How to Tame and Ride a Strider in Minecraft (Nether Guide)

Current as of Minecraft Bedrock v26.1 and Java Edition 26.1 — Updated April 2026

Table of Contents

TL;DR

Striders cannot be tamed like horses — you just put a saddle on them and ride
You need 2 items: a saddle and a warped fungus on a stick
The warped fungus on a stick is crafted from 1 fishing rod + 1 warped fungus
Warped fungus grows in the Warped Forest biome in the Nether
Striders walk on lava without taking damage — they are the only safe lava transport in the game
Outside of lava, Striders slow down, shiver, and turn purple — water and rain damage them
You can breed Striders with warped fungus to grow your own herd
Right-clicking a Strider jockey (zombified piglin riding a saddled Strider) is a shortcut to getting a pre-saddled Strider

Strider in Minecraft

What Is a Strider?

The Strider is a passive mob exclusive to the Nether. It was added in the 1.16 Nether Update and is the only way to safely cross the massive lava lakes that dominate the Nether landscape without building bridges or using fire resistance potions constantly.

Striders look like tall, round red mobs with two long spindly legs. They roam the surface of lava lakes, bobbing as they walk, and are completely harmless to the player. They never attack. When happy and warm in lava they are a vivid red colour. When you take them out of lava onto land, they turn a duller purple, start shivering, and slow down noticeably.

They are the Nether’s equivalent of a horse — a rideable mount that makes exploration far faster and safer — but they work on lava instead of land.

What You Need to Ride a Strider

You need exactly two items:

1 Saddle
1 Warped Fungus on a Stick (to control the Strider once riding)

You also need to find a Strider in the Nether first, which means you need to have built or accessed a Nether portal. Our guide on how to find and get to the Nether in Minecraft covers portal building from scratch if you haven’t been there yet.

Step 1: Get a Saddle

Saddles cannot be crafted — they must be found. Here are the best places to look:

Nether Fortress chests — one of the most reliable sources, and you’re already in the Nether hunting for Striders
Bastion Remnant chests — Nether structures with good loot tables
Dungeon chests (underground in the Overworld)
Desert Temple chests
Stronghold chests
Village chest or blacksmith
Fishing — saddles are rare fishing loot
Leatherworker villager at Expert tier — sells saddles directly for emeralds

If you already have a Nether fortress nearby, check its chests first since you’re heading into the Nether anyway. For a full breakdown of obtaining saddles, our saddle guide covers every method.

Step 2: Get Warped Fungus

Warped fungus is a teal-coloured mushroom that only grows in the Warped Forest biome — one of the six Nether biomes. The Warped Forest looks immediately distinctive: it’s filled with tall blue-green twisting trees (warped stems), cyan vines hanging from the ceiling, and a teal-blue fog. It is the most visually striking of all the Nether biomes.

Warped fungus grows on the ground throughout the Warped Forest. You can harvest it instantly with any tool or your bare hand. Collect at least a few pieces — you need one for the crafting recipe and more to use as fuel for luring and breeding Striders later.

Alternative sources:

Crimson Forest biome — warped fungus also spawns here, though less commonly
Endermen in the Nether occasionally hold warped fungus and drop it on death
Bone meal on Warped Nylium (the teal ground block in the Warped Forest) — applying bone meal causes warped fungus to sprout nearby, making this an easy renewable farm

If you’re having trouble finding the Warped Forest, just explore different areas of the Nether until the terrain colour shifts to blue-green. Each Nether biome has a very different visual character so they’re not hard to distinguish once you know what you’re looking for.

Step 3: Craft a Warped Fungus on a Stick

This is the item that controls the Strider once you’re riding it. Without it, a saddled Strider will just wander randomly. With it, you can steer in any direction you face.

Recipe:

1 Fishing Rod + 1 Warped Fungus

Place them anywhere in your crafting grid — the fishing rod in one slot and the warped fungus directly below it (or in any adjacent arrangement). The result is 1 Warped Fungus on a Stick.

To make a fishing rod (if you don’t have one):

3 sticks + 2 string arranged diagonally on a crafting table

String comes from killing spiders, breaking cobwebs, looting chests, or trading with fishermen villagers.

The Warped Fungus on a Stick has durability — each time you use the boost function it consumes 1 durability point. When it runs out of durability it reverts to a plain fishing rod. You can extend its life by applying the Unbreaking enchantment via an anvil, just like a tool. You can also combine two partially used Warped Fungus on a Stick items in an anvil to merge their durability (and preserve enchantments).

