Introduction
The armadillo is a passive animal mob that was added to Minecraft in the 1.20.80 update, also known as part of the Bedrock Edition. This adorable creature brings more life to the Savanna and Badlands biomes and serves a significant purpose by providing armadillo scutes, a crucial ingredient for crafting wolf armor. The armadillo won the Minecraft Mob Vote in 2023, earning its place in the game. This Minecraft Bedrock Armadillo Guide will explore everything you need to know about interacting with and utilizing these unique mobs in your Bedrock Edition worlds.
Where to Find Armadillos
In Bedrock Edition, you can find armadillos naturally spawning in Savanna, Savanna Plateau, Windswept Savanna, Badlands, Eroded Badlands, and Wooded Badlands biomes. These are classified as warm or arid environments, reflecting the armadillo’s preference for dry, sunlit habitats.
They typically spawn in groups of two to three in the savanna-type biomes and in groups of one to two in the badlands-type biomes. Armadillos require a light level of 7 or higher to spawn, which means they most often appear during the day or in well-lit areas above ground. They will not spawn in caves or dark zones unless proper lighting conditions are met.
Savanna biomes are characterized by their yellow-green grass, scattered acacia trees, and gently rolling terrain. The plateau and windswept variants tend to be more elevated and can sometimes be adjacent to plains or desert biomes, making them easier to locate when exploring large landmasses. Badlands biomes, on the other hand, are much rarer but visually striking due to their layered terracotta formations and minimal vegetation. The eroded and wooded variants of badlands add unique elevation changes and terrain features that may affect visibility, so players should explore carefully to spot armadillos hiding behind hills or rock formations.
When searching for armadillos, players should keep a few things in mind. First, traveling during daylight increases visibility and natural spawn rates. Second, sprinting near armadillos may startle them, causing them to roll up, which can make them harder to approach or breed. Third, once found, armadillos do not despawn like some other passive mobs, so players can create enclosures to keep them nearby for breeding or scute collection. Finally, if you’re struggling to find the correct biome, using seeds with known coordinates or a biome locator tool can help you pinpoint savanna and badlands biomes quickly.
With a bit of exploration and patience, you’ll be able to track down these helpful creatures and begin harvesting their unique resources for use in crafting wolf armor.
Armadillo
Armadillos in Bedrock Edition have 12 health points, which equates to 6 hearts. This means they can withstand a moderate amount of damage before dying, similar in durability to animals like pigs or sheep. They are classified as passive mobs, meaning they will never attack players under any circumstances, even when provoked. Their behavior is entirely defensive, relying on avoidance and their unique roll-up mechanism rather than confrontation.
The adult armadillo has a height of 0.65 blocks and a width of 0.7 blocks, making it a small, squat creature that moves low to the ground. This compact size allows them to blend in easily with terrain, especially in areas with uneven ground or tall grass. Baby armadillos are even smaller, with a height of 0.39 blocks and a width of 0.42 blocks, making them easy to miss unless you’re paying close attention.
You can attach a lead to an armadillo to move it around, which is particularly useful when transporting them to a secure enclosure or a breeding area. Leads work even when an armadillo is rolled up, allowing players to safely relocate them without needing to wait for the mob to unroll.
Armadillos do not require food to survive and will not follow the player unless tempted for breeding purposes. They exhibit wandering behavior when idle, walking slowly across the terrain and occasionally stopping to observe their surroundings. They can also climb small slopes and navigate uneven terrain, but they will not jump or try to follow players across large drops or obstacles.
Armadillos do not interact with most blocks or entities and will not pick up items, attack mobs, or engage in any form of combat. However, they are reactive to their environment and nearby entities, as seen in their defensive behavior, which is explored in greater detail in the next section.
Because of their small size and passive nature, armadillos are vulnerable to environmental hazards. They can take fall damage, drown in water, and are susceptible to fire and lava like most living entities. For this reason, players looking to farm or breed armadillos should consider building protective pens with safe flooring and barriers to prevent accidental harm.
Although they serve a specific utility in crafting wolf armor, armadillos also bring a new level of life and immersion to the savanna and badlands biomes, helping to flesh out the ecosystem with another ambient creature that responds dynamically to the player’s presence.
