You want a happy ghast, the big white flying mob that four players can ride at once. Where do you get one, do you have to tame it, what is the saddle everyone searches for, how long does the baby take to grow, and can you make it fly faster? This guide answers each question for Java Edition 26.3, the current release since 15 September 2026, and Bedrock Edition 26.60 from 27 October 2026. Happy ghasts arrived with the Chase the Skies drop on 17 June 2025 (Java 1.21.6, Bedrock 1.21.90), and the 2026 drops only changed details.
Quick answer: To get a happy ghast, find a dried ghast next to a Nether fossil in a soul sand valley, or craft one from 8 ghast tears and 1 soul sand. Bring it to the Overworld and put it in water: after about 20 minutes it becomes a ghastling, which grows into a happy ghast in another 20 minutes, sooner if you feed it snowballs. You do not tame it. There is no happy ghast saddle either: craft a harness from 3 leather, 2 glass and 1 wool, use it on the adult, and up to four players can ride. Can you make happy ghasts go faster? Not in survival. A ridden happy ghast flies about 3.6 blocks per second and ignores Speed potions. On Java, an operator can raise its flying_speed attribute with /attribute.
How to Get a Happy Ghast
Happy ghasts do not spawn on their own. Apart from spawn eggs and commands, every one starts as a dried ghast, a block you get in one of three ways:
| Method | How it works |
|---|---|
| Find one | In soul sand valleys in the Nether, each Nether fossil has a 1 in 3 chance of a dried ghast next to it. It breaks instantly by hand and drops itself. |
| Craft one | Put 1 soul sand in the middle of the crafting grid and 8 ghast tears around it. A ghast drops 0 or 1 tear, and Looting adds to that. |
| Barter | Give gold ingots to piglins. Each ingot has a 10 in 469 chance (about 2.1%) to return a dried ghast. |
Then take it home. Water cannot be placed in the Nether, so take it back to the Overworld. Place the block in a water source, or place it on the ground and empty a water bucket onto it, so that it becomes waterlogged. Green particles show that the rehydration has started.
The ghast changes in three visible steps, at roughly 5, 10 and 15 minutes, and after about 20 minutes it turns into a ghastling. Keep the water in place the whole time: if the water goes, the block dries out again at the same rate, and breaking it sends it straight back to the dried state.
How Long Does It Take for a Happy Ghast to Grow?
About 40 minutes from dried ghast to adult, if you do nothing to speed it up:
| Stage | Time | What speeds it up |
|---|---|---|
| Dried ghast in water to ghastling | About 20 minutes | Nothing practical |
| Ghastling to happy ghast | 20 minutes (24,000 ticks) | Snowballs |
Both timers only run while a player nearby keeps the area active, so stay close. Servers add their own rules, covered below.
Snowballs. In Java Edition, each snowball you feed a ghastling cuts its remaining growth time by 10%. Ten snowballs bring a fresh ghastling from 20 minutes down to about 7, and a stack of 16 to under 4. In Bedrock Edition, 10 snowballs take a newly spawned ghastling all the way to adult. A shovel gets 4 snowballs from a snow block, and snow golems drop up to 15 when they die.
Keeping a ghastling small. Since Java 26.1 and Bedrock 26.10, a golden dandelion (1 dandelion surrounded by 8 gold nuggets) stops a ghastling from growing. Using one resets its growth timer to the full 20 minutes and locks it; a second golden dandelion starts it again.
A ghastling follows players or adult passive mobs within 16 blocks, and otherwise drifts within 32 blocks of where it spawned. Near a busy farm it can wander off after a cow or another player, so put it on a lead.
How to Tame a Happy Ghast
You don't, because there is no taming step. The Minecraft Wiki lists the happy ghast with the mobs that are "always rideable, without needing to tame them", next to the camel and the pig. What you do instead:
- Raise it from a dried ghast, as above, or call a grown one over. Hold a snowball, or a harness if it is not wearing one yet, and it follows you. In Java that works from up to 16 blocks away.
- Put a harness on it (next section).
- Climb on.
Without taming there is no owner either, which matters on a server (see below).
