Every Minecraft mob has unique perks and actions, making them valuable or incredibly troublesome. Some mobs have a high ability to interact with the game world, either by moving blocks, attacking, or destroying anything around them.

The fear of constructing a unique structure in Minecraft and losing it to an in-game event is real and can happen for various reasons. For instance, one can have their favorite forest lost due to the spread of fire, burning everything in its way.

However, to further raise your awareness, common mobs also risk sabotaging your stuff in the game. For instance, a block-moving mob can stumble upon a redstone mechanism you made and move one of its most vital components out of place.

Therefore, it’s essential to understand how this problem, called “mob griefing”, can affect your gameplay and different ways to avoid it.

So, although you can try and fend off bold entities from interacting with your things, either by constructing fences or going into combat, there is still a different approach.

Let’s discuss how to turn off mob griefing in Minecraft in-depth.

What is Griefing?

In the context of games, griefing happens when a third party negatively affects an in-game structure you’ve made. Some examples of griefing include:

  • Construction damaging.
  • Base theft.
  • Killing of farm animals.
  • Terrain destruction.
  • Junkying the place.
  • Allocating lava or water into the land.
Turning off mob griefing

Nevertheless, all of the actions mentioned above must be perpetuated by an aggressor towards its victim, the landowner.

Now, griefing is typically common in multiplayer servers, mainly among players. Nevertheless, let’s focus on mob griefing, which happens when a non-playable character is, in this case, the aggressor.

Let’s jump to the concept of mob griefing.

Mob Griefing

When a mob is a griefing aggressor, you’ll typically encounter less destruction since their actions don’t necessarily focus on causing localized destruction.

Therefore, it’s commonly always a matter of coincidence and bad luck.

For instance, Endermen are villainous night creatures that attack the player whenever you look at them. Additionally, they tend to lift random blocks off the ground and place them somewhere else.

enderman

Still, Endermen don’t act with any intent; they just pick any block from the ground and place it anywhere, not too far. However, they can happen to strike one of your structures, removing a piece and misplacing it, griefing “accidentally”.

Creepers can also make larger impact.

For instance, whenever you get too close (a distance of three blocks), they explode, disintegrating surrounding blocks. Therefore, their explosion can cause significant damage to wood buildings and Redstone circuits.

creeper

Moreover, charged creepers can cause a 3 times more substantial explosion, further jeopardizing even robust structures.

On the other hand, a less hazardous occurrence involves sheep; they often headbutt grass and vegetation, and sometimes they can mess up your garden.

Now, mob griefing can be pretty bad for business, making it essential to be aware of some countermeasures to avoid this problem.

How to Avoid Mob Griefing

You can take a few actions to avoid mobs griefing your base before jumping into radical approaches.

One quick and efficient method to avoid mob griefing is to isolate your base from non-playable characters. Therefore, try surrounding your land with fences, focusing on separating the most important buildings.

fences

Additionally, since night enemies typically appear in the darkness, craft and place torches or lamps around your territory. Consequently, mob spawn points will tend to be further from illuminated sites.

Now, let’s discuss how to avoid specific commonly-found griefers.

Explosive Griefers (Creepers)

Moreover, in the case of explosive griefers, such as creepers, having robust blocks like rocky walls and floors can avoid further damages. So, investing in a granite or brick finishing for your house’s outside can be fruitful in two senses: prettiness and sturdiness.

Additionally, in the case of combat, always go for ranged attacks.

Avoid getting close to a creeper at all costs to sever any chance they’ll explode. So, take crossbows and bows as an excellent resource to fight these creatures.

Endermen

Even though having a robust foundation can make your base tank creepers with ease, endermen won’t care. Unfortunately, an enderman can carry any whole block, even bedrock or spawners. So, avoiding these griefers is somewhat trickier.

A vital piece of information about endermen is that they hate water and absolutely avoid it.

So, a good suggestion is to build a body of water around your house or any specific structure you want to protect. Furthermore, you can add a bridge for easy access around.

water

Moreover, you can use a few water manipulating tips to ensure you’ll make a reliable water-containing structure.

It’s always exciting to make the best of any situation, and making a pond-like body of water around your house can be quite a good sight.

Disabling Griefing With Commands

Although you can take the aforementioned in-game approaches to protect yourself from mob griefers, the game allows players to use a more practical approach. Fortunately, with a simple text command in Minecraft’s chat, one can disable mob griefing.

Still, it’s vital to know that the player who’ll type in the command must be the server’s owner for the following solution to work. Therefore, it’ll work in your singleplayer world or any multiplayer server that belongs to you.

Finally, it’s also essential to enable cheats in the game world.

In Minecraft Java Edition

In this version of Minecraft you’ll need to open the text chat in-game and type the following: “/gamerule mobGriefing false”.

Consequently, this command will shut down any griefing capacity from mobs in that current game world.

gamerule

In Minecraft Bedrock Edition

Firstly, in the Bedrock Edition, make sure you have Host Privileges in the game world you’ll operate the command. Then, in the world list, select the one you’ll use.

After selecting the world, browse “More Options” and click on “Game Options”.

Then, go to “Host Privileges” and find the “Mob Griefing” segment, where you’ll be able to deactivate it. Consequently, any in-game asset you’ve built will remain unaltered by mobs.

Although using commands is more straightforward and exact, the in-game approaches to avoid mob griefing are also valid. In fact, in a Minecraft server where you’re not the host, they’ll be your go-to solutions to avoid mob griefers.