Armadillo Behavior
A key behavior of the armadillo is its tendency to roll up into a cube-like shape when it feels threatened. This unique defensive mechanism provides both visual charm and functional gameplay significance, adding a layer of strategy to how players interact with armadillos and their environment.
This behavior is triggered under several conditions. Hostile undead mobs, such as zombies, wither skeletons, and drowned, will cause nearby armadillos to roll up immediately if they come too close. Additionally, armadillos perceive sprinting players as potential threats. If a player runs past an armadillo—even without making direct contact—it may initiate its roll-up behavior in response to the perceived danger. Players riding mounts like horses, or traveling in vehicles such as minecarts or boats, can also trigger this defensive state. Similarly, if any nearby mob or player has recently dealt damage to the armadillo, or another armadillo within its range, it will enter its rolled-up form.
While in this rolled-up state, the armadillo becomes immobile and curls tightly into a protective ball with a square-shaped shell. In this position, the armadillo takes reduced damage from physical attacks, making it more resilient to threats, although it is still vulnerable to environmental hazards such as lava or drowning. The armadillo cannot move, eat, or be tempted by its preferred food (spider eyes) while rolled up. This means it cannot be bred, led, or interacted with in most ways until it has fully unrolled.
Periodically, the rolled-up armadillo will peek its head out to assess the area. This cautious checking behavior adds realism and immersion. If the armadillo detects no nearby threats for a duration of three seconds (60 game ticks), it will safely unroll and resume its normal passive behavior, including wandering and interacting with players.
However, there are notable exceptions to this behavior. Armadillos will not roll up if they are submerged in water, falling through the air, actively fleeing from a threat, or being held on a lead. This suggests that the defensive roll is a conscious choice rather than a reflex, and that armadillos prioritize escape or environmental survival over curling up in certain situations.
When not rolled up, armadillos exhibit a fascinating secondary behavior: they naturally repel spiders and cave spiders within a radius of six blocks. These arthropods will instinctively move away from the armadillo, making it a passive but effective tool for area control. This interaction can be utilized by players to reduce the presence of spiders around bases, paths, or farming areas, especially in biomes where those mobs are common.
Overall, the behavior of armadillos combines realism, utility, and charm, making them one of the most dynamic passive mobs introduced in recent updates. Understanding how and why they respond to threats helps players create better environments for breeding, scute collection, or simply observing their behavior in the wild.
Armadillo Drops
When you directly kill an armadillo, it does not drop any items. This design choice was made to discourage the unnecessary killing of passive mobs and to promote ethical resource collection through non-lethal methods. Unlike many other mobs in the game that reward materials upon death, the armadillo’s value lies in the items it produces while alive—specifically, armadillo scutes.
Armadillos will drop armadillo scutes periodically over time, or they can be harvested by the player using a brush. Naturally, an armadillo drops one scute every 5 to 10 minutes on its own, functioning similarly to how chickens lay eggs at regular intervals. This passive generation makes armadillos an excellent candidate for automated or semi-automated scute farms, especially when enclosed safely and kept in well-lit areas to encourage activity.
To obtain scutes more quickly, you can use a brush directly on an armadillo. Each successful use of a brush instantly yields one armadillo scute, allowing players to collect them more efficiently than waiting for natural drops. There is no cooldown or delay between brushings, meaning you can continue using the brush on the same armadillo repeatedly—limited only by the tool’s durability.
In Bedrock Edition, an unenchanted brush has enough durability to obtain five armadillo scutes, breaking after the fifth use. Players interested in long-term scute farming should carry multiple brushes or consider enchanting them with Unbreaking (if possible) using commands or in custom scenarios, though this is not part of standard survival gameplay. It’s important to remember that the brush will always break after its durability is exhausted, so keeping spare brushes nearby is crucial for ongoing scute collection.
Any dropped scutes behave like regular items and will despawn if left on the ground for too long. You should always collect them promptly, especially if you’re brushing multiple armadillos in a confined area. Scutes may land in corners or on nearby blocks, so scanning the area carefully after each brushing session will help prevent loss of materials.
Killing an adult armadillo will grant you 1–3 experience points if the kill is performed by a player or a tamed wolf. This reward is relatively low and further reinforces the idea that armadillos are not meant to be farmed through death. Baby armadillos, consistent with many other juvenile mobs, do not drop any experience when killed.
