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Wither Storm

The Wither Storm is a giant, mutated variant of the Wither that appears in Minecraft: Story Mode, a narrative game by Telltale Games. It's a fictional monster that does not exist in standard Minecraft. Even so, it has become one of the most recognizable monsters in Minecraft culture, and mods that recreate the Wither Storm are hugely popular.

The Wither Storm does NOT exist in vanilla Minecraft

This is the most important thing to know: the Wither Storm is not part of standard Minecraft. You won't meet it in survival mode, you can't summon it with blocks, and you won't find it in any Java Edition or Bedrock Edition update. The Wither Storm exists only in Minecraft: Story Mode and in mods made by the community.

Vanilla Minecraft does have the Wither, a boss summoned from soul sand and wither skeleton skulls. The Wither Storm is its fictional, mutated version from a separate game.

The story in Minecraft: Story Mode

Minecraft: Story Mode is a point-and-click adventure game released by Telltale Games in 2015. It's made up of several episodes in which you play Jesse and, together with a group of friends, save the Minecraft world from various threats.

The Wither Storm appears in the first four episodes as the main antagonist. Ivor, one of the characters, creates it by using a command block built into a Wither-summoning structure. Instead of a regular boss, a Wither Storm appears: a monster that keeps growing, devouring blocks, mobs and entire structures from the world.

Appearance and abilities

The Wither Storm is a huge black-and-purple creature with tentacles that reach the ground. Inside it is a command block, which is the source of its power. The monster can:

  • Devour blocks and mobs with a tractor beam
  • Grow endlessly: the more it devours, the bigger it gets
  • Regenerate after being destroyed, as long as the command block is untouched

To defeat it, Jesse has to destroy the command block hidden inside the monster.

Cracker's Wither Storm: a popular mod

Cracker's Wither Storm is a mod that adds the Wither Storm to vanilla Minecraft. It's one of the most popular mods on the subject, with millions of downloads on CurseForge.

The mod lets you summon the Wither Storm with a command block placed in the standard Wither-summoning structure. Once summoned, the monster behaves much like it does in Story Mode:

  • It devours the surrounding blocks and grows
  • It fires wither skulls
  • It pulls in blocks and mobs with a beam
  • It goes through several growth phases

The mod is available on Forge for versions 1.19.x and 1.20.x. It requires a command block, which in survival you can only get with the /give command.

Minecraft: Story Mode: availability

Telltale Games shut down the studio in 2018, and Minecraft: Story Mode was pulled from all digital platforms. The game can no longer be bought on Steam, the Xbox Store or the PlayStation Store. Physical copies on discs are one way to play it, although they're getting harder to find.

Cultural impact

The Wither Storm became hugely popular in the Minecraft community, going far beyond the Story Mode game itself. YouTube videos showing fights against the Wither Storm have hundreds of millions of views. "Wither storm" is one of the most searched Minecraft-related terms.

The Wither Storm's popularity comes down to a simple idea: "what if the Wither had no growth limit?" It's a fantasy about a monster that can't be stopped by conventional means, and it's that hopelessness that makes it so fascinating to players.

See also