How to Ride a Llama in Minecraft (and Lead a Caravan)

You can ride a llama by using it with an empty hand, but you can’t steer it: there’s no llama saddle, so it walks wherever it wants. Riding is mostly how you tame one. To actually move llamas around, tame them, put a lead on the front one, and up to nine others follow in a caravan.

Step 1: Find llamas

Llamas spawn in herds of four to six in windswept hills, windswept forests and windswept gravelly hills, and in groups of four on savanna plateaus. They come in white, cream, gray and brown. Wandering traders also bring two trader llamas with them.

Don’t hit them. Llamas spit back for 1 damage, and a missed spit can start a fight between llamas.

Step 2: Tame by riding

1. Empty your hand.
2. Use the llama to climb on.
3. It’ll probably throw you off. Climb back on.
4. Repeat until hearts appear. That’s a tamed llama.

Each failed attempt raises the llama’s temper by 5 (out of 30), so the odds get better every time. Feeding it wheat or hay bales first also raises its temper.

Step 3: Add a chest and carpet

Hold a chest and use it on a tamed llama. Sneak and use the llama to open the storage. The number of slots depends on the llama’s hidden strength value, from 1 to 5, and gives 3, 6, 9, 12 or 15 slots. The game doesn’t show strength directly, so open the chest to find out what you’ve got.

Use carpet on a tamed llama to give it a patterned rug. It’s cosmetic, but color-coding llamas by what they carry is handy.

Step 4: Form a caravan

Put a lead on one llama. Up to nine other llamas nearby that aren’t already in a caravan will line up behind it, each following the one in front. Walk and the whole line comes with you. Each leashed llama can lead its own caravan of up to ten, and you can’t have two leashed llamas in the same line.

This is the main reason to keep llamas. Ten llamas with strong chests can carry well over a hundred slots of items, enough to move a whole early base before you have shulker boxes. Wild llamas can join a caravan too, though they won’t carry chests.

Riding in practice

Riding a tamed llama works, but it wanders aimlessly, stops to look around and won’t respond to direction keys. It’s fun for a minute and useless for travel. For a mount you can steer, a donkey carries a chest and can be saddled, and our horse guide covers the fast option.

Keeping them safe

Llamas spit at wolves on sight and wolves fear the strongest llamas. Tamed llamas don’t defend you; they only spit at whatever hurts them. They take reduced fall damage, so caravans survive rough mountain trails better than you’d expect. Breed tamed llamas with hay bales: the baby gets a random strength up to the stronger parent’s, with a small chance of one higher, so breeding strong llamas gives bigger chests over time.