Happy Ghast Saddle: the Harness Recipe
There is no happy ghast saddle. The item people search for as a ghast saddle is the harness, and a normal saddle (3 leather and 1 iron ingot since 1.21.6) does not go on a happy ghast. The harness recipe is the same in Java and Bedrock:
| Left | Middle | Right | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top row | Leather | Leather | Leather |
| Middle row | Glass | Wool | Glass |
The wool sets the color, so there are 16 harnesses, one per wool color. To change the color later, put the harness and a dye in the crafting grid. The color is only looks: it changes the curtains on the ghast's sides, not how it flies.
Use the harness on an adult happy ghast to put it on; a ghastling cannot wear one. A dispenser can put a harness on too. To take it off, use shears on the happy ghast while nobody is riding it and while you are not sneaking. The harness drops as an item.
Riding: Controls and How Many Players Fit
Up to four players can ride one happy ghast. The first player who mounts steers from the front seat, just above its face, and the next three sit on the other sides, clockwise from the pilot.
| Control | What the happy ghast does |
|---|---|
| Forward | Flies where you are looking, including up or down |
| Back | Flies the opposite way |
| Left and right | Moves sideways without changing height |
| Jump | Rises straight up |
| Sneak (dismount) | Puts you on top of it |
There is no key to go down. Look down and press forward, or look up and press back.
Once you dismount you stand on the happy ghast as if it were a block. As long as a player stands on it, it stays still and turns to face north, south, east or west, which makes it a floating scaffold for building high up. When the last player steps off, it moves again, and anything left on top falls.
It carries cargo too. Hold a lead attached to a boat or a mob, sneak and use it on the happy ghast, and the load hangs underneath. Boats, boats with chests, horses, donkeys, mules, camels, sniffers and a few more hang from four ropes; other leashable mobs hang from one. There is no limit to how many, and shears cut them loose. Players cannot ride in a carried boat, because the lead snaps, but a player on a pig or an unsaddled horse that hangs from the ghast comes along.
Can You Make Happy Ghasts Go Faster?
Not in survival. The Minecraft Wiki measured a ridden happy ghast in Java at about 3.6 blocks per second in level flight, 1.75 going straight up and 3.5 diving. That is slower than walking (4.3 blocks per second) and less than half the speed of an average horse (9.5).
Nothing you can do in survival changes that:
- Speed potions do nothing. Mojang marked this as intended for Bedrock (MCPE-199192), and in Java the Speed effect does not work on flying mobs (MC-40949).
- Snowballs only lure an adult. Feeding speeds up ghastlings, not grown happy ghasts.
- The harness color is cosmetic.
Mojang chose the speed deliberately: a designer compared every way to travel in the game to decide how fast the happy ghast should be and at what point in a playthrough you get one. For distance, a horse or an elytra is faster. The happy ghast is for groups, cargo and building.
With a command in Java Edition. Java keeps how fast a mob flies in the flying_speed attribute, and the happy ghast's base value is 0.05. An operator can change it for one happy ghast while riding it or standing next to it:
/attribute @n[type=minecraft:happy_ghast] minecraft:flying_speed base set 0.1
@n picks the nearest happy ghast, and 0.1 is twice the base value. Mojang fixed this attribute for happy ghasts during the 1.21.6 snapshots, so it does change their speed (MC-296802). Raise it in small steps and fly a test lap: the new value only applies to that one ghast, and it is saved with it. To go back to normal:
/attribute @n[type=minecraft:happy_ghast] minecraft:flying_speed base reset
Bedrock Edition has no /attribute command, so a vanilla Bedrock world or server has no command for this.
Keeping Your Happy Ghast Alive and Nearby
- It has 20 health points (10 hearts) and heals 1 point every 30 seconds, or 1 per second at cloud height (Y 187 to 196 in the Overworld) or in rain or snow under open sky.
- Unlike a normal ghast, it burns in fire and lava, and an adult drowns underwater.
- It stays within 64 blocks of its home without a harness, 32 with one, and about 10 on a lead. The home moves to where you last dismounted, changed the harness or removed the lead.
