Illusioner

For the powerful mob in Minecraft Dungeons, see MCD:Illusioner.

This feature is exclusive to Java Edition.

Illusioner

Health points	32HP × 16
Behavior	Hostile
Mob type	Illager Monster
Attack strength	Bow: Easy and Normal: 2HP – 5HP Hard: 3HP – 5HP
Speed	0.5
Spawn	By commands

The illusioner is an unused illager armed with a bow. It attacks by firing arrows and creating illusions.

Spawning

Illusioners do not spawn naturally in any way without commands, nor do they have a spawn egg in the Creative inventory. An illusioner can be spawned only by using data packs or the /summon minecraft:illusioner in-game command. Illusioners despawn outside of simulation distance even if named with a name tag.

Drops

When an illusioner is killed by a player or a tamed wolf, any naturally spawned equipment, including its unenchanted bow, has an 8.5% chance of dropping (or 9.5% with Looting I, 10.5% with Looting II and 11.5% with Looting III) and drops with a random item durability. In addition, 5XP experience orbs are dropped on player or tamed wolf kills.

The illusioner also drops one illager ominous banner and one ominous bottle if it is a raid captain.

Behavior

Although they do not naturally spawn in raids, illusioners spawned by the player attack players, adult villagers, iron golems, and wandering traders within a 16×4×16 cubic area.

An illusioner joins a nearby raid if it occurs or joins a patrol if sufficiently near a patrol captain.

The illusioner attacks with its spells and its bow, firing an arrow every second, three times faster than a skeleton. Unless the illusioner is summoned using commands, it cannot attack with a non-bow item in its hand, cannot use tipped arrows in its off-hand slot (but can use spectral arrows) and cannot use enchanted bows. Also, it is the only illager that can see its target through walls.

The illusioner moves quickly on a semi-circular fashion and always tries to maintain a consistent distance between itself and the player, strafing from left to right and vice versa, retreating if the player gets too close or advancing if the player retreats.

Finally, the illusioner has two spells: a spell that blinds its opponent and a spell that summons visual pseudo-duplicates and makes the illusioner invisible.

If a bow is not in the illusioner's main hand, the illusioner does not attack players or villagers, but can still cast Blindness. An unarmed illusioner can be spawned with the command /summon minecraft:illusioner ~ ~ ~ {}.

Casting Blindness

The illusioner casts its Blindness spell only if the regional difficulty is greater than 2. As a result, the world difficulty setting, the inhabited time of the chunk, the total daytime in the world and the phase of the moon from the day-night cycle affects its ability.

This spell gives a Blindness effect that lasts for 20 seconds upon first engaging a new player opponent. The illusioner signals this attack by raising its arms during a short-timed animation, making a low pitched sound and producing a black mist of particles (). Other entities (typically a wolf, a snow golem or an iron golem) do not trigger this magic. The illusioner does not cast this spell more than once on the same player opponent, unless it has first shifted its attention to another opponent and then back to that original opponent.

This spell resets the illusioner's spell cooldown to 1 second and resets the cooldown for the blinding spell to 9 seconds.

Summoning duplicates

As long as an illusioner is engaged in combat, it casts an Invisibility status effect on itself that lasts 60 seconds and refreshes the effect whenever the Invisibility's time runs out. The illusioner signals this spell by raising its arms, making a strange high pitched sound and producing a blue mist of particles called "mirror".

When an illusioner becomes invisible through this or another method, it creates four false duplicates of itself. These hover and waver at short distances from the actually invisible illusioner, though they do not space themselves out until the first time the illusioner is attacked. They face in exactly the same direction as the illusioner and move somewhat in step with the original, appearing to phase through blocks like a vex does. Despite using the shooting animation whenever the original uses its bow, only the real illusioner can shoot and be damaged.

The clones move to new positions if they were not triggered and are still bunched together. The illusioner can also do this once in a while to "refresh" the clones' positions.

When the real illusioner is damaged, its duplicates all snap back to where the real illusioner is, then quickly snap back out to new positions, making a teleporting sound, signaling the hit.

If an invisible illusioner receives the Glowing effect, all of the duplicates glow, while the true illusioner remains invisible. However, only the invisible illusioner burns when catching fire.

When spectated, the illusioner's own duplicates are not shown, though duplicates of other illusioners are still visible.

The duplicates disappear once the illusioner's Invisibility effect ends.

This spell resets the illusioner's spell cooldown to 1 second and resets the cooldown for the invisibility spell to 17 seconds.

Sounds

Data values

ID

Name	Identifier	Entity tags	Translation key
Illusioner	illusioner	illager illager_friends raiders	entity.minecraft.illusioner

Entity data

Illusioners have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.

