The cubic world of Minecraft is an ever-changing landscape of creativity and uncapped possibilities. Minecraft's growth has no end in sight, thanks to Mojang's regular content updates. In October 2022, Mojang brought us Minecraft Live 2022, an event which gave us the first sneak peek at the features coming in Minecraft Update 1.20. Perhaps the most exciting announcement was that of a new mob coming. Below is everything you need to know about Minecraft camels.
We'll go over how to find camels, how to ride them, and how to breed them, on top of anything else you might need to know.
While the Minecraft 1.20 update doesn't currently have a release date, players who are willing to experiment can still play with camels by downloading the latest Java Edition snapshot. If you're looking to add a camel to your Minecraft survival party, we've got you covered. Here's everything you need to know about Minecraft's newest mob.
How to find Minecraft Camels in 1.20
Camels can only be found in one overworld biome - the Desert. In keeping with the real world, you'll most likely find camels in a small herd. Camels only spawn in Desert villages, though you may be able to find them wandering through neighbouring areas as they go off on their own little adventures.
Having them only spawn in villages can make them a tough mob to locate, as Desert villages aren’t the most common world-generated structures. Luckily, Desert biomes are easy to find: they’re usually huge, and are the only biome to be made up entirely of sand. Once you've located a Desert biome, you'll have to travel across it in the hope of finding a randomly-generated village.
If you're having trouble finding a Desert or a Desert village in your game, you can put your world seed into Chunkbase to search your world for both locations.
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How to ride Camels
Similarly to other animal mobs, the camels in Minecraft can be tamed and ridden if you know how. You can sit and ride a camel by simply interacting with it. This is done with a right-click with default button mapping. Unfortunately, riding a camel like this won't give you any control over them, instead forcing you to sit and wait for the camel to slowly wander around.
If you want to ride and control a camel, you'll need to bring a saddle with you. You can't craft a saddle, and will instead have to find one from a chest in a dungeon or Nether fortress. Once you have one, use the saddle on the camel to instantly tame it. This is all it takes to ride and control a camel; no annoying taming mechanics required.
Camels are unique in that two people can ride them at once. So long as each player brings their own saddle, each camel can hold a driver and a passenger. This makes them ideal for long co-op treks across the overworld.
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How to breed Camels
If you’re familiar with classic Minecraft mechanics, you’ll know that most animal mobs are able to breed with one another to create adorable baby versions of themselves.
Breeding animals like pigs and cows is a common way of gaining meat in survival mode. Luckily, camels don't drop meat, so you won't be slaughtering them to stay fed.
If you want to breed camels anyway, you'll first have to find two of them, and force them into close proximity. The easiest way to do this it to build a small enclosure, then ride the camels into it. Block the entrance and build a way for you to enter the enclosure from above.
Once they're trapped, you'll have to feed each camel a piece of cactus. You can find cactus naturally from Desert and Badlands biomes. Once both camels have eaten some cactus, wait a few seconds and a baby camel will appear next to them. Each baby born will give you between one and seven experience orbs.
Once a pair of camels have bred, they won't be able to breed again for another five minutes. Once this timer is up, simply feed them both some cactus to have them breed again. As long as you wait the required time, there's no limit to how many babies a camel can have.
What else is there to know about Camels?
Camels have a few unique features that make finding and taming them worth the effort. The most obvious of these is their enormous height. They're the tallest friendly mob in the game, and riding one will put you out of range of melee mobs like Zombies.
Camels are versatile mounts, providing high speeds and huge jumps on flat terrain. Unfortunately, they're much slower than horses on complex terrain like mountains.
Camels are also fairly easy to keep alive, thanks to their ability to regenerate health independently. If you need to speed up their healing, you can heal two of their hearts by feeding them some cactus.
If you're feeling evil, you can kill camels to gain between one and three experience orbs. They don't drop leather or meat, meaning that you'll be committing this murder to just be evil.
That's all there is to know about Minecraft Camels, the newest mob!
If you’re craving more Minecraft content, why not check out our articles on the best mouse for Minecraft and the Minecraft player that made pets unkillable?