Stalker Creepers for Minecraft

Review Stalker Creepers

Changing Creeper Behavior

Players in Minecraft often create various farms to gather resources and gain experience, take part in battles with mobs, but most likely each of you has encountered a situation where a creeper suddenly sneaks up from behind and explodes, causing you to lose all your accumulated progress, right? This is a vanilla mechanic originally implemented by the developers, and it has not changed since the earliest versions of the game. If you are tired of this approach and would like to somehow change their behavior, be sure to check out our review, where we talk about a separate modification that focuses exclusively on creepers!

The Stalker Creepers mod adds a new mechanic for creeper behavior to the game. For example, how did they behave in the game world before? They either sneaked up on you unexpectedly or approached directly and then exploded at close range. If you did not manage to move away in time, you would die together with it or take massive damage (even if you had good enchanted armor). After installing this add-on, the mechanic changes slightly; however, the author’s main goal is to complicate interactions with creepers, so these innovations are clearly not aimed at beginners who have not been playing Minecraft for very long. It is difficult to show exactly what changes in screenshots, so it is better to either install the mod right away or read the entire article carefully.

Creepers will now become much more dangerous, as their behavior changes. Each such mob will now try to track the player if they enter a certain detection radius. And as soon as you turn to face it, it will immediately explode. That is, creepers will now explode only during direct face-to-face contact, but if the player is facing away, they may survive. Sounds simple—what’s the big deal? You might think you can survive easily and not be afraid of these creatures at all, since they activate only under specific conditions. However, this becomes a serious problem, because they have a small AI mechanic that literally “watches” the player.

For example, you can move calmly through the game world without worrying that someone is following you or trying to kill you, regardless of whether it is daytime or nighttime. As soon as you stop, the creeper will approach from behind as closely as possible and wait until you turn around. You turn—and an explosion happens instantly. You will no longer have those few seconds, like in the vanilla version of the game, to run away in time. This creates serious problems for players. And the most interesting part is that the Stalker Creepers modification, using its built-in AI (even if not the smartest one), tracks the player’s movement and relays information to creepers so that they can detect the player faster and attempt to explode.

You can survive only if your character is wearing good enchanted armor. The explosion power of creepers is standard, and if it detonates directly in front of you, it leaves behind a large crater. At the same time, other creatures also die, such as pets, NPCs, and various third-party mobs. As a result, Minecraft becomes much more hardcore and difficult for you. You will have to constantly look around, take mob behavior into account, and if you create creeper farms, carefully calculate all the risks. A creeper explodes only if you are on the same vertical level. For example, if it falls onto a platform in a mob farm and is slightly above you, it will not explode, even though it is directly in front of you and looking you in the eyes. Builders of such constructions can breathe a sigh of relief!

To avoid taking damage from such mobs, simply try not to look them in the eyes. In some cases, changing your focus or camera angle helps, for example, by looking at the ground. And the most important point: Jeb once joked about stalking mechanics in the game and promised that all creepers would literally stalk players, but this option was never implemented. The developer of the Stalker Creepers mod decided to adopt this idea and finally add it to the game world. That is why many players will welcome such options, since they had heard about them from official sources before, even though they never made it into a release.

This mod works both in single-player mode and on servers. If you want to diversify the usual survival rhythm and add more hardcore elements, increasing the overall difficulty, this option is an excellent choice. We also recommend that every player install another mod we previously reviewed in detail—Second Chance. It gives a “second chance” at survival by slightly blocking critical damage. For example, if you have more than 7 hearts, then after a creeper explosion or taking severe damage, you will retain half a heart and will be able to quickly restore your HP, provided you react fast enough.