How to trap mobs in boats in Minecraft

Minecraft has a lot of different resources and materials, with items such as ender pearls being critical for players to get to the End and fight the ender dragon. Emeralds are used for the incredibly powerful villager trading system, and iron is exceptionally useful for making redstone components and shields.

All of these materials can be acquired in large amounts through farms. The creation of these farms is made much easier when using boats to trap and move mobs from place to place. Detailed below are ways to trap mobs in boats and why it is useful to do so.

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How to use a boat to trap Minecraft mobs

Neutral mobs

Two pigs trapped in a boat (Image via Minecraft)

While it may go against what a player might expect, neutral mobs are more annoying to trick into getting trapped inside of a boat. This is because neutral mobs will just wander around randomly, without regard for the player. This means that neutral mobs can very quickly wander away from a boat that the player has placed down to trap them.

As annoying as it may be, the process for getting neutral mobs trapped in a boat is quite simple. Players will simply need to place down a boat near a neutral mob and then attempt to walk into them to push them into the boat’s hitbox. If successful, the mob will be trapped in the boat until the player breaks it.

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Hostile mobs

A skeleton trapped in a boat (Image via Minecraft)

Hostile mobs are much easier to trap in a boat because they want to attack the player. This means that hostile mobs with melee attacks will path find straight toward players. Unfortunately, skeletons and other ranged mobs will often strafe players, meaning they can be incredibly difficult to trap in a boat.

Due to the simplistic pathfinding that hostile mobs have, players can very easily trap them in boats. Players simply need to place down a boat and then position themselves so that the boat is between the hostile mob and the player.

The hostile mob will then walk into the boat when attempting to reach the player. This will cause them to enter the boat and be trapped until the player kills them or breaks the boat.

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Why trapping mobs in a boat is useful

Two villagers trapped in a boat (Image via Minecraft)

Trapping mobs, both hostile and neutral, have a lot of useful applications. For example, trapping an enderman inside a boat renders them completely helpless. They are unable to teleport and cannot reach the player to attack them. This means that players can defeat them at no risk, helping them easily get ender pearls.

Additionally, villagers can be moved by using boats. This might allow for players to move villagers from a distant village to their base. This means that players could make a breeder or villager trading hall much closer to their base instead of traveling to a far-off village to do any trading.

Another example is players being able to trap and move hostile mobs such as zombies into farms that require permanent hostile mob fixtures. This includes iron farms that require zombies to scare villagers, causing iron golems to spawn.