How to put armor on villagers in Minecraft

It's no secret in Minecraft that villager mobs aren't exactly great at defending themselves, making them easy targets of hostile mobs or worse, making them easily convertible to zombie villagers.

Since they're so helpless, being able to equip armor would certainly help Minecraft villagers. Fortunately, that's very much possible, and it can be easily accomplished with only a few materials.

By enclosing an individual villager with a dispenser, it can have armor items applied to it, which will increase its defense and provide a huge boost to its survivability. This will, in turn, make killing villagers significantly more difficult for just about any hostile mob in the game.

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Minecraft: Placing armor on villagers with a dispenser

Armoring villagers makes killing them a significantly tougher job for hostile mobs in the Overworld (Image via Mojang)

To equip Minecraft villagers with armor, players will need a dispenser, a button, the armor they wish to equip, and fencing or building blocks to keep the villager stationary. Placing a villager in a boat or minecart adjacent to the dispenser can also do the trick if players don't want to build an entire structure around the villager.

The steps to equip a Minecraft villager with armor are as follows:

1. Enclose the villager in a structure where it is unable to move horizontally or vertically. Alternatively, place the villager in a minecart or boat.
2. Within the enclosure, right next to the villager, place a dispenser pointing towards the villager. If the villager is in a boat or minecart, place the dispenser as close as possible to where the villager is sitting.
3. Place a button adjacent to the dispenser but within reach of the player.
4. Fill the dispenser with the armor pieces desired.
5. Press the button. Each press should apply one of the armor pieces to the villager. To check and see if this is working correctly, look for small smoke particles emanating from the dispenser after each button press.

The villager's equipped armor won't be visible in vanilla Minecraft, but it will have an increased defense from the armor regardless. Players who want to test this out in earnest can switch over to Creative Mode and perform the trick before taking a few swings at the villager with a weapon. If it has quality armor equipped, the Minecraft villager should take substantially more punishment than it normally would.