Minecraft wiki entry for Combat, associated text: Wither skeletons are the Nether equivalent of skeletons. They use stone swords and give players the Wither effect upon damaging them. They spawn in fortresses. If the player sees one, shoot it with a bow or trap it with blocks, or use a tactic similar to creepers — sprint hit them, then retreat a few blocks, and repeat. A shield is also very useful as it completely blocks their hits including the wither effect. Wither skeletons are exactly 2.4 blocks tall, but their pathfinding works as if they were over 2 blocks tall. This provides some safe tactics for combating them: the player just has to build a 2 blocks high space where it is safe to hide upon engaging a wither skeleton. If the player is too close and can't place a block in front of it fast enough, use an attack strategy similar to zombified piglins. They will rarely drop wither skeleton skulls used to make the wither. A sword enchanted with looting will increase the chance to drop a skull up to 5.5%. The Smite enchantment can deal high damage to them, due to wither skeletons being an undead mob. They can spawn with pumpkins on Halloween‌[Java Edition only], and can sometimes pick up armor and weapons, but they cannot pick up blocks or items. An efficient way of killing them will be making a wither skeleton farm by filling in large parts within the bounding box of the fortress with nether bricks.