The Bad Omen: Minecraft Battles for the Ages

The world of Minecraft truly has some strange features sometimes. Say, you decide to go for a little walk around the village you’ve made your home. You wave goodbye to the many villagers that provide you with goods and services. Soon, you can’t see your own house anymore and all that is left around you are majestic mountains, lovely flowers, the animals of the woods… and a scary gray face staring at you. The day that so many fear has come as you have encountered - the illagers! And with them may come a little something called the Minecraft bad omen.

How to Get ‘Bad Omen’ Quickly

Once you are face to face with the gray menace, there aren’t many choices left: fight or flight. If you’ve encountered a pillager outpost and want to fight, our wiki article shows you several ways to go about it. However, an illager patrol is a different story. These patrols spawn in any biome outside your village and attack anything that gets into their range - including merchants, iron golems and even villagers themselves. Oh, and the player, of course.

Still, with only around 5 mobs, even inexperienced players stand a good chance at confronting these strangers. Whether you confront a patrol around your village or claim a pillager outpost for yourself, the important thing happens once you kill the illager captain (the one with the big flag on its back), an imposing figure even for the standards of Minecraft. “How to get ‘bad omen’” is a question with only one (or two) answer(s): killing the captain. Once you or your tamed wolf gets them, you can finally obtain the object of your desire: The ominous bottle. This small but dangerous item will immediately curse you upon consumption (dramatic pause) forever! Nay, five-ever (just kidding, it's just for 100 minutes.) Alternatively, you can fight your way through a trial chamber. Doing so will award you with a vault key. ‘What does it open?,’ you ask? Well, a vault, of course! And vaults can contain ominous bottles. Isn’t that just a swell coincidence?

Tip:
The bad omen Minecraft command comes to the rescue. If you don’t want to go through the entire hassle of crossing swords with the illagers, just use a command to apply the Minecraft bad omen effect on yourself. Enable cheats in your world, insert the command and get cursed immediately. However, we would advise to use the traditional method as it is more honorable and teaches you how to deal with the illagers.

The Minecraft Bad Omen Effect & Your Enemies

Once you’ve acquired the bad omen, Minecraft decides to throw even more woes at you. Entering a village with this Minecraft bad omen effect calls the hoard, triggering a pillager raid. Standing too close to a bed a villager used also does the trick. This raid will test your skills as a warrior by throwing wave after wave of illagers and their friends at you. Some of them will be familiar if you visited a mansion before. The enemies you will encounter include:

• Pillager: Raids never happen without this ground trooper. They shoot you with crossbows and can be dangerous in numbers, though they can’t take much damage.
• Vindicator: The melee version of the pillager. Comes with a guaranteed axe made of iron in every packet!
• Evoker: Not your average stage magician. They summon snapping fangs and vexes to… well, vex you.
• Vex: The allay’s mean cousin. Equipped with a sword and ready to attack from the air.
• Witch: This mean lady throws potions at you during a raid. When a patrol picks up a witch, she copies the patrol’s behavior.
• Ravager: This absolute unit is a true machine of destruction. They rampage through your village like there’s no tomorrow and should be encountered with caution.

The number of waves depends on your level of bad omen. Minecraft contains 5 different levels of bad omen and ominous bottles (the latter which happen to coincide with the 5 levels of bad omen.) The higher the level, the more waves there are and the more mob weapons are equipped with enchantments during the raid. In Minecraft, not visiting your village is already punishing, so make sure to be well equipped with armor before setting out.

Bringing the Bad Omen to the Trial Chambers

The other way to utilize the bad omen effect is by entering a trial chamber. Doing so upgrades the challenge into an ominous trial. The higher the level of the bad omen effect, the longer the ominous trial. However, while this mechanic does raise the challenge, it also raises the chance of you finding an ominous vault key. And ominous vault keys let you open ominous vaults. And ominous vaults contain ominous (read as ‘better’) loot.

Minecraft Bad Omen: Nothing Lasts Forever

Some of you might feel a sort of Mandela effect when it comes to the bad omen in Minecraft: ‘I could swear I just had to kill an illager captain. That whole bottle thing sounds made-up!’ we hear you say. For one, we can guarantee you, you are not imagining things. Until the so-called ‘armored paws’ drop of April 23rd, 2024, killing one of those dull-colored banner-bearers was, in fact, the only way to receive this condition. At the same time, there really was only one use for the bad omen effect, namely triggering raids.

However, Minecraft is a game that, even after 15 years, still continues to evolve. When the developers added the trial chambers in the ‘Tricky Trials’ update, the mechanics surrounding the bad omen were changed as well. By letting you drink a bottle to trigger it, the game now has multiple uses for the effect, specifically the ominous trials. We understand that this can be confusing, but look at the bright side: Not only can you do more with the bad omen effect in Minecraft, you also have more freedom when it comes to using it. Instead of being cursed right away, you can now trigger raids or ominous trials at your own leisure. If you don’t want to, just store the bottle in a chest and drink it later. Play at your own pace, you know?

Why even Get the Minecraft Bad Omen?

With all of that, you might wonder why people would want to get their hands on the Minecraft bad omen. You might get a lot of XP and some achievements during the Minecraft illager raid or the ominous trials, but there is a lot of risk. You might lose some villagers you spent a lot of time training or the buildings you constructed. And of course, harder trials increase the risk of an in-game death dramatically. Unfortunately, we don’t have a clinical study to back that up, but it does seem pretty self-explanatory. Those concerns are reasonable, so you should always keep some milk with you. Why milk, you ask? Well, because it removes the effect, of course. In fact, milk can remove any and all status effects that are currently on your character. Yes, milk. Don't ask us why, the Minecraft lore is already confusing enough. It’s like it could be on a poster: “Minecraft: Get rid of bad omen! Drink milk!” At least it could maybe help your in-game bone structure, right? No? Oh well.

However, if you want to prove yourself, or just forgot to drink your milk, there is a good reason to trigger a raid. And its name is ‘hero of the village’. Oh, and if you put your stuff into a chest, it is safe from the raiders.

Hero of the Village & Ominous Trials

Hero of the village is an effect you get after killing the final illager raid captain in the last wave. With this effect, you get two things from your villagers: discounts and love! Specifically, love in the form of presents. Depending on their profession, the villagers will shower you with items they sell, while babies and unemployed villagers drop poppies and seeds. For example, a fletcher will throw arrows at you that don’t even hurt you. Also, everything you buy from them becomes a lot cheaper. And of course, the admiration of the masses for vanquishing the evil Minecraft raid lasts for eternity - more or less. But 40 minutes is still close to eternity, right? Right?

Speaking of eternity: trial chambers. More often than not, they are a glimpse at an eternal fray. Not a good segue, but a segue nonetheless. Anyway, while ominous trials can be extremely difficult, throwing all manner of skeletons and zombies with enchanted gear at you, they do have some upsides as well. Okay, it’s mainly just the improved loot, but trust us, it is worth it. If you still doubt us, just look at the loot tables in our trial chambers article. Go ahead. We have the time.

Well, 40 minutes of fame as the Hero of the Village and improved loot are not that much at the end of the day. But the solution to that problem is simple: Just play the raid or trial again. If you’ve struggled to do it, maybe gather some friends and try surviving the Minecraft bad omen in multiplayer this time. And to top this experience off, why not use a Minecraft server from G-Portal? Stand proud against the horde, defend your village and claim some of the most sought-after loot you can imagine!