Minecraft Camels Guide: How to Breed, Tame, and Ride

Image: Mojang via HGG

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Penned by Nathan Hart

I'm a stand-up comic by night and write for HGG by day. Most of my gaming happens at an improvised desk at the Days Inn right outside whatever small town I'm in for the night.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

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Breeding Camels in Minecraft

With all this in mind, let’s jump right into our guide on how to breed camels in Minecraft!

Finding a Camel

The first step toward making a new camel is getting ahold of two old ones. Camels only spawn inside desert villages during the creation of the world, with each desert village spawning a single camel that won’t respawn if killed. This makes them very rare, but also fairly predictable to find — you can track down at least one desert village pretty easily in any desert biome.

You can find the desert biomes themselves by looking for large patches of sand. The best way to do this is by climbing to the top of a nearby mountain/plateau or scanning the shoreline from a boat. Once you’ve found the desert biome, try getting to some high ground at night. The torches from the village will shine in the distance and make it much easier to spot compared to daytime, when it might blend in with the rest of the sand.

Love Mode

The fact that camels can’t naturally respawn means it’s imperative you take care of the ones in your possession, and also raises the need to breed new camels as quickly as possible!

After acquiring two camels and bringing them close together in a single village (doable with either a leash or a saddle), you’ll need to bring both the camels into Love Mode. This works the same as any other breedable animal in Minecraft — simply hand them some of their favorite food. For camels, this is a chunk of cactus.

Cacti were already a favorite plant among Minecraft players due to their huge variety of uses, like base defense, decoration, and green dye. Now the ever-present cactus has become even more valuable as camel food. Every five minutes, you can give camels more cactus to breed more baby camels.

Raising Little Camels

Once you’ve got a little camel around, you’ll need to keep them safe. We recommend putting them into a small stable area so they aren’t exposed to the hazards of accidental monster attacks — Creepers are especially dangerous for your fledgling camels.

Since you have a baby camel, you likely already have a good supply of cacti for breeding. Luckily, these are also the key to rapidly raising camels to adulthood! Once you’ve got your baby camel around, you can feed it somewhere between 10–12 cacti to instantly grow it into an adult camel. If you don’t have that many cacti available, feeding it whatever you’ve got will at least speed up its growth. With this method, you can rapidly multiply your stock of camels.

How to Tame a Camel and Other Uses

Camels are comparable to horses in lots of ways. They’re mounts made to help you rapidly traverse to new locales, with similar methods for taming and riding. You need a saddle to properly control a camel or a horse; otherwise, they’ll wander randomly when you try to ride them.

They are unique from horses in a number of beneficial ways, though. Although they’re slower than horses in general, they move quickly in straight lines or over elevation, making them absolutely ideal for rapidly traversing large, flat areas like deserts. They can also easily traverse terrain with a high degree of elevation due to their ability to climb blocks that are 1.5 blocks tall. Additionally, they can transport two players at once, making them excellent mounts for marching into battle and farming XP in the desert.

Best of all, however, is the fact that they stop zombies and Endermen from attacking you while you’re mounted. You’re simply too high for them to reach! This, combined with their other desert-traveling benefits, means they’re great for farming the large supply of Endermen you’ll need to unlock the End Portal and beat the game. Just be careful to stay at the same elevation as the mobs, as it’ll be much harder to dodge attacks while mounted if they get even a little higher than you.