Overview
A Totem of Undying is a one-shot second life. Hold it in your main hand or your off hand and the blow that would have killed you is cancelled: the totem is consumed, your health is set back to half a heart, and you are handed Regeneration II for 45 seconds, Absorption II for 5 seconds and Fire Resistance for 40 seconds to survive whatever hit you in the first place. That last effect is the one people forget, and it is why a totem saves you from a lava swim as reliably as it saves you from a Warden. The catch is that it only works from a hand slot. A totem in your hotbar, in your inventory or in a shulker box does nothing, which is the single most common way players die holding one. The other catch is supply: evokers are the only source, and evokers live in woodland mansions and in raid wave five and above. A serious totem stockpile therefore means farming raids, which is why experienced players keep a village with an iron golem and a supply of Bad Omen rather than hunting mansions. Treat every totem as a consumable, not as a trophy — one saved life is worth more than a full chest of them gathering dust.
Insurance for anything you cannot afford to lose: the End fight, a Warden encounter, a lava-adjacent Nether tunnel, or any trip carrying gear you have spent hours enchanting. One totem in the off hand converts a fatal mistake into a scare.
Totem of Undying is a miscellaneous item in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. It is unstackable. You get it by killing Evoker.
It is not used in any crafting recipe.
How to get it
Every evoker drops exactly 1 totem when killed, and Looting does not change that. Evokers spawn in woodland mansions and in raid waves 5, 6 and 7, so a raid farm reliably yields several totems an hour.
Tips
- Keep the totem in your off hand and your shield in the hotbar, not the other way round — a shield saved is a totem wasted.
- After it fires you have roughly five seconds of Absorption to get away; use them to run or block up, never to keep fighting.
- Raid farming beats mansion hunting: a single village raid can drop three or four totems, while a mansion holds only a handful of evokers.
- A totem does not stop you drowning in the void, because there is no damage tick to cancel down there — nothing saves you from that.
Version notes
Unchanged mechanically since 1.11 apart from the 1.21 raid rework, which now starts a raid from an Ominous Bottle rather than from killing a patrol captain.
Properties
Totem of Undying does not stack — each one occupies an inventory slot of its own.
- Stack size
- 1
- Renewable
- Yes
- Category
- Miscellaneous
Dropped by
1 mobs drop Totem of Undying: Evoker. Looting raises the maximum on most of them.
Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
Does a Totem of Undying work from the inventory?
No. It has to be in your main hand or off hand at the moment of the killing blow. Anywhere else in the inventory and it does nothing.
Can you get totems without a woodland mansion?
Yes. Raids from wave 5 upwards spawn evokers, and every evoker drops one totem, so a village raid farm is the usual supply.
Does Looting increase totem drops?
No. The drop is a guaranteed single totem regardless of enchantments.
How do you make Totem of Undying in Minecraft?
Totem of Undying has no crafting recipe — it drops from Evoker.
What is the stack size of Totem of Undying?
Totem of Undying does not stack at all. Every one you carry takes an inventory slot of its own, which is the practical limit on how many you take on a trip.
