For most—if not all—Minecraft players, the base is their home, and as such, it is considered to be their most prized possession in the game. A base is where players can safely store their valuable items, safely spend the night and rest, craft multiple pieces of equipment and materials, and be a haven where they can recollect themselves before heading back out.
Unfortunately, suppose the player is not cautious and misses out on the tiny details that keep their base safe. In that case, their base can be overrun by hostile mobs or, even worse, accidentally burn the entire place to the ground. And given how Minecraft bases can be so vulnerable in the face of lava, fire, explosions, and hostile mobs in general, creating ways to protect your base is one of the best and most important methods to keep everything safe and under control.
Having a base filled with creepers and undead hostile mobs is the last thing any player would want to happen, especially when it comes to Minecraft multiplayer. Various online players can freely come and go in your base in this game mode. Some of them may accidentally take a small prank too far and destroy the base you worked hard to build in the first place. Hence, we have created a guide on some of the most common and effective ways you can use to protect your base in Minecraft.
How To Protect Your Base in Minecraft
1. Keep your base well lit
It is fairly common knowledge that hostile mobs such as zombies, skeletons, and creepers spawn at night, but some players do not know the exact reason why this happens. They spawn at night because of a game mechanic called light level.
There is a given number for each location in the game for the current light level of that specific location and in, which can be affected by how light or how dark the location is. Because of this, when the light level of an area becomes lower than 7, hostile mobs can spawn. And since nighttime generally lowers the light level in the overworld, hostile mobs can spawn more frequently during the night than in the day.
However, this is not always the case, especially for structures. When an enclosed structure such as a shelter or a base is built, the light level inside of it becomes low as sunlight cannot pass through solid blocks. This causes hostile mobs to spawn inside your base even during the day if your base does not have proper lighting. Therefore, you must keep your shelter or base interior well lit to prevent this from happening.
Various ways help brighten the interior of your base. You can utilize basic light sources such as torches and lanterns and place them in and around your base. Other blocks emit light, such as glow stones and carved pumpkins that you can use for decoration purposes. And for other utility blocks, such as campfires, you can use them as more than just a light source.
2. Build walls and fences
Fences and walls are an effective way to create barriers or barricades around your base, preventing unwanted visitors from easily entering and exiting your base without your knowledge. Although fences can be used as decoration blocks, their main purpose is to keep an area safe from hostile mobs. You can utilize this by creating a barricade to surround your base and placing a fence gate to allow you to get in and out easily.
A one-block high fence should be enough to keep most hostile mobs at bay. However, this does not block a skeleton’s arrows from shooting straight at you from across the fence. Moreover, mobs that can climb fences and walls, such as spiders and cave spiders, or mobs that can teleport like the endermen cannot be stopped by mere fences. To prevent this from happening, you can create solid walls with a roof to prevent spiders from getting in and keep your base interior height around 2 to 3 blocks tall to prevent endermen from freely teleporting inside your base.
3. Make use of water and lava
Water is an element in Minecraft that makes rivers and oceans what they are. And like the real world, various mobs are living underwater. While it is true that there are hostile mobs underwater, such as the drowned and guardians, they are less common than their land counterparts. You can use this to your advantage by creating a moat around your base to prevent regular mobs such as creepers and skeletons from getting near your base.
Another technique to utilize water is to create flowing water sources that push any mob away from the base itself. In this way, any mob that wants to swim towards you will be redirected elsewhere. As for lava, it is already common that lava is an essentially dangerous element to use as it may burn your base if you are not careful enough. However, if you are handling it carefully, you can use lava as a defense mechanism that will incinerate any mob from walking toward you. You can also create a Redstone mechanism with lava to create an automatic base defense system that will trigger with the push of a button.
4. Keep pets nearby
If you think that pets in Minecraft are merely for decoration purposes, then think again because Minecraft pets are more useful than you would expect. Having a pet wolf or two will keep you company in your lonely survival journey, but wolves are also good and loyal hunters as they protect their master to their dying breath. Their pet wolf will immediately back up any mob that the player will attack. For hostile mobs, they will instinctively attack all that will come near the player.
For pet cats, this is not the case. And although you would think that since cats cannot defend the player in the same way wolves can, they are practically useless, you are wrong. Cats have another purpose: to ward off creepers in the area. Creepers are naturally afraid of cats to the point that they run in the opposite direction whenever a cat comes near them. So you can keep tamed cats inside your base to make sure no creepers will even think to come inside.
5. Create iron golems and snow golems
If you have enough resources, creating golems to defend your base can be very helpful. Golems are known to defend players and villagers from hostile mobs as villagers generally create them for that purpose. However, players can also manually create golems with enough materials on hand.
Iron golems are probably the best ones to defend your base as they have high health bars and can easily kill hostile mobs with a single hit or two. And although iron golems cost more resources to build than snow golems, the result is always worth it as they are stronger overall.
To create an iron golem, you will need four blocks of iron and one carved pumpkin. Place a single iron block at the bottom and place a 3-block horizontal layer of iron blocks on top, and finally, place the carved pumpkin on top to create a cross-shaped creation. This will automatically turn into an iron golem, and it will defend your base as long as you do not attack it.
Snow golems are slightly weaker than iron golems as they can only be created in snowy biomes, and their attack is to throw snowballs at hostile mobs. Although this may seem very weak, they can still be useful for players as each thrown snowball can push mobs away. To create a snow golem, you will need two blocks of snow and one carved pumpkin, then stack the two snow blocks vertically and place the carved pumpkin on top.
