You’ve successfully tamed a horse in Minecraft, but it seems to have a mind of its own. It won’t follow your commands, and while you can keep it inside a fence, riding it isn’t going as planned. Horses are among the fastest ways to travel in the game, second only to flying. To gain control over your horse, you need a saddle. In the past, crafting one wasn’t an option; players had to rely on trading at villages or finding them through exploration and fishing. Fortunately, after much anticipation, crafting saddles is now possible.
Crafting Your Saddle
As of May 2025, creating a saddle is available in the snapshot version of Minecraft and will be included in the full game soon. Here’s how you can craft one:
- gather Materials: You’ll need three pieces of leather.
- Get Iron: Collect one iron ingot.
- Use Crafting Table: Open your crafting table interface and place the iron ingot in the center bottom square with three leather pieces arranged above and beside it.
- Retrieve Your Saddle: Take your newly crafted saddle from the output slot.
- Saddle Up: You can now equip this saddle on any suitable animal! If you want to remove it from a pig without harming it, use shears rather.
Trading for Saddles
If crafting isn’t for you or if you're looking for alternatives:
- Locate a Village: Search for a village where you'll find villagers.
- Find Leatherworker: Look specifically for the leatherworker villager who trades items related to leather goods.
- Level Up Villager: The villager must reach Level 3 before offering saddles as trade options; this requires trading emeralds or other items like rabbit hide or flint.
- Increase Chances at Master Level: Once you've leveled up this villager to Level 5 (Master), there’s about a 50% chance they will offer you a saddle.
Discovering Saddles in Chests
If you'd rather not craft or trade for saddles:
- Explore various locations where chests might contain saddles:
– Abandoned mineshafts (chance unknown)
– Desert temples (23%)
– Dungeons (27%)
– End Cities (13%)
– Jungle temples (12%)
– Nether Fortresses (35%)
– Strongholds (2%)
keep in mind that finding saddles isn't guaranteed every time you open these chests.
Fishing for Saddles
Fishing is another method but has very low odds—only about 0.8%. Cast your line like normal fishing and hope that luck brings up a saddle instead of just fish.
Using Your Saddle
now that you've got your hands on that coveted saddle:
- Ensure you're empty-handed before approaching your horse.
- Interact with the horse; if it tries to buck you off,repeat until it's calm enough for riding.
- While seated on the horse's back,access your inventory where you'll see both yours and its inventory combined.
4 Drag the saddle into its designated spot marked by an icon resembling a gray saddle.
Once equipped correctly, you'll notice changes indicating it's ready! Now you're free to steer wherever you'd like!
With these methods at hand—crafting new ones yourself or exploring different avenues—you'll be well-equipped with all necessary tools needed when taming horses within Minecraft!
