How to prevent warden from despawning in Minecraft

Mobs are one of the most intriguing things about Minecraft that make the game more interactive and fun to explore. Some of them are quite scary, and the warden is at the top of this list.

It is a hostile mob that was first introduced during Minecraft Live 2020. A while after it was announced, it was added to a Java snapshot for version 1.19.

Minecraft 1.19: The Wild Update came with not only a new mob but also a huge underground structure that could be found in the Overworld. This is where players would often come into contact with the warden.

Finding and preventing the warden from despawning in Minecraft

The warden is a ferocious hostile mob with a lot of HP and attack damage per hit. It was designed to be an almost unkillable character with which players would avoid fighting. It has 250 hearts of health, 50 more than even the infamous Ender Dragon.

Ideally, players would want to stay as far away from it as possible, as even though the warden cannot see, it can still detect vibrations from the player.

Preventing a warden from despawning

A warden emerging from the ground (Image via Mojang)

The warden emerges from the ground when the player activates a naturally generated sculk shrieker four times. If no vibrations are detected for sixty seconds, it digs into the ground and despawns.

Luckily, this can be prevented quite easily. All players need to do is give the warden a name using a name tag. This item can't be crafted and can be acquired by either trading with master-level librarians or from the loot chests of dungeons, mineshafts, ancient cities, and woodland mansions.

Finding a warden

As the warden is spawned by only a naturally generated sculk shrieker, the only place where players can summon a warden is the deep dark cave biome. Players will have to dig a lot to find this cave biome as it only generates very low Y levels.

A sculk shrieker upon activation in Minecraft (Image via Mojang)

While in deep dark caves below Y -51, players may come across an ancient city. The structure is huge, and has a lot of sculk shrieker blocks. Spawning a warden here would be easy, but escaping it once it has appeared will be more challenging.

How to use a name tag

Renaming a name tag in Minecraft (Image via Mojang)

To use the name tag, players need to place it on an anvil and write a name. Players need to sneak up to the warden and then use the tag on it by pressing the use button.

Sneaking up and using it on the warden is the hardest part, if the player makes even the slightest sound, the mob will start attacking them instantly.

If there are no librarians to trade with, the second best source of name tags is mineshaft. This is because they have a 42.3% chance of having a name tag in their loot chests in both Java and Bedrock Edition.