Sooner or later, every Minecraft player experiences the sheer terror of hearing a Zombie banging on their door. But can they break them? Let’s see when they can, when they cannot, and some tips and tricks for feeling safe in our Minecraft house at night.
Not every Zombie can break doors
Let’s start by saying that up to 10% of Zombies or Baby Zombies are able to break Wooden Doors, so not all of them will be able to do it. The actual percentage is determined by the regional difficulty. It would take some time to cover how the regional difficulty works, so for now let’s just remember that it can’t be more than 10%.
Requirements for breaking doors
Zombies will be able to break Wooden Doors only in Survival mode with difficulty set to hard and in Hardcore mode.
If you’re playing Survival mode on Easy or Normal difficulty, Zombies will “attack” the door, but the door will show cracks without actually breaking: the door will stand. Obviously this didn’t stop me from running away in panic when it happened on my first Easy playthrough.
Another important thing to know is that Zombies can break a door only if they are facing the top half of the door. If they are one block lower than the door they won’t be able to break it.
How to prevent them from breaking your doors
There are several ways for stopping them from breaking your doors:
- You can use an Iron Door. As stated before, Zombies can only break Wooden Doors, so you won’t have to worry if you use an Iron one. If this is your way to go, you can check the article on Iron Doors that can be open by players only.
- You can place your doors one block higher than the ground level. Zombies can’t break doors by attacking the bottom half.
- You can use Fence Gates instead of doors. I know, they’re not technically doors. But Zombies can’t break them, so there you go. (This and other reasons covered in the article Can Villagers open Fence Gates? make them a good solution for defenfing Villagers from zombie attacks)
- You can put Wooden Doors on backwards. This method will be easier to understand in the video below, so just check that at minute 2:58.
- You can place one block in front of your doors. This isn’t different from building a wall in front of doors, so what’s the point? But if you find yourself wanting to make some Villagers safer before the night comes, this can be a quick option.
Video tutorial
I found a very well done video on how to defend your house from Zombies breaking the doors. I talked about some of these methods, but not all of them because some were easier to show in a video. Hope you find it interesting.
