What Are Ominous Trials and How Do They Work in Minecraft 1.21

In the upcoming Minecraft 1.21 update, the new Trial chambers are all about fighting and combat challenges. However, if you’re good at the game, conquering these new structures won’t be all that difficult. Thankfully, if you’re looking for a greater challenge, you can always try the ominous trials. They essentially increase the difficulty of the trial spawners, which makes the trial chambers more rewarding. In this guide, we share everything you need to know about ominous trials in Minecraft 1.21. So, let’s begin!

What Are Ominous Trials?

Ominous trials is the name for harder trial spawn battles inside trial chambers. Approaching a regular trial spawner with the Bad Omen effect applied will cause it to turn blue and also spawn mobs that are more difficult to defeat, as they will often have armor.

Moreover, the ominous trial spawner will randomly summon projectiles and potions above the mobs and players. They may deal damage to you or apply a potion effect that could be helpful or harmful.

How to Start Ominous Trials in Minecraft 1.21

To start the ominous trials event, you’ll first need to get the Bad Omen effect. Then, activate a trial spawner to kickstart the ominous trial event. Check out the steps below to understand the process in detail.

Step 1: Get Ominous Bottle

• First, defeat the raid captain who spawns as part of the pillager patrol. This will be a pillager with the ominous banner above their head.

• Once you kill them, you’ll receive an ominous bottle. It will apply the Bad Omen effect when you drink it. The effect’s level may be anywhere from 1 to 5.

Step 2: Use Ominous Bottle Before Starting Trial

The Bad Omen effect is only a transitional effect. You may enter a village and it will turn into Raid Omen, shortly after which the raid will begin. But, if you enter a trial chamber structure and get close to a regular trial spawner, it will turn into an ominous trial spawner.

This is only the case if the spawner is not in cooldown or if it is in cooldown but its last phase wasn’t the ominous one. So, that means if you defeat the mobs from a regular trial spawner, you can trigger the harder trial right away with the Bad Omen effect.

Speaking of which, the Bad Omen will instantly turn into the Trial Omen effect when you activate a trial spawner.

Step 3: Ominous Trial Working

The Bad Omen’s level determines how long the Onimous Trial will last for. So, the Bad Omen 1 will turn into Trial Omen that lasts for 15 minutes, but Bad Omen 5 will see the Trial Omen that lasts for 1 hour and 15 minutes. So, each level of the Bad Omen effect adds 15 minutes to the Trial Omen’s timer.

The ominous trial spawner glows blue instead of orange and emits soul flame particles. It will spawn the same number of mobs as the normal trial spawner, but they will have equipment most of the time. Furthermore, they spawn projectiles and potion clouds above the player to make the battle extra difficult. The mob effects this spawner can inflict include:

• Wind Charged (affected mob will create a wind burst explosion upon death)
• Weaving (affected mob will spread cobwebs upon death)
• Oozing (affected mob will spawn two medium slimes upon death)
• Infested (affected mob has a 5% chance to spawn 1-2 silverfish when hurt)

If the trial spawner already spawned some mobs before it turned into its ominous version, all the previous mobs will despawn, and you’ll get a new challenge. Defeating all mobs spawned by the ominous trial spawner will cause it to spit out items and then go into cooldown.

Once the cooldown for an ominous trial spawner has ended, it will turn back into a regular trial spawner. So, you’ll need the Bad Omen effect to make it into an ominous spawner again.

What Are the Ominous Trial Rewards

So, now you know how the ominous trials work. The next question is: Why would you even bother with them? Well, the ominous trial spawners have their own loot pool, which is different than the regular trial spawners.

They will mostly yield high-quality food, such as steak and golden carrots (one of the best foods in Minecraft). Though, there is a 30% chance it will eject a single ominous trial key.

The ominous trial key is used to unlock an ominous vault, special variant of the vault that generates in trial chambers, usually higher up in rooms. It glows blue and is far scarier than the normal vault. This block can yield fairly valuable loot, like:

• Ominous Bottle III – V,
• Enchanted Golden Apple,
• Flow Banner Pattern and Flow Armor Trim Smithing Template,
• Wind Burst, Breach, and Density Enchantments for the Mace,
• Heavy Core,
• and more.

So, that’s all you need to know about ominous trials in the Minecraft 1.21 update. They provide an optional difficulty within the game world itself and give you plenty of reasons to try them out. With that said, if you defeated the ominous trials, don’t forget to share your experience in the comments below.