How to get, grow and ride a Happy Ghast in Minecraft

The Happy Ghast is a friendly flying mount added in Java Edition 1.21.6 (the Chase the Skies drop, June 2025). You hatch it from a Dried Ghast block, raise the baby, then put a harness on it to fly with up to three friends. Its mechanics are unchanged up to 26.3; the only addition is the Golden Dandelion in 26.1, which can keep a baby small.

There are three ways to get the block:

• Craft it: 8 Ghast Tears around 1 Soul Sand in a Crafting Table. Ghast Tears drop from Ghasts, the hostile ones that fly over the Nether.
• Find it: Dried Ghasts generate next to Nether fossils in soul sand valleys, with a 1 in 3 chance per fossil.
• Barter it: each Gold Ingot you give a Piglin has a 10 in 469 chance (about 2.1%) to return a Dried Ghast.

Soul sand valleys are the blue Nether biomes covered in Soul Sand and Soul Fire, and Ghasts spawn there often, so one trip covers both the fossils and the tears. With cheats on, /locate biome minecraft:soul_sand_valley gives you the nearest one. More shortcuts in the list of useful commands.

Keep spare Ghast Tears: they also brew Potions of Regeneration, as shown in the potion brewing guide.

Place the Dried Ghast and make it waterlogged: put it in a water source, or place it on land and empty a Water Bucket on it. Do this in the Overworld, since water evaporates in the Nether. The block must stay waterlogged the whole time.

The timing varies a little: each stage starts on a random tick, then takes 250 seconds. If you remove the water, the block dries out again at the same pace, and mining it resets it to dry. The spot where it hatches becomes the ghast's home, so hatch it at your base.

The baby, called a ghastling, is just under one block wide. It follows players within 16 blocks, or an adult passive mob such as a Cow or a Horse, and otherwise stays within 32 blocks of its home. It cannot wear a harness yet.

• It grows up on its own after 20 minutes.
• Feed it Snowballs to speed this up. In Java Edition, each Snowball removes 10% of the remaining growth time. In Bedrock Edition, 10 Snowballs are enough to grow a new ghastling.
• Since 26.1, a Golden Dandelion (8 Gold Nuggets around a Dandelion) stops its growth. Use a second one to let it grow again.

A ghastling does not drown, but an adult can. And unlike the hostile Ghast, a Happy Ghast is not immune to fire or lava.

The harness makes a Happy Ghast rideable. Put 3 Leather on the top row, then Glass, Wool, Glass on the middle row. The Wool sets the color: White Wool gives a White Harness. There are 16 colors, and you can recolor any harness by crafting it with a dye.

Equip it by using the harness on an adult Happy Ghast, or with a Dispenser. A ghastling cannot wear one. To take it off, use Shears on the ghast while nobody is riding it.

Use the harnessed Happy Ghast to climb on. The first rider sits at the front and steers. Up to four players can ride at once, the others in seats around the sides. Its goggles drop over its eyes while someone flies it.

There is no key to go down: look down and press W. A ridden Happy Ghast flies at about 3.6 blocks per second, whatever the terrain below. The third-person camera also sits further back than usual, which helps you see around its 4-block body.

A Happy Ghast follows any player holding a Snowball, and an unharnessed one also follows a player holding a harness. That is the easiest way to move it on foot. You can also leash it: its Lead stretches up to 16 blocks before breaking, instead of 12 for other mobs.

It can lift things too. Hold the lead of a boat or a large mob, sneak and use the Happy Ghast: the leashed entity is attached underneath. Horses, donkeys, mules, camels and sniffers hang from four ropes, and a boat can carry smaller mobs inside. There is no limit to how many you attach, but a boat with a player in it cannot be lifted. Shears cut the leads.

• It is passive, cannot be bred and does not flee when hit.
• When a player stands on top of it, it stops moving and turns to face the nearest cardinal direction, with or without a harness.
• Left alone, it wanders within 64 blocks of its home, or 32 blocks with a harness. The home moves to its current position when you get off, put on or remove the harness, unhook a lead, or stop tempting it.
• It avoids Cactus, Sweet Berry Bushes, Wither Roses, Magma Blocks, fire and Pointed Dripstone.

A Happy Ghast has 20 health points (10 hearts) and heals 1 point every 30 seconds. It heals 1 point per second when it flies between Y 187 and Y 196, at cloud height, or when it rains or snows while it has open sky above and does not touch water. When it dies, it drops its harness, plus 1 to 3 experience points if a player killed it.

A parked Happy Ghast is a flying platform. Fly to the height you need and press Shift: you land on its back. As long as a player stands on it, it stays still and acts like a solid block, so you can place blocks from it, and other players can even land on it with an Ender Pearl. When the last player leaves, it moves again and throws off any mob or item left on top. While riding, you also pick up dropped items from a wider area below you. Back on the ground, a Copper Golem can sort the blocks you bring back.