Successfully breeding two armadillos rewards the player with 1–7 experience points, encouraging peaceful and sustainable interactions. Breeding is not only a way to expand your population for scute production but also a gentle method of gaining XP without the need for combat.
In summary, armadillos are designed to be long-term passive resource providers. Their scutes are best acquired through brushing and patience, and players who treat them well will be rewarded with a steady supply of this valuable crafting material.
Breeding Armadillos
To breed armadillos in Bedrock Edition, you will need to feed two adult armadillos their favorite food: spider eyes. Spider eyes are obtained by killing spider mobs. Once you have spider eyes, right-click on two adult armadillos with them. They will enter love mode, and a baby armadillo will spawn shortly after. Baby armadillos take 20 minutes to grow into adults, but you can accelerate this process by feeding them more spider eyes, with each spider eye reducing the growth time by 10%. If an armadillo rolls up after being fed but before breeding, it will lose its willingness to breed and will need to be fed another spider eye once it unrolls. Rolled-up armadillos cannot be fed.
Wolf Armor
The primary use of armadillo scutes is to craft wolf armor, which protects your tamed wolves. To craft wolf armor, you need six armadillo scutes arranged in a specific pattern on a crafting table: one in the top left corner, one in each slot of the middle row, and one in both the bottom left and right corners. Once crafted, you can equip the wolf armor on an adult tamed wolf by right-clicking on it. Wolf armor in Bedrock Edition has a durability of 64 and absorbs all damage until it breaks.
Dying Wolf Armor
Similar to leather armor, wolf armor can be dyed different colors in Bedrock Edition. You can use various dyes in a crafting table with the wolf armor to change its color. You can even mix dyes to create custom colors for your wolf’s protection. However, using wolf armor on a cauldron filled with water will remove the dye.
Repairing Wolf Armor
When wolf armor takes damage, it will show visual cracks. You can repair damaged wolf armor by using armadillo scutes on the armored wolf. Each scute used in this way will restore eight points of durability to the wolf armor. This allows you to maintain the protection of your wolves during your adventures.
Limitations of Wolf Armor
While wolf armor provides significant protection to your tamed wolves, it does not protect against all types of damage. Damage from falling into the void, drowning, suffocation (being inside blocks), freezing, magic damage from enchantments, thorns, wither damage, entity cramming, and the sonic shriek of the Warden will still affect your wolf even while wearing armor. It’s important to be aware of these limitations when taking your armored wolves into dangerous situations.
Other Uses of Armadillos
Besides providing scutes for wolf armor, armadillos have another interesting use: they scare away spiders and cave spiders. This can be helpful for keeping these arachnid mobs away from your base or potentially for redesigning spider farms.
Data Values and Commands
In Bedrock Edition, the armadillo’s entity identifier is armadillo and its numeric ID is 142. Specific spawn events for armadillos in Bedrock/Education Edition can be used in game commands. For detailed information on entity data and commands, refer to the Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format. You can summon an armadillo using commands such as /summon minecraft:armadillo.
Trivia
Real-life armadillos are excellent swimmers and can hold their breath for a significant amount of time, but this is not the case in Minecraft, where they drown like other mobs. Similarly to turtles, armadillos do not drop scutes when killed, a decision made by Mojang Studios against the unnecessary killing of real-life animals in Minecraft. Despite being a passive mob, the armadillo has been referred to as a neutral mob on the official Minecraft website. The development time for the armadillo was notably short compared to other mob vote winners.
Conclusion
The armadillo is a valuable and charming addition to Minecraft Bedrock Edition. Found in warm biomes like the Savanna and Badlands, this passive mob offers unique behaviors—such as rolling up when threatened—and plays an important role in protecting tamed wolves. Armadillos periodically drop scutes or can be brushed to collect them, making them essential for crafting and maintaining wolf armor.
Wolf armor greatly boosts a wolf’s defense and can be dyed or repaired using more scutes, though it doesn’t protect against all damage types. Armadillos also have interesting interactions with spiders, scare them off when not rolled up, and can be bred using spider eyes. Their peaceful nature, usefulness, and unique mechanics make them a welcome part of any survival world, especially for players who rely on their loyal canine companions.
If you’re looking for more guides, be sure to explore the website for more tips and tricks. Enjoy your adventure, and happy mining!