Step 4: Find a Strider

Striders spawn in groups of 2–4 on lava surfaces with at least one block of air above. They appear in every Nether biome — you don’t need to find a specific biome just for Striders. The massive lava seas at the lower levels of the Nether are where you’re most likely to spot them in numbers.

Look out for:

Red bulky mobs bobbing on lava lakes
Baby Striders riding on top of adult Striders (a 1-in-10 spawn chance)
A Zombified Piglin riding a Strider — this is the Strider Jockey (more on this below)

If lava is between you and the Strider, use non-flammable blocks like cobblestone, gravel, or netherrack to build a small bridge or platform to get close enough to interact. Bring a Fire Resistance potion for safety — falling into the Nether’s lava without it while trying to reach a Strider is a very common way to lose your gear.

Step 5: Saddle the Strider and Ride

Once you’re close enough to a Strider:

Select the saddle in your hotbar
Right-click the Strider (or press your use button on console/mobile) to place the saddle on it
The saddle snaps onto the Strider immediately — no taming process, no hearts, no patience required
Right-click again to mount the Strider
Switch to the Warped Fungus on a Stick in your hotbar

The Strider will now move in whatever direction you are facing while you hold the Warped Fungus on a Stick. Face left, it goes left. Face right, it goes right. This is identical to how riding a pig with a Carrot on a Stick works.

To dismount: press Shift on Java Edition, or your sneak/crouch button on console and mobile.

How to Control the Strider

The Warped Fungus on a Stick controls both direction and speed:

Direction — hold the Warped Fungus on a Stick and face the direction you want to go. The Strider follows your camera direction at all times.

Boost — right-click (or press use) while riding and holding the Warped Fungus on a Stick to trigger a speed boost. This costs 1 durability from the stick and makes the Strider accelerate significantly. On flat lava the boosted Strider reaches around 9 m/s (Java) — fast enough for quick Nether traversal. Without the boost, normal lava speed is around 4 m/s.

Luring — even without riding, Striders will follow you if you’re holding a warped fungus or a warped fungus on a stick and they can see you. This is how you guide them to where you need them.

On land vs lava — Striders move noticeably slower on land (around 1.7 m/s) compared to lava (around 4 m/s). They are not great land mounts. Use them on lava.

The Strider Jockey Shortcut

About 1 in 30 adult Striders spawns with a Zombified Piglin riding it. This is called a Strider Jockey. The Zombified Piglin holds a Warped Fungus on a Stick instead of its usual golden sword, and the Strider it’s riding spawns already saddled.

If you kill the Zombified Piglin, you’re left with a pre-saddled Strider and potentially a free Warped Fungus on a Stick if it drops one (roughly 8.5% chance in Java, 25% in Bedrock — higher with Looting).

Important: Killing the Zombified Piglin will anger nearby Zombified Piglins if they see you do it — the same mechanic as accidentally hitting one. Make sure you’re not surrounded before attacking the jockey. Kill it cleanly from a distance with a bow, or position yourself so other Zombified Piglins aren’t watching.

On Peaceful difficulty, the Zombified Piglin despawns immediately when the Strider Jockey spawns, conveniently leaving you a free saddled Strider with no combat required.

Strider Behaviour: What to Know

Striders love lava, hate water. Lava is their natural element — they take zero damage from it, walk on its surface without sinking, and even slowly rise back up if they submerge. Water and rain are a different story. Water deals damage to Striders at 1 HP per half second. Rain also damages them even when they’re standing in lava. Keep Striders away from water entirely.

Outside of lava they slow down and shiver. A Strider on land turns a dull purple, shows a displeased expression, and moves at roughly 40% of its lava speed. Their legs also appear slightly shorter. This isn’t just visual — it’s a clear signal that they need to be back in lava.

Striders cannot be tamed in the traditional sense. There are no hearts, no taming process, no loyalty once you dismount. You simply put a saddle on them and ride. They won’t follow you home or stay where you left them without being penned in. If you dismount in the Nether and walk away, the Strider wanders off on its own.

Striders can submerge in lava and come back up. If your Strider rides into flowing lava that pushes it under, it slowly rises back to the surface. You won’t be dismounted. However, you as the player can still take fire damage while submerged — a Fire Resistance potion protects against this.

Fall damage behaves oddly. If a Strider falls into lava source blocks from a height, it can take fall damage despite lava normally being harmless to it. Falling into flowing lava is fine. Worth knowing if you’re navigating steep terrain.

