How long does the bad omen effect last in Minecraft?

Bad Omen is a Minecraft status effect that players can acquire by killing an illager captain. These captains are easily spotted, as they are the illagers that spawn with banners.

The effect itself is quite simple.Once a player enters a certain radius near any bed claimed by a villager, a raid event starts. In the Java edition of the game, the bad omen status effect has different levels of potency, ranging from between one and five.

Higher levels of potency also add additional raid waves to the event.

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How long does Minecraft’s bad omen effect last?

The ominous banner, dropped by illager captains (Image via Minecraft)

Bad omen is the longest lasting status effect in the game. The effect begins with the death of the illager captain, lasting for 140 minutes after the fact. This is represented as xx.xx in the inventory until the duration decreases to a point where the status effect box can display the remaining duration.

The only status effects that come anywhere near the same duration as bad omen are the hero of the village status which, coincidentally, is only gained by successfully repelling the illager raid that the bad omen effect spawns in a village when a player gets too close.

A player's wolf attacking an illager (Image via Minecraft)

A tamed wolf that kills an illager captain will transfer the effect to their owner. An iron golem that kills the illager captain will not gain the status effect, and therefore will not instantly spawn raids on the village without the player’s input.

Other mobs that kill the illager captain will not gain the bad omen status effect, though they can be given the status effect with commands. Despite being valid targets for the status effect via console command, these mobs do not spawn a raid when entering the required radius of a villager-claimed bed.

The only mobs in the game immune to the bad omen status effect, even by console commands, are the boss mobs.

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Counters

A player drinking milk to remove the poison status effect (Image via Minecraft)

Bad omen counts as a status effect to Minecraft's code in all ways. This means there are two main ways to remove the effect should the player want to avoid participating or starting a raid the next time they stray too close to a village.

A player using death to remove a status effect (Image via Minecraft)

The first and easiest method to remove bad omen is to die, as the player’s status effects reset with death. However, there is a drawback to using player death as a way to remove unwanted status effects, namely, the loss of any XP levels the player had at the time of death.

This method of status effect removal is also worthless to hardcore players, as death would mean the loss of the entire world. Between the level XP loss and inability to be used by hardcore players, there is a second method to consider.

The second method is to use a bucket on a cow or mooshroom to acquire a bucket of milk, and then to drink said bucket of milk. Milk removes status effects the same way as death, only well, without the death.