- Mojang's own advice is to tie it to a post when you leave. A lead on a happy ghast stretches 16 blocks before it snaps, instead of 12.
Happy Ghasts on a Server
Hydration and growth pause when nobody is near. In Java, the dried ghast and the ghastling only make progress in chunks the server simulates: within the simulation-distance of a player (10 chunks by default, see our simulation distance guide) or in force-loaded chunks. A vanilla Java server also pauses 60 seconds after the last player logs off (pause-when-empty-seconds in server.properties). To keep a ghast nursery running while you play elsewhere, an operator can stand next to it and force-load its chunk, then remove the ticket once the ghast has grown:
/forceload add ~ ~
/forceload remove ~ ~
On Bedrock, a ticking area does the same job, with a radius of 0 to 4 chunks:
/tickingarea add circle ~ ~ ~ 1 ghastnursery
/tickingarea remove ghastnursery
Leave the random tick speed alone. Each hydration step waits for a random tick, about 68 seconds on average in Java, and then runs a fixed 250 seconds. The game rule random_tick_speed (default 3, called randomTickSpeed before the 1.21.11 rename) only shortens that wait, so it saves a few minutes at most, and it also speeds up crops, leaf decay, snow and ice across the whole server.
Nobody owns a happy ghast. Any player can ride a harnessed one, shear off its harness or cut its lead. If players park them in shared areas, set a rule, and if you run a land claim plugin, check whether it protects mobs inside a claim.
Commands for events. With operator rights (permission level 2 in Java, see our OP commands guide), these hand out or spawn everything in Java:
/give @s minecraft:dried_ghast
/give @s minecraft:white_harness
/summon minecraft:happy_ghast ~ ~ ~
/summon minecraft:happy_ghast ~ ~ ~ {Age:-24000}
The last line spawns a ghastling. Swap white for any of the 16 colors, such as light_blue_harness. On Bedrock, /summon happy_ghast ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ minecraft:spawn_baby spawns a ghastling. In a server console, type these without the slash, use your player name instead of @s, and put execute at YourName run in front of commands with ~ or @n so they run where you stand. On a Space-Node Minecraft server, every plan runs on the Pterodactyl panel, whose live console takes these commands directly.
Run 26.3 if you teleport riders. Java 26.3 fixed a desync when all players riding a happy ghast are teleported (MC-300000).
FAQ
Can you make happy ghasts go faster?
Not in survival: Speed potions, snowballs and harness colors change nothing. In Java, an operator can raise its flying_speed attribute with /attribute.
Is there a happy ghast saddle? No. It wears a harness: 3 leather in the top row, then glass, wool and glass. A normal saddle does not fit.
How do you get a happy ghast? Find a dried ghast by a Nether fossil in a soul sand valley, craft one or barter for one, then put it in water in the Overworld.
How do you tame a happy ghast? You don't have to. Lure it with a snowball, put a harness on it and climb on.
How long does it take for a happy ghast to grow? About 20 minutes as a dried ghast in water, then 20 minutes as a ghastling, less with snowballs.
How many players can ride a happy ghast? Four. The first one steers.
Sources
All opened on 1 November 2026:
- Mojang: Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.6 (the Chase the Skies changelog, 17 June 2025), Mob Menagerie: Happy Ghast (9 April 2026), version manifest
- Minecraft Wiki, mobs and blocks: Happy Ghast, Dried Ghast, Harness, Golden Dandelion, Snowball, Ghast, Nether Fossil, Saddle, Waterlogging
- Minecraft Wiki, mechanics: Riding, Taming, Lead, Transportation, Attribute, Entity format/Mob, Tick, Chunk, Game rule, server.properties
- Minecraft Wiki, commands: /attribute, Target selectors, /forceload, /tickingarea
- Mojang bug tracker: MC-296802, MC-40949, MC-300000, MCPE-199192
- Minecraft Wiki, versions: Java Edition 1.21.6, Java Edition 26.1, Java Edition 26.3, Bedrock Edition 1.21.90, Bedrock Edition 26.60