How to Breed Striders

Feed two Striders a warped fungus each and they will breed, producing a baby Strider and giving you 1–7 XP. Baby Striders take 20 minutes to grow to adult size, and you can speed this up by feeding them more warped fungus — each piece reduces the remaining growth time by 10%.

Parent Striders have a 5-minute cooldown before they can breed again.

Breeding Striders is useful if you want a herd of rideable Striders around your Nether base, or if you want to farm string (Striders drop 2–5 string on death). It’s also required for the advancement “Walked on Lava” and the associated breeding achievement.

To breed efficiently, build a pen on solid ground near the Warped Forest so you have a constant warped fungus supply close by.

Keeping Your Strider Safe

Striders are passive mobs with 10 hearts (20 HP). They can be killed by:

Player attacks
Arrows from Skeletons (now more common in the Nether)
Ghast fireballs
Water and rain
Powder snow (extra cold damage)

Protect your Strider when riding through Nether areas with Ghasts overhead. Ghast fireballs hit Striders. If you’re doing a long lava crossing and a Ghast appears, be ready to deflect its fireballs or steer your Strider out of the line of fire.

Striders cannot be leashed, so to pen them up you need to build walls or fences around a lava pool and coax them in using warped fungus. Once enclosed, they’ll stay within their lava pen.

Why Riding a Strider Is Worth It

The Nether’s lava seas are enormous barriers. Without a Strider, crossing them means bridging over hundreds of blocks of open lava — slow, material-intensive, and dangerous. One misstep and you lose everything. A Strider removes all of that.

On a Strider you can cross the Nether’s lava ocean in a straight line at a comfortable 4 m/s, boosting when you need extra speed, without burning and without building a single bridge block. It makes finding Nether Fortresses, Bastion Remnants, and Ancient City access routes dramatically faster.

It’s also safer than you might expect. As long as you have a Fire Resistance potion active and keep your Strider out of water, the main threats are Ghasts above you — and you can handle those with a bow or by deflecting fireballs.

Combined with a Nether highway (a fast travel road in the Nether that uses 1:8 distance scaling), a Strider makes cross-continent overworld travel genuinely practical. See our guide to the Nether for how to set this up.

Recommended Gear Before Riding a Strider

Before heading into the Nether lava seas on a Strider, make sure you have:

Fire Resistance potion — essential if you fall off your Strider into lava
Saddle — obviously
Warped Fungus on a Stick — with Unbreaking enchantment if possible
Bow with arrows — for defending against Ghasts overhead
Cobblestone or netherrack — for bridging to reach Striders at the lava edge
Extra warped fungus — for luring Striders and breeding if needed

Brew your Fire Resistance potions before entering the Nether — our potion brewing guide walks you through the exact recipe using magma cream and a blaze rod.

Quick Reference

Task	What to Do
Find Striders	Lava lakes in any Nether biome
Get warped fungus	Warped Forest biome floor
Craft warped fungus on a stick	Fishing rod + warped fungus
Saddle a Strider	Right-click with saddle in hand
Mount the Strider	Right-click again after saddling
Steer the Strider	Hold warped fungus on a stick, face the direction
Boost speed	Right-click while riding and holding the stick
Dismount	Shift (Java) / Sneak button (console/mobile)
Breed Striders	Feed two adult Striders warped fungus
Accelerate baby growth	Feed baby Strider warped fungus
Free pre-saddled Strider	Kill Zombified Piglin off a Strider Jockey
What harms Striders	Water, rain, powder snow, arrows, fireballs
What doesn’t harm them	Lava (completely immune)
Normal lava speed	~4 m/s
Boosted lava speed	~9 m/s (Java)

Final Thoughts

Striders are one of the most practical mobs in the Nether and genuinely underused by players who don’t know about the warped fungus on a stick mechanic. Once you’ve crossed the Nether’s first massive lava sea on one, building bridges feels like the old way of doing things.

The whole setup takes maybe 10–15 minutes the first time: find the Warped Forest, grab some warped fungus, craft the stick, locate a Strider, slap a saddle on it, and go. From that point on, the Nether’s lava is your highway rather than your barrier.

Once you’re comfortable riding across lava, the next logical goal is finding Nether Fortresses for blaze rods to unlock the brewing system back in the Overworld — and building the trading empire that gives you gear to survive everything the Nether throws at you. Our villager trading tiers guide covers exactly which villager trades make late-game Nether exploration significantly safer and more profitable.