How to Start the Pumpkillager Quest (Summon Your First Encounter)

Plant and Harvest Pumpkins

The questline only triggers through pumpkin harvesting, so your first job is a pumpkin farm. Craft pumpkin seeds from a pumpkin and plant them on farmland. Bonemeal speeds growth if you want encounters faster. When a pumpkin is fully grown, break it by hand or with any tool — the trigger is the break event, not the drop.

Understand the Encounter Chance

Each pumpkin you break has a chance to spawn a Pumpkillager encounter. This is random per break, so a single pumpkin may do nothing while the next one triggers it. Because of this, plant a decent-sized patch rather than one or two stems — more breaks per session means you reach the encounter sooner. Keep harvesting the same patch; there is no special pumpkin, biome, or time-of-day requirement mentioned for the trigger.

What Happens on the Encounter

When the encounter fires, a Pumpkillager appears and the quest begins. Do not run far away or log out mid-fight if you want to progress — stay and deal with it. Once it is resolved, the questline continues and later steps unlock. If nothing happens after many pumpkins, just keep breaking more; the chance is per pumpkin, so bad luck streaks are normal and not a bug.