Wolves were the first pets you could tame in Minecraft. They are loyal companions in your world and have received many exciting updates over the years that make them even better! They can fight alongside you against monsters and now have some nice armour to wear! To get this, you need to seek out one of the latest animals: the armadillo. This resilient creature was added to the game in the last mob vote and drops important items to prepare your wolves for battle. We’ll show you how to assemble an army of equipped wolves and also how to set up a small automatic farm for horn shields!
Finding and Taming Wolves: Taming Tips
Most players who have been playing Minecraft for a long time are probably already familiar with wolves. These animals have been in the game since the beta and are a wonderful pet for your world! With some of the latest updates, they have become even stronger and can stand by your side in battle.
Wolves can be found in various biomes and are no longer just focused on the taiga. There are now nine different variations, which we will go into in more detail shortly. They often appear in packs, which gives you the opportunity to tame several wolves at once. You need bones from skeletons — each has a 33% chance of taming the wolf. Once hearts appear, the wolf is yours!
In battle, wolves are your best team members! They attack anything that attacks you, but also follow your attacks. They have 40 hearts, twice as many as before the last update. You can heal and breed them by feeding them any kind of meat or fish.
Tamed wolves can be given a different collar colour using dye or nicknames with name tags. This is extremely useful if you have a lot of wolves!
All Fur Colours of Wolves: Exploring Variations
Since one of the latest updates, it has been possible to find nine different variants of wolves. Whereas you used to only encounter a light grey wolf, there are now a variety of colourful options so you can bring even more of the fluffy companions to your side! When breeding, you have a 50/50 chance of obtaining a parent’s fur colour. Depending on the biome, you can encounter packs of one to eight wolves.
- Ash Grey: Snowy Taiga
- Pale: Taiga
- Spotted: Savanna Plateau
- Striped: Wooded Badlands Plateau
- Chestnut: Giant Tree Taiga
- Rust-Coloured: Sparse Jungle
- Snow: Grove
- Black: Giant Spruce Taiga
- Forest: Forest
Finding Armadillos and Using Horn Shields
Once you’ve tamed your wolves, you absolutely need to equip them with the new wolf armour. To do this, you first have to find armadillos, one of the latest animals in Minecraft. These drop armadillo horn shields, which you can then use to craft your wolf armour.
Armadillos can be found in warm areas, including the various parts of the badlands (mesa) and savannah. However, due to their brownish colour, you are more likely to encounter them in the savannah, where they are easier to spot. These cute little animals are actually harmless but retreat into their shells when they sense danger. They do not attack you and are generally passive mobs.
Like most other animals in Minecraft, you can breed armadillos yourself. For this, you need spider eyes, which you can feed to the armadillos. Presumably, this is because many spawners are found particularly in the badlands. Interestingly, spiders are scared of armadillos, similar to how creepers are scared of cats. You can use this to your advantage!
Armadillos drop a specific item, namely their horn shields. And you need these to create wolf armour. Like chickens and their eggs, armadillos drop a horn shield every five to ten minutes in the game. So you don’t necessarily need to do much to collect a few shields. However, it is easier with a brush. Each armadillo theoretically gives you an unlimited number of horn shields, but you can only obtain four (Java) or five (Bedrock) per brush. This can be quite expensive, especially for copper.
Creating an Automatic Farm: Armadillo Horn Shields
If you want to craft some wolf armour, then a small passive farm for armadillo horn shields is worthwhile. This works completely automatically! If you have a lot of armadillos, you can collect an unlimited number of horn shields for your wolf armour.
All you have to do is build a small catchment pool with a hopper and a carpet over it, because as mentioned before, the armadillos shed their scales from time to time. Get two armadillos with a lead and breed them to get a few dozen. Then you just have to wait!
The Properties of Wolf Armour in Minecraft
But why do you need wolf armour anyway? Well, if you do a lot of fighting, then a pack of tamed wolves is one of your best weapons! But without armour, they are very susceptible to damage, which is why you should go in search of armadillos.
- Wolf armour absorbs all damage and has a durability of 64. The wolf itself is not injured.
- However, the armour does not protect against all forms of damage. It does not protect against drowning, freezing, thorns, wither effect, or the Warden’s sonic boom.
- Worn armour can be repaired with horn shields. One horn shield restores 8 durability points. You can see the damage by the cracks that appear in the armour.
- Like leather armour, wolf armour can be dyed in any colour! This goes beyond the 16 different shades, as you can try different combinations. In the Bedrock edition, this process is also possible via the cauldron, in Java only via the crafting interface.
- You can remove the armour by using shears. This allows you to repair or dye it.
Conclusion: Benefits of the New Update
Wolves have gained great features with the latest Minecraft update! Now it’s even more worthwhile to tame the four-legged creatures and use them for battle. If you then collect horn shields from armadillos, you can equip your wolves with armour. Get your own Minecraft server and assemble a small army of wolves to take on monsters or even other players. You can also search for all nine types, together with your friends!
