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Building a base is one of the first things most players will do in Minecraft. They allow for areas of relative safety and places where players can create storage to empty their inventories and keep any valuables safe.
With the abundance of hostile mobs in the game, these bases can quickly find themselves under siege. This makes it vital for players to have defenses set up in preparation, and some of the best defenses are the animals that can be tamed in the game.
5 best Minecraft animals to tame to defend your base
5) Parrots
Keen-eared players can use the parrot’s mimicry abilities to determine when hostile mobs are within 20 blocks of the parrot. That means a perimeter of parrots can be used to alert players to potential enemies that wander close to their base.
A parrot can also rest on a player’s shoulder and allow this perimeter of hostile mob detection to move with the player, alerting them if any enemies stray too close.
The only downside to parrots is that they mimic the sounds enemies make, so new players might not know which sounds relate to which enemies, in which situation the mimicry ability is not as useful as it should be.
4) Skeleton horses, or a regular horse
Skeleton horses spawn occasionally from lightning strikes. Initially, they spawned as traps and transformed into four skeleton horsemen when approached by the player. Should the player manage to kill the skeleton riding any of these skeleton horses without killing the horse itself, it becomes passive and tamed.
These skeleton horses have the least amount of health of any horse variety, but also move considerably faster than all other horses. Should a player want something to tank damage as they move around their base, they should instead look towards a normal horse. However, if a player wants to get around their base as quickly as possible to address threats, the skeleton horse is the way to go.
3) Foxes
Foxes are effectively a slightly worse tamed wolf. They will only attack mobs that attack the player, and won’t follow a player around, as they cannot be tamed. They can only trust the player. They can be led back to a player’s base using a lead, however, and will help the player fight off any mobs that attack.
Since they cannot be tamed, a player will need to breed a new fox using sweet berries. Any fox bred this way will trust the player, and can then be led back to the player's base.
2) Cats
Cats have an aura of protection, ranging from six to sixteen blocks. Creepers and phantoms will do everything in their power to stay outside of this bubble. This means that numerous cats can act as protective bubbles, keeping creepers and phantoms away from the player’s base entirely. The best way to defend a base, after all, is to not have to fight enemies away from it but to deter enemies from coming near it.
1) Wolves
Wolves will attack any hostile mob that attacks the player or follow the player into battle when attacking hostile mobs. With a whopping 10 hearts of health, they can take a beating while they dish out damage. They can be bred for additional tamed wolves and healed using meat, which players can have an ample supply of using farms.
