Thirst System
The 1.18 thirst system is in development and will be released following testing. Some information reflects features of updates coming soon and may not work in game yet. Check the changelog (below) for more information.
Description: Horses require adequate daily water to remain happy and healthy. This system works cooperatively with the Hunger System.
Basics & Finding Water
Horses will become thirsty twice per day, and will need 2-4 buckets of water daily (2 buckets twice). When water is available, horses can drink:
- From placed water troughs and half barrels
- From ground water in a 10 block search radius
- Waterbuckets right-clicked by a player
Meals
Horse thirst is a configurable value - if it is disabled none of your horses will experience thirst.
Meal times are at 7AM and 5PM every Minecraft day. When triggered:
- The previous drinking period will be logged as either met or missed.
- The thirst level is decreased so they can drink again.
- Meal times will be skipped if the player sleeps through a storm
- Meal times will be skipped if the horse is not rendered/loaded (so you can go explore or play elsewhere in SP)
Missed Drinks
Horse will satisfy their drink requirement if they consume 1-2 buckets of water. When satisfied, they can progress between status' of thirst depending on whether they have missed any drinks previously. A horse that is missing 0 drinks will be considered satisfied and can remain satisfied with 1 bucket each 'meal', or quenched if they get 2 buckets instead.
If a horse fails to consume 1-2 buckets of water each meal time, that will be counted as a missed drink. Missing drinks will deteriorate the thirst status and slowly accumulate debuffs. Health can also be affected. Missed drinks must be recovered; each drink your horse satisfies consecutively will decrease the missed drinks value by 1. Craft and use the Vet Bag to view the status of any missed drinks.
| Thirst Level (GUI) | Status | Missed Drinks | Gaits | Jump | Obedience |
| 5 | Quenched | 0 | --- | --- | +10% |
| 4 | Satisfied | 0 | --- | --- | --- |
| 3 | Thirsty | 1 | -2s Stamina | -10% | -10% |
| 2 | Dehydrated | 3 | Max. Canter | -20% | -20% |
| 1 | Exsiccosis | 7 | Max. Walk | -30% | -30% |
Health
Water does not contribute towards or detract from health stats in the same way food does. However, missing drinks will prevent a horse from increasing their capped health stat.
MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON
Additional
Tack & Leading
Horses can drink if ridden or tacked, but not if they are on a lead (including if hitched). This is intentional to prevent the horse pathing to water while being led by a player. Leaving a horse hitched will restrict their ability to satisfy thirst.
Priority
Horses will always prioritize water over food if both are available, within their search radius and the horse is hungry/thirsty.
Exsiccosis
Severely dehydrated horses will not pee as their body needs to conserve water to remain alive.
Fatality
Horses will not die directly from critical thirst needs and fatality will not be implemented as a feature. However, horses can die from taking damage and are much more likely to do so with a decreased max health stat. The implemented system of missed drinks encourages players to keep their horses well watered and rehabilitate their horses back to full health with regular care to provide a non-fatal consequence to neglect.
SWEM commands offer a way for singleplayer users or server staff with adequate permissions to adjust need related stats.
Troubleshooting
[Read More] My horse is not drinking!
The most likely reason for a horse not eating is:
- Horses are not loaded during meal times (7AM + 9PM) so their needs were not set to decrease
- The world has /gamerule doDaylightCycle set to false so time does not pass to allow meal times to take effect
- Horses cannot access water - obstructed by something else (ie shavings around a trough)
- Horses cannot find water in their search radius - about 10B in any direction to reduce lag for multiple searching horses.
- Horses have already drunk enough to satisfy their meal points and do not need to drink any more
[Read More] The mealtimes are just too much work, but I still want thirst!
Unfortunately we can only offer immersive realism, or disabling thirst entirely at this point. If you are finding the feeding system to occupy too much of your MC day (and you don't like that), you can do one of the following:
- Pause the time for a while if you have access to commands
- Avoid rendering them around meal times on days you just want to chill
- (MP) Board your horse out to another player to take care of (or who won't render them) for a while.
- Turn off one or the other (hunger or thirst) to reduce your daily tasks. Disabling hunger will impact your ability to level health, whereas disabling thirst will have less significance on gameplay.
Mods like Hourglass allow you to lengthen the MC day (+/- night) to give you extra time to water your horses and still get things done. Example: You can set the day to be 20 minutes instead of 10, and leave or shorten the night duration.
[Read More] How to set the game to meal times?
Mealtimes are at 7AM (999 ticks) and 5PM (10999 ticks).
- /time set 999
- /time set 10999
Setting the time to these when /gamerule doDaylightCycle false is implemented can result in many missed drinks as the game is constantly triggering a meal time.
Trivia
Meal times are fondly referred to as 'hungy' times - which is not a typo. These have been referred to as that ever since the initial concept for a meal and time based food/water system, and that phrase is accurate even down to the code level.
Known Issues
- [-] Health does not deteriorate when horse is in exsiccosis (missed 7+ drinks)
Changelog
PRE 1.18.2
This is not a complete list of version changes / fixes. It is a changelog of relevant wiki-related version information.
| MC Version | Release | Notes |
| 1.18.2 | 1.18.2-1.2.1 [Beta] | Implemented new thirst system, uses feed system's 'hungy times' |
| 1.16.5 | 1.16.5-0.5.3.20 |
Thirst system is broken in 1.16.5 release and will not be updated.
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