More than you’ll ever need to know about horses in Minecraft: Pocket Edition 0.15

More than you’ll ever need to know about horses in Minecraft: Pocket Edition 0.15

Neigh too much info

Horses are one of the most exciting new features in Minecraft Pocket Edition’s huge 0.15 update.

You can tame them. Feed them. Ride them. Breed them. And loads more. Here’s our definitive guide to horses in the blocky world of Minecraft.

Horses come in many breeds

Horses appear naturally in the plains and savanna biomes in your Minecraft world, and can spawn with different coat colours, and in different sizes. They can also sometimes appear as donkeys.

Horses can be tamed

If you get up close to a horse you’ll notice a “Ride” button. Tap this to leap on the horses back.

At first, the horse will be completely untamed. It will ride around without direction and quickly throw you off. You’ll need to ride it multiple times – until hearts come out of its butt – to tame it.

Now the horse is tamed but you can’t yet tell it where to go. So tap sneak (the button in the middle of the directional pad) to leap off the horse.

You can find a saddle

If you want to tell the horse where to go you need to get a saddle. Sad(dle)y, you can’t craft one of these items. You’ll have to find it – by fishing, or by searching in chests inside dungeons.

Once you have one, get on the horse, look down and press open to see the horse menu. Here you can tap on the saddle in your menu to apply it to the horse.

Now the horse will obey your commands properly, and you can move it using the directional pad. You can also jump – and the longer you hold down jump, the higher the horse will leap.

A horse runs a lot faster, and jumps a lot higher than the player character.

You can craft or find horse armour

Horses can also wear armour to boost their health points – but only leather, the weakest type of armour, can be crafted (from seven leather pelts).

If you want better armour like iron, gold, or diamond, you’ll need to find it in a dungeon chest or in a village blacksmith chest.

To equip it, repeat the steps above: get on the horse, look down, hit open, and then tap on the armour in your inventory.

Donkeys can carry chests

Donkeys work very similarly to horses. You can tame them, throw on a saddle, and use them to walk faster and jump higher. But you can’t make the horse wear armour.

However, you can make it carry a chest. Hold a chest and then tap ride on the donkey and it will hold onto the chest.

Now, use open on the donkey and select the chest tab from the lower left corner to see what the donkey is carrying. There are only 15 slots but that could be all the space you need to bring some booty back from a dungeon.

You can name a horse

Another new item in Pocket Edition 0.15 is the name tag, which lets you give a name to a mob (including a horse or donkey). Annoyingly, it’s another item you can’t craft: you’ll have to find it in a dungeon or while fishing.

Once you have one, use it on an anvil and then type a new name into the slot that says “Name Tag”. Then tap on the new name tag on the right to add it to your inventory. You’ll need one XP point.

Then go up to your horse of choice while holding the name tag, and hit Name. The animal will now strut about with a little white name above its head. Handy for keeping track of your farmyard.

You can put horses on leashes

Don’t want your tamed, armoured, and named horse to run away? Use the new lead item to keep it by your side. You can craft one from four string and one slime ball.

Then go over to the animal and hit the “Leash button”. It will now stay with you as you walk – though the leash can break if you get too far away.

You can have multiple animals on multiple leashes at once. And if you tap on a fence post while holding a leash, the animal will be tied up until you hit the post again.

You can breed horses

You can get two horses to bump uglies and pump out a baby horse by making them both enter love mode. To do this, you first need a golden apple or carrot.

A golden apple is crafted by mixing one apple and eight gold ingots. A golden carrot can be made from one carrot and eight golden nuggets.

Walk up to one animal and hit the “Feed” button, and the animal will start spewing hearts. Do this to another animal in the vicinity (it’s a good idea to build a fence around them) and they’ll start getting jiggy with one another.

Soon enough, a baby horse will pop out. A foal if you breed two horses, a donkey foal if you breed two donkeys, and a mule if you breed a donkey and a horse. That’s the only way to get a mule.

You can feed horses

Feeding a horse helps in a number of ways. It can heal a wounded horse’s injuries, make an untamed horse easier to tame, and shorten the time it takes for a foal grow up into a horse or donkey.

Sugar and wheat are the least effective food, and apples work quite well. Golden apples and carrots put tamed horses into love mode, as mentioned above, but are also very effective in healing, taming, and growing horses.

Hay bales, which are made from nine wheat, are very effective at healing horses but can’t be fed to untamed horses.

Horses can be skeleton traps

In Minecraft proper, some horses are called “skeleton traps”. They spawn during thunderstorms and look like regular horses but if you get too close they will transform into four skeletons on horseback.

We’re not sure if this happens in Pocket Edition.

You can also spawn zombie horses in creative mode, but it doesn’t seem like they show up in adventure mode.