Mob Menagerie: Strider

Not everything in the Nether is out to get you. Don’t believe me? Cast your gaze into the middle of the fiery lava lakes that populate this dangerous dimension. You see that weird blobby thing paddling around happily? That’s a strider, our mob of the month, and it’s the only friend you’ll find on the far side of Nether portal.

Striders joined the Minecraft party, alongside bastions, piglins, and a ton of new biomes, in the Nether Update which was released in June 2020. They’re not too tricky to find, though they can be difficult to attract to the shore. Why? Because they’re hot-blooded – they get chilly when they’re out of the lava, and will take damage from water and rain. Brandon Pearce, developer on the Minecraft gameplay team, shared some insights into the strider’s cold response design back in 2020.

There’s one reliable way to lure a strider, and that’s to get hold of some warped fungus – their favorite delicacy. Stand on the shore and wave it in their direction, and if they’re close enough to smell it then they’ll head on over. Fairly soon, you’ll have an attentive strider standing in front of you.

What next? Well, there are two options. The first is to feed the fungus to the strider, and another to a different strider nearby, so that they both enter “love mode” and make a baby strider. Yay! More striders!

The other option is to slap a saddle on that bad boy and ride him into the lava. “Wait, what?” I hear you say. That’s right – striders are your ticket to bypass all that nasty lava and reach more distant shores of the Nether. Striders can walk on the surface of lava, you see, keeping the toes of anyone riding one juuust above the point at which they’ll burn. 

The tricky thing is that striders tend to just wander around aimlessly. That’s why I believe it was a smart piglin that invented the warped fungus on a stick – an easily craftable way of getting a strider to go in the direction you want it to go. To dismount, you’ll want to reach land again and then point your crosshair at the block you want to dismount to before pressing the use button.

Striders are uncommon among Nether mobs in that they’re perfectly happy outside of the Nether. You’re good to take your new friend through a portal and down to the depths of the Overworld, to skate across the lava lakes found there. Just remember to keep them out of the rain...