Minecraft is filled with many mobs but none quite as cute as the panda. If you find a few of these cuddly creatures and want to keep a couple as pets, we have you covered. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about how to tame a panda in Minecraft. Soon you and your new-found panda bears will be best friends.
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How to Tame a Panda in Minecraft
You can’t tame a panda in Minecraft like you do a wolf or cat. However, you can keep and breed pandas like you would cows, pigs, or chickens. The concept is pretty similar to these farm animals as well. Pandas will make much more interesting and interactive pets because each panda has its own personality and will act differently depending on what its personality is!
Step One: Build a Pen
The first thing you will want to do is build a nice cozy pen for your pandas to live in! You can do this with some simple fences like you’d see on a farm. Alternatively, you can make something like a zoo pen with glass panes or just invite them to roam inside your home. The choice is really up to you and how creative you want to get. Personally, I recommend a nice open pen with plenty of trees and some bamboo to make them feel right at home.
Step Two: Get Some Bamboo
The only way to get pandas to follow you is with some bamboo. Therefore, you will need some of it. Bamboo can be a little challenging to find. It only spawns naturally in jungle biomes and only abundantly in bamboo jungles. When adult pandas are killed they can drop bamboo, but that is a last resort because who wants to kill a panda? Once you have explored your Minecraft world and located a jungle, simply cut down some bamboo with an axe and you’re ready to go. You can make a bamboo farm to grow more bamboo once you have found a few pieces to start. To grow more bamboo, simply place a piece on a dirt, sand, or gravel block that gets plenty of light and has room above it to grow. Bamboo can grow between 12-16 blocks high!
Step Three: Find Some Pandas
Now you need to find some pandas for the pen that you built in step one. Just like bamboo, pandas can only be found in jungle biomes. So, hopefully, you found a few of them when you were acquiring some bamboo. You will want at least two of them if you want to breed them. If you have the option, pick some that are as close to where your pen is as possible. It will make the next step a lot easier.
Step Four: Lead Them To Their New Home
It is time to lead your new panda friends to their new home. Simply hold bamboo in your hand and the pandas will follow you, just like a pig would when you are holding a carrot. You will need to stay within 16 blocks of them to keep their interest, so do not move too fast. Slowly, and I mean very slowly, make your way over the terrain guiding them to the pen you built for them. This is best done during the day so hostile mobs do not bother you. However, if you are playing on peaceful this won’t be a problem. Once they are safe in their pen, you will have successfully tamed some pandas!
Why You Should Tame a Panda in Minecraft
There are a couple of neat benefits to adding a few pandas to your collection of animals. They are some of the coolest creatures in Minecraft and are unique because they have personalities, unlike most animals in the game. Let’s discuss why you would want to tame a panda in Minecraft!
Slimeball Farm
One of the quirks of baby pandas is that they sneeze. When they sneeze three things can happen: scare other pandas nearby, look incredibly cute, and mostly importantly, they have a chance to drop a slimeball. This allows you to create a slimeball farm by breeding pandas and collecting the slimeballs from the sneezing babies. If you can find a panda with a weak personality trait and breed some pandas so that both their genes are weak, you can maximize your slime output. This is because weak personality baby pandas sneeze way more often than other personalities.
How to Breed Pandas
In order to breed pandas there are three requirements. The first requirement is that you need two pandas. The second requirement is that you need to have a bamboo plant growing within a five-block radius of the two pandas. Therefore, it can be helpful if you have a smaller pen that you can lead them to for breeding, or you can just make sure there is bamboo thickly scattered about your pandas’ pen. The final requirement is two pieces of bamboo to feed them. Once the two pandas are each given a piece of bamboo within 5 blocks of some growing bamboo, they will enter love mode. Then, they will make a cute little baby panda!
Pandas are Great Pets
The other reason you would want to have some pandas is that they make cool pets. They are one of the only animals to have different personalities. This will lead to many unique interactions and make each of them behave differently. For example, playful pandas will have their tongues sticking out and roll around having fun. Pandas are a super fun pet to have around your home in Minecraft. Making a cool aesthetic pen for them filled with bamboo will make them the star of your house.
Informative Link: Minecraft Wiki Page on Pandas