Pillager vs Vindicator in Minecraft: How different are the mobs?

Minecraft has a wide variety of creatures that players come across very often. Pillagers and vindicators have both been in the game for a while now. Pillagers were added back in the 1.14 Village & Pillage update, and vindicators were introduced a few versions before that in the 1.11 exploration update.

As they are both illagers, they look very identical. The only difference in their appearance is their clothes and the weapon they are sometimes equipped with. Because of the similarities in their appearance, many players are often confused between the two mobs.

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Differences between Pillagers and Vindicators in Minecraft

Spawn location

A pillager outpost and a woodland mansion (Image via Minecraft)

Both pillagers and vindicators spawn during patrols and raids. However, they also have a specific location for spawning. The pillagers can be found in their pillager outposts, where they continually generate on the top floor, and vindicators spawn in woodland mansions inside particular rooms.

The chances of players finding vindicators during patrols are low because only 20% of the illagers spawned during a patrol are vindicators. And they will only spawn during patrols when the world's difficulty is set to hard.

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Behavior

Pillagers and vindicators are both hostile towards players, villagers, iron golems, and wandering traders. Bedrock Edition pillagers are slightly more merciful than pillagers of Java Edition as they do not attack baby villagers, but vindicators are cruel mobs and attack baby villagers in both editions.

Minecraft has an Easter egg where if the player names a vindicator "Johnny," it will attack every mob in its vicinity except illagers and ghasts.

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Health points and attack damage

The difference between the health points of pillagers and vindicators is almost negligible. Pillagers have twenty-six health points or thirteen hearts in the game, and vindicators have twenty-four health points or twelve hearts.

Vindicators armed with an axe are scarier to fight against because they deal significantly more severe damage than pillagers with a crossbow. When armed, vindicators can cause seven health points of damage on easy difficulty, thirteen on normal, and nineteen on hard.

Unarmed vindicators can cause damage of three health points on easy, five on normal, and seven on hard. Compared to unarmed vindicators, pillagers deal similar damages:

Easy: Three to four health points with ranged attacks and two health points with melee attacks.

Normal: Always four with ranged attacks and three with melee.

Hard: Four or five with ranged attacks and always five with melee.

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Drops

A crossbow and an axe in the game (Image via Minecraft)

In Bedrock Edition of Minecraft, both mobs drop the same items, and the drop rates are also precisely the same. However, in Java Edition, the weapons they drop are different.

Vindicators can drop a normal or enchanted axe, and pillagers can drop crossbow. The chances of this happening are the same for both the mobs (8.5%).