If you’ve ever wondered how to make a name tag in Minecraft, I hate to break it to you but name tags cannot be crafted by the player as there is no recipe for it.
Instead, you’ll need to go exploring or trade with a friendly Villager to get your hands on one.
In Minecraft name tags are pretty rare, they allow you to name creatures like Wolves, Chickens, or your favorite Zombie. This will stop them from despawning, which can be very handy when building mob spawners.
In this article, we’re going over how you can find a name tag in Minecraft and how you can use it.
3 Ways to find a Name Tag in Minecraft
1. Explore the world to find a name tag
There are a few chest locations where you can find name tags including dungeons, mineshafts, woodland mansions, ancient cities, and buried treasure.
Our only advice here would be to go exploring and keep your eyes peeled for hidden chests…and pray to the Minecraft Gods that luck is on your side!
2. Trade with a Librarian to get a name tag
You can get name tags by trading with a master-level librarian villager. There is some luck involved as not all master-level librarians have name tags in their trading menu.
Note: You’re going to need plenty of emeralds to level this Librarian up to master rank. Find emeralds by either trading for other goods with Villagers or mining them in caves.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to get a name tag from a Librarian in Minecraft:
- Firstly, you need to locate a village!
Explore your world for one, or if you’ve got cheats enabled use the command “/locate village” to get the coordinates for one.
2. Now that you’ve found a village, go find a Librarian.
If there’s no Librarian in the village, go find another village or place a lectern in a house that doesn’t have a workstation. A Villager will then see it and turn into a librarian.
Related: How to Make Lectern in Minecraft
3. Next, perform trades with the librarian to level it up to Master rank.
4. Once the villager is leveled up, there is a chance that the Librarian will have a nametag in its trade menu for you to purchase.
If this does not happen, you need to start over by finding a new librarian to level up to Master.
3. Go fishing to find a name tag
There is about a 5% chance that you will find a name tag when fishing in Minecraft. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to get a name tag whilst fishing:
- Create a fishing rod out of string and sticks.
- Locate any body of water.
- Go fishing!
- Continue fishing until you’re lucky enough to catch a name tag!
How to use a name tag in Minecraft
Now that you’ve got your name tag, it’s important to know how to use it!
Default name tags will not have a name attached to them, which means if you try to use them on your favorite mob, nothing is going to happen. That’s because you need to name the name tag first.
If it sounds a little confusing, here is a step-by-step guide on how to use a name tag in Minecraft:
- First of all, you’re going to need an anvil.
To craft an anvil, you need 4 iron ingots and 3 iron blocks. This is a total of 31 iron ingots.
You can find iron ore (which will need to be smelted into ingots) or iron ingots in your world by mining it or finding it in various chests.
2. Create 3 iron blocks. This is done by placing an iron ingot in each crafting slot.
3. Now, with your 3 iron blocks and 4 iron ingots, you need to craft the anvil.
This can be done by placing 3 iron blocks in the top row of a crafting table, 1 iron ingot in the middle, and the last 3 iron ingots at the bottom.
4. Once you’ve created your anvil, place it wherever you want.
5. Right-click the anvil, and a menu should pop up.
Place your name tag in the left-most box and replace the default “Name Tag” name with whatever you want.
And then place the name tag back in your inventory.
Note: Renaming a name tag in the anvil menu will cost experience levels. Kill mobs or farm gems to get enough exp.
6. Finally, go find your favorite mob and right-click the name tag on it to use it.
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