Mob Menagerie: Copper Golem

Copper golems require two ingredients to build – a block of copper, and a carved pumpkin. Put the copper block down somewhere, and put the pumpkin next to it, and something remarkable will happen – you’ll get a copper chest and a copper golem. Initially, it’ll wander around aimlessly, and maybe have a look in the chest. But put some stuff in that chest, and then the magic begins.

The golem will grab up to 16 of the first thing that it sees in the chest, then it will go to the nearest wooden chest (within 65 blocks horizontally and 17 blocks vertically) and take a look in there – if it’s empty, or if the chest contains the thing the golem is holding, then it’ll put that thing in the chest. Otherwise it’ll move onto the next chest.

These golems aren’t super smart (what do you expect from an animated pumpkin?). They can only remember ten or so chests. If it can’t put something into any of those ten chests then it’ll wander around for a bit, forgetting which chests it looked at, and then try again. They’ll also ignore items dropped on the ground, ender chests, minecarts with chests, boats with chests and any other container.

Oh, and there’s another thing. Like copper blocks, copper golems will gradually oxidize over time – getting greener and greener. After becoming fully oxidized, they’ll no longer be able to move and turn into a statue. You’ll need to use an axe to scrape off the oxidation, stage by stage. A golem can also be waxed with a honeycomb to prevent the oxidation from happening.

We’ve talked about real-world golems before in this column. They’re a creature from Jewish folklore, originally created from clay or mud, which obeys its creator’s instructions. The Talmud says that the first human, Adam, was initially created as a golem, and the word is also used in the bible to refer to an imperfect or unfinished being.

Golems in folklore have their instructions written down on a piece of paper which is placed in their head, or they’re written directly on their forehead. You can usually deactivate a golem by removing its instructions, which works a bit like how you might close a program on a computer to stop it running. In that way, the golem could be seen as representing the earliest idea of a robot.

Minecraft’s golems are very robot-like, both the copper ones and their snowy and iron cousins. In Minecraft Dungeons there are redstone golems. In Minecraft Legends there are cobblestone golems, plank golems, mossy golems and grindstone golems. What golems would you like to see next? Me? I’m holding out for a honeycomb golem that automatically harvests your hives for you – feels like that would bee great fun.