dog raw cod, raw salmon, pufferfish, tropical fish, cooked cod, cooked salmon and rabbit stew heals it only on the Bedrock edition).
- Useful in XP Farms
In some farm designs, tamed dogs can actually serve an important purpose. You can position your dog in a specific place and let it auto-attack mobs that the farm produces. This way, the wolf’s kill will count as the player’s kill and you can get valuable drops without killing anything.
- Cute and Adorable Mobs
Let’s be honest, who doesn’t want a cute dog in their Minecraft base? Especially when combined with the right texture packs in Minecraft, you can choose what the wolf looks like. Because, even though they’re sweet, we would really appreciate more dog variants in the game.
