Overview

Every animal and monster you kill raises your personal Retaliation Level. Mobs that spawn near you afterwards get more health, armor, weapons, dodging, counterattacks and teleