To get mounts fast in Minecraft, you need to quickly secure three core components: a suitable mount mob (such as a horse, donkey, or strider), a saddle, and the appropriate taming or baiting items. You can find horses naturally spawning in Plains and Savanna biomes, while saddles can be reliably acquired by looting Dungeon chests, Desert Temple vaults, or trading 6 Emeralds to master-level Leatherworker villagers. Once you mount an untamed horse repeatedly until heart particles appear, open your inventory while mounted to equip the saddle and take full control of your new steed.
Locating and Taming Your First Horse
Horses are the premier land mount for standard exploration due to their high jump capability and fast sprint speed. When entering a fresh survival world, your immediate priority should be locating a Plains or Savanna biome, where horses spawn in herds of two to six. Unlike passive farm animals, horses cannot be lured using wheat until they are fully tamed, meaning you must approach them empty-handed. For more foundational gameplay strategies, check out this manor lords best beginner tips and tricks overview which shares parallel early-game resource gathering principles.
To successfully tame a horse, make sure your hotbar is empty and right-click the animal to mount it. The horse will frequently buck you off, indicated by angry smoke particles. Simply repeat the mounting process until green heart particles appear, signifying that the horse trusts you. However, taming only allows you to ride the horse; you cannot steer it without a saddle. For advanced equipment management strategies, look at this mount and blade 2 bannerlord best armor sets location guide to understand how gear prioritization functions across similar sandbox titles.
The Fastest Ways to Acquire a Saddle
Saddles cannot be crafted using a crafting table, making them the primary bottleneck for players looking to secure mounts fast. Fortunately, multiple structures across the Overworld have high loot probabilities for saddles. Dungeons (mossy cobblestone rooms with monster spawns) feature chests with a 28.3% chance to contain a saddle. Similarly, Nether Fortresses, Stronghold altars, and Desert Pyramids offer generous rates.
If exploration yields no results, leveraging the Official Minecraft Wiki confirms that master-level Leatherworker villagers sell saddles for exactly 6 Emeralds. You can fast-track this villager method by building a lectern for a Librarian, trading paper for emeralds, and placing a cauldrons or blast furnace to establish a Leatherworker. For performance optimization while exploring vast terrain chunks to find villages, apply the settings found in this monster hunter wild best system requirements pc settings analysis.
Traversing Hazardous Terrain with Striders
When your exploration takes you into the treacherous depths of the Nether, standard mounts become useless. Instead, you need a Strider, which serves as the ultimate mount for crossing massive lava oceans. Striders spawn frequently in groups along the lava lakes of the Nether. To ride a strider, you must first place a saddle directly onto it while standing nearby, and then hold a Warped Fungus on a Stick to dictate movement direction and speed.
Crafting a Warped Fungus on a Stick requires a Fishing Rod and a Warped Fungus, both easily obtained in the Nether Crimson Forest biomes. Riding a strider prevents you from taking lethal lava damage, allowing you to bypass ghast attacks and piglin hordes efficiently. If you enjoy optimizing character movement and progression loops, check out monster hunter wilds how to level up fast for complementary progression pacing tactics.
Using Donkeys and Mules for Inventory Expansion
If your primary goal for getting mounts fast is resource gathering and long-distance hauling, donkeys and mules are superior choices over standard horses. Donkeys spawn naturally in Plains and Savanna biomes alongside horses, while mules must be bred by combining a horse and a donkey using golden carrots or golden apples.
The defining feature of donkeys and mules is their ability to equip chests. By holding a chest and right-clicking a tamed donkey or mule, you add 15 slots of mobile inventory storage. This makes them indispensable during early mining expeditions or when stripping entire biomes of rare blocks. For players who love deep progression systems and companion synergies, review this lords of the fallen best early skills to unlock breakdown for more efficiency tips.
Alternative Early Mounts: Pigs
While pigs are generally considered meme mounts rather than serious exploration tools, they represent the absolute earliest mount you can access in a fresh survival world. Pigs spawn universally across grassy biomes and require only a Carrot on a Stick and a saddle to ride.
However, pigs have significant drawbacks: they move slowly, cannot jump high, and the carrot on a stick loses durability rapidly as you drive them. Use pigs only as a temporary novelty while you hunt for horses or gather emeralds for villager trades. For more tactical survival tips, take a look at the lethal company best beginner tips and tricks article for resource management strategies in hostile environments.
Maximizing Mount Speed and Jump Stats
Not all horse mounts are created equal in Minecraft. Every horse generated in the world possesses hidden randomized statistics governing maximum health (ranging from 15 to 30 hearts), movement speed, and jump height. Elite horses can jump up to 5.5 blocks high and sprint significantly faster than the player's base sprint speed.
To breed a super horse, you must feed two tamed horses golden carrots or golden apples to enter Love Mode. The resulting foal will inherit stats averaged from both parents plus a randomized bonus roll. By selectively breeding horses with superior jump stats over several generations, you can create mounts that easily clear ravines and fences. For hardware configuration adjustments to keep your game running smoothly during high-speed horse riding across chunks, reference the advice in lenovo legion go best graphics settings for performance.