Advancements

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)
	Not Today, Thank You	Deflect a projectile with a Shield	Block any projectile with a shield.
	How Did We Get Here?	Have every effect applied at the same time	Have all of these 34​[until: Fourth Drop 2026]/35​[upcoming] status effects applied to the player at the same time: Absorption Bad Omen Blindness Breath of the Nautilus Conduit Power Darkness Dolphin's Grace Fire Resistance Freezing Glowing Haste Hero of the Village Hunger Infested Invisibility Jump Boost Levitation Mining Fatigue Nausea Night Vision Oozing Poison Raid Omen Regeneration Resistance Slow Falling Slowness Speed Strength Trial Omen Water Breathing Weakness Weaving Wind Charged Wither The source of the effects is irrelevant for the purposes of this advancement. Other status effects may be applied to the player, but are ignored for this advancement. This is a hidden advancement, meaning that it can be viewed by the player only after completing it, regardless of if its child advancement(s), if any, have been completed.
	Voluntary Exile	Kill a raid captain. Maybe consider staying away from villages for the time being...	Kill an entity in the #raiders entity tag wearing an ominous banner: Evoker Illusioner Pillager Vindicator This is a hidden advancement, meaning that it can be viewed by the player only after completing it, regardless of if its child advancement(s), if any, have been completed.
	Hero of the Village	Successfully defend a village from a raid	Kill at least one raid mob during a raid and wait until it ends in victory. This is a hidden advancement, meaning that it can be viewed by the player only after completing it, regardless of if its child advancement(s), if any, have been completed.
	It Spreads	Kill a mob near a Sculk Catalyst	Kill any mob that drops experience near a sculk catalyst, with the sole exception of the ender dragon. Mobs that drop no experience are ignored for this advancement.

Advancements that apply to all mobs:

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)
	Adventure	Adventure, exploration and combat	Kill any mob, or be killed by any living entity.
	A Throwaway Joke	Throw a Trident at something. Note: Throwing away your only weapon is not a good idea.	Hit a mob with a thrown trident.
	Take Aim	Shoot something with an Arrow	Using a bow or a crossbow, shoot a mob with an arrow, tipped arrow, or spectral arrow.
	Mob Kabob	Hit five mobs in the same Charge attack using the Spear	Armor Stand and Mannequin also count for this advancement.
	Arbalistic	Kill five unique mobs with one crossbow shot	Armor Stand and Mannequin also count for this advancement. This is a hidden advancement, meaning that it can be viewed by the player only after completing it, regardless of if its child advancement(s), if any, have been completed.
	Over-Overkill	Deal 50 hearts of damage in a single hit using the Mace	Damage can be dealt to any mob, even those that do not have 50 hearts of health overall.

History

Java Edition

Java Edition
1.12			17w16a				Added illusioners.
			17w17a				The illusioner's Blindness spell is now cast only if the regional difficulty is 3 or above.
							Illusioners now have new sound effects.
			17w17b				The illusioner's blindness spell is now cast only if the regional difficulty is 2 or above.
			17w18b				Illusioners are no longer a valid mob for earning the Monster Hunter advancement and are no longer required to complete the Monsters Hunted advancement.
1.14			18w43a				The texture of illusioners has been changed. Illusioners now have green eyes.
			18w46a				A loot table has been added to illusioners.
			19w13a				If raiding illusioners killed all the villagers in the village or the beds were destroyed, illusioners celebrate their victory by cheering and jumping.
September 29, 2019							Illusioners were mentioned as potential candidates for addition to raids, in analogy to the implementation of brown mooshrooms as announced a year earlier.
1.18			21w37a				Illusioners no longer attack baby villagers.
			pre5				Illusioner texture was slightly changed, removed a few misplaced pixels.
1.19			22w17a				Changed its models, now the last two rows of pixels on its robes can render.

Legacy Console Edition

Legacy Console Edition
Xbox 360	Xbox One	PS3	PS4	PS Vita	Wii U	Switch
TU54	CU44	1.52	1.52	1.52	Patch 24	1.0.4	Added illusioners.
?	?	?	?	?	?	?	Illusioners no longer have hoods.

Data history

Issues

Illusioners are an unsupported mob and as such issues relating to them may not be fixed.

Issues relating to "Illusioner" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

Trivia

• The illusioner displace sound is almost the same as the traditional sound of teleportation via an ender pearl or chorus fruit, endermen or shulkers, albeit with a slight distortion at the end.
• Illusioners shoot backward when they are in a boat.^[2]
• Illusioners hold bows in a different direction compared to skeletons or players, a little more diagonally.
• Despite being unused, the illusioner was present in a Minecraft video about every mob in the game.^[3]
  • As a result of being unused, an episode of The Story of Mobs gave instructions on how to spawn it to give context for what the mob is.^[4]
• The original concept for the Illusioner was that it would create separate mobs, but this couldn't be done due to engine limitations.^[5] This is also the reason why it remains unused.^[6]

Gallery

Renders

• 
  An illusioner aiming
• 
  An illusioner raid captain
• 
  A sitting illusioner
• 
  An illusioner riding a ravager
• 
  An illusioner without its second layer (this state cannot be seen in the game)

Textures

• 
  Illusioner texture file
• 
  Programmer Art texture file

Screenshots

• 
  Illusioner duplicates dying when the original illlusioner is killed
• 
  An illusioner shooting an arrow at a villager with its bow
• 
  An illusioner attacking villagers
• 
  An illusioner preparing to cast its Blindness spell
• 
  An illusioner killing a villager with its bow
• 
  A few illusioner captains of illager patrol summoned using commands
• 
  Illusioners using the wrong subtitles.^[7] "Skeleton shoots"

In other media

• 
  An illusioner from Minecraft Dungeons with the different outfit and eye coloring

References