Cinder Bailiffs and Ferns
What it is
A Cinder Bailiff is a broad, four-footed woodland animal with a fired-clay breastplate, a brush tail and three back vents. It feeds on Cinder Ferns and guards them. Come too close and it warns you, then blows a short fan of ash.
How to get it
Finding ferns. Cinder Fern patches grow on dry ground in newly generated forests, wooded badlands and the Emberwood Reach.
Making a fern. Craft fern + clay ball + charcoal (shapeless) for a Cinder Fern root. Plant it on grass, dirt, coarse dirt, rooted dirt or podzol, out of water.
Attracting a Bailiff. Bailiffs spawn naturally only near a mature, cooled fern, and no more than two in one area. Planting a fern doesn’t guarantee one will come. They don’t spawn on Peaceful. A Bailiff drops nothing special when killed.
How to use it
Growing ferns
A fern grows young, then prepared, then mature. A cooled fern grows slowly on its own in good light. Hot fronds don’t grow until rain or a spell cools them.
Spells that hit the fern (for example with Touch):
| Spell effect | What happens |
|---|---|
| Grow | A cooled fern grows one stage |
| Fire | Heats the fronds and grows one stage |
| Tidebreath, Frost or Freeze | Cools the fronds |
One cast changes one fern.
Harvesting: use a mature, cooled fern with your hand to take one root. The plant stays and goes back to young. Breaking it just gives you the root back.
Feeding
A Bailiff browses a mature, cooled fern for 2 seconds, then rests beside it for up to 8 seconds. The fern drops back a stage. It waits a minute before eating again. Once it has fed, it guards that fern.
Its ash fan
| Phase | What you see | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Warning (1.2 seconds) | It braces, vents rise, clay fragments mark three lanes | Step out of the lanes, back off, or answer it |
| Fan (0.9 seconds) | Three vents fire one after another | Its aim is locked; move out of the lanes |
| Recovery (2 seconds) | Vents settle, ash falls | Reposition |
The three lanes point left, straight ahead and right, reaching 4 blocks. You can only be hit once per fan, for 4 damage. It doesn’t set anything on fire.
Tips and counterplay
- Answer the warning: a melee hit, or a Frost or Freeze spell that chills it, interrupts the warning. It doesn’t stop a fan that has already started.
- Sidestep: once it warns, it won’t turn to follow you.
- Tidebreath won’t calm a wild Bailiff, but it does cool a fern.
- Back off or put a wall between you and it, and it goes back to feeding.
- Server owners can switch natural Bailiff spawns off. Existing ferns stay.