Horse in Minecraft is a great way to explore your world by making more of the map accessible to you. Your world becomes smaller, and exploration becomes more fun, when you command horses.
But getting a horse requires some steps – none of which are complicated or difficult if you know what to do. If you’ve never played Minecraft before, or if you took a break and are getting back into the game, follow these steps to tame your first horse.
Why You Want To Tame A Horse
Taming a horse is important for multiple purposes. You cannot equip a wild horse with any items or ride it, but you can lead it wherever you want and they are as useful as an untamed sheep until they are tamed.
As mentioned earlier, horses are a great option for explorers or anyone looking to reach their destination. Horses will cut the travel time and you owe it to yourself to tame one of these beings!
How Long Does It Take?
It really doesn’t take much time to tame a horse, just a few seconds or less even. What might take time is gathering the items you need for taming, or riding it once you set it free from being wild and become friendly with you.
The art of taming takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, whereas finding a saddle can take only a few minutes or several hours depending on the type of seed your world was generated from.
Find A Horse
The first step to taming a horse is to find one. Horses can be found in any plains, savanna, or village biome in large numbers. It can take some time to find a biome or village, but when you find one you’ll typically see one or multiple herds of horses.
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Get A Saddle
Tamed horses require a saddle before they can be ridden, and people starting in the game will want to acquire one as soon as possible.
Trading for saddles can be done through trading with Master-level leatherworker villagers who will likely trade if your villager’s Luck is high and Ravagers only appear during raids. Be sure to search for chests in Strongholds, dungeons, savanna villages, jungle temples, desert temples, end cities or village tanneries.
Gather Food (Optional)
Providing food to horses will reduce the speed of riding time, and may tame the horse even without the rider. The time it takes to domesticate a horse is only a few seconds if you have enough food on hand, but it’s also an option if you want to go back to mining and building.
Horses eat Sugar, Wheat, Apples, Golden Carrots, and Golden Apples. To get Apple items you will have to search the Oak tree for them. Sugar and Wheat is easy to find at the marketplace or in your inventory.
Try Riding (And Feeding)
The first thing you should do if you have food is to feed your horse by clicking on it. If not, this will cut down the time it takes.
To ride a horse, you first need to make sure it has some food in its inventory. If the horse doesn’t have any food, you just need to click on it with an empty hand to try and saddle it. Your first attempt won’t succeed unless you’re very lucky.
Understanding Temper
The horse taming mechanic works on a stat called Temper. A new horse’s temper is generated the first time you attempt to ride it, and can fall anywhere between 0 and 99. In order for a wild horse to be ridden, its temper must be below 99; if it’s above, it will be considered tame instead.
Feeding your horse increases its Temper by a certain number of points, with food generally being the determining factor. Sugar and Wheat give three points, Golden Carrots grant five points each, and Golden apples are granted 10.
Get Back On
If you used enough food to tame the horse then you can skip this step. If not then you got bucked off and the horse is probably irritated with you. The thing you need to do next is get right back on that horse.
Attempting to ride the horse will cause its temper to go up by five points each time. The most a player needs to try and tame the horse is 20 times, but odds are it will take less than 10 tries before being successful at taming it.
Lost the cat (for now) but tame a horse. #Minecraft #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/yZLmsuuoGp
— Engel Dreizehn (@Engel_Dreizehn) August 17, 2021
Hearts
You’ll know you succeeded when the horses produce hearts. If your graphic settings are set low then hearts probably won’t display, so the way you’ll know is that you won’t be bucked off and can access the horse’s inventory.
At this point, you just need to access the items in your inventory and place the saddle on top of the horse. Then, you can ride it wherever you please.
Every horse should be tamed
Every horse is considered a wild animal by the game, and must be tamed before it can be ridden. Horses found in villages or those obtained from breeding will need to have their horses tamed.
This can be true, because the game treats taming as an act of claiming or owning the horse. Until you tame it, though, your horse isn’t yours. If you plan on breeding horses and find yourself needing a lot of them tamed in one go for whatever reason, then get some food farms set up first so that you have enough food.