While Minecraft may place a lot of importance on mining elements and building things you need, you also need to do a fair bit of mob fighting in the game. Of course, not all mobs are the same, and hence, your strategy for taking them on shouldn’t be either.
In this article, we’re talking about hitboxes in Minecraft, how to enable them, and how to use them to your advantage.
Also read: How to get a parrot off your shoulder in Minecraft?
Hitboxes in Minecraft
Minecraft hitboxes can be activated by pressing F3 + B. Do keep in mind that hitboxes are only available in the Java Edition of the game, so if you’re playing the Bedrock Edition or any other version, you’re out of luck at least as long as seeing hitboxes is concerned. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know about them.
If you have the Java Edition and decide to enable hitboxes, you’ll see a white line outlining the entity showing its location. There’s a red rectangle near its eyes, showing the line of sight. In most cases, the line of sight is all around a mob, making it impossible to sneak upon them. Finally, there’s also a blue line that extends away from the line of sight; this is the direction in which the entity is looking.
Using hitboxes
Since hitboxes are the only areas where a mob will take damage (except void, fall and effect-related damage), knowing them can help you take them down. For example, a ghast’s tentacles aren’t included in the hitboxes, meaning you’d be wasting arrows shooting at them.
Suffocation mechanics are also easily explained by hitboxes. The head location is marked with a thin red box. When this red box is pushed into another solid block (like water), the mob starts getting suffocated if there’s no head present (such as ghasts), the entire body can be considered as the head.
Hitbox sizes can also be used for farms. You can build automatic farms that only ensure adult mobs will be killed based on their hitbox sizes since baby mobs don’t drop anything.
Finally, a mob’s line of sight box can be used to escape them strategically. All you have to do is get out of that red rectangle, and you’ll be good. Lines of sight vary from 20 blocks to over 100 blocks for ghasts and blazes. Do keep in mind that this is affected by factors like enchantments or wearing skulls.
The Ender Dragon
The Ender Dragon, often considered the boss mob in Minecraft, has a unique hitbox. It has green boxes covering different parts of its body, indicating where damage can be dealt. Otherwise, there’s a huge white box and a similarly sized red line of sight block, meaning the Ender Dragon and see and deal damage at quite a distance.
Also read: How to get Mushroom blocks in Minecraft?
