Bad Omen was added to Minecraft in update 1.14, adding a new wrinkle into player plans. Bad Omen is how the game tracks and manages the new Illager raids on villages. The debuff is transferred to a village as a target when an afflicted player runs into that village’s zone. You will notice it on your UI, as it looks like an Illager face with axes cross underneath. When you see that it’s a bad sign. Here’s what it means, and how to deal with it.
What is Bad Omen in Minecraft?
Bad Omen is a status effect that causes a raid to appear when an afflicted player enters a village. This does not apply to any other mob with the effect if the mob is in a village. This can be especially dangerous on multiplayer worlds as it can spread a plague of hostile NPCs very easily across the globe.
Bad omen can be given to only players and tamed wolves when they kill an illager captain. This does not happen in Java Edition. Instead, the Bad Omen debuff is gained when killing vindicator or evoker captains that spawn in woodland mansions. In essence, Bedrock edition only has one tier of the omen, Java Edition has slightly differing effects, based on if you kill an Outpost Captain or a Patrol Captain.
The system has five tiers in total. Each level of Bad Omen increases the likelihood of Illagers spawning with more dangerous weapons in the next raid. At Bad Omen V, the possibility of the most dangerous raids is certain.
Only boss mobs are immune to Bad Omen; however, only players and tamed wolves can trigger raids. Notably, you cannot transfer the Bad Omen from an Iron Golem if they kill any kind of captain. This is why Iron Golems make both good village defense and raiders against enemy outposts.
How do you remove Bad Omen in Minecraft?
So far, the only way in vanilla Minecraft to avoid triggering Raids is to do one of two things.
You can hide out, and keep away from villages. If you wait out the timer, as long as 100 minutes, you can clear the omen naturally. You cannot enter a village before the timer expires, or it marks that area for raiding. There is another way though, and it’s much faster.
You can use cow’s milk to clear the debuff. Simply take a bucket and milk a cow. Drink the fresh milk and it will clear the debuff. This is why it’s always a good idea to have milk on hand when attacking illagers, as you can easily clear bad omen this way.
