How to Cure a Zombie Villager in Minecraft
Throw a splash potion of Weakness, feed a regular golden apple, and wait 3 to 5 minutes to turn a zombie villager into a villager with permanent trade discounts.
To cure a zombie villager, throw a splash potion of Weakness at it, feed it a non-enchanted golden apple, then wait 3 to 5 minutes while it converts. If it survives, it becomes a villager with permanent trade discounts.
What you need
- Splash potion of Weakness: Brew a water bottle with a fermented spider eye. Nether Wart is not needed. Add gunpowder to make it a splash potion. A fermented spider eye is crafted from a spider eye, a brown mushroom, and sugar.
- Golden apple: Craft one from 1 apple surrounded by 8 gold ingots. Use only a regular golden apple. An enchanted golden apple does not work.
- A safe enclosure: Any solid enclosure with a roof works to keep the zombie villager safe from sunlight while it converts.
How to cure a zombie villager step by step
Find or make a zombie villager. Every igloo basement contains a caged zombie villager, a guaranteed source. Zombie villagers can also appear when a zombie, husk, drowned, zombie villager, or, on Java Edition, a zombified piglin kills a villager, depending on difficulty.
Apply Weakness first. You can throw a splash potion of Weakness, or use a lingering potion, an arrow of Weakness, a dispenser, a witch, a creeper area-effect cloud on Java Edition, or the /effect command.
Feed it a regular golden apple while the Weakness effect is active. Then protect it. During curing, the zombie villager behaves like a normal zombie and gains Strength, so it is more dangerous while converting. Keep it enclosed and shaded.
Wait 180 to 300 seconds, or 3 to 5 minutes. When curing finishes, it becomes a villager that offers a permanent trade discount to the player who cured it, and gains Nausea for 10 seconds, which has no effect on behavior.
Difficulty conversion chances
If a zombie or related mob kills a villager, the chance that the villager becomes a zombie villager depends on difficulty.
| Difficulty | Chance a killed villager becomes a zombie villager |
|---|---|
| Easy | 0% |
| Normal | 50% |
| Hard | 100% |
Where it goes wrong
- You used an enchanted golden apple. Only a non-enchanted golden apple triggers curing.
- You fed the apple before Weakness. Weakness must be applied first, then the golden apple.
- It burned in sunlight. The cure takes 3 to 5 minutes, so keep it under a solid roof or in shade.
- You switched to Peaceful. A zombie villager that is mid-cure despawns if the difficulty is switched to Peaceful. Moving far away does not despawn it.
- You expected iron bars and beds to speed it up greatly. Each tick has a 1% chance to check a 9x9x9 cube for iron bars or a bed. Each half of a bed counts separately, and each block found, up to 14, has a 30% chance to reduce the timer by 1 more tick. The maximum averages only about a 4.2% speedup, so they barely help. Copper bars are ignored.
FAQ
Does re-curing the same villager stack discounts?
No. Curing the same villager again gives no additional discount. Villagers near the cured villager also get smaller discounts.
Where can I reliably find a zombie villager?
Every igloo basement contains a caged zombie villager alongside a cleric villager. On Java Edition, 5% of zombies spawn as zombie villagers, and 20% in old growth pine taiga biomes. On Bedrock Edition, 5% of the time 2 to 4 zombie villagers replace normal zombies.
Does curing affect enchanting or gear upgrades?
No. Curing affects only villager trades and discounts. It does not affect a Level 30 enchanting table or upgrading diamond gear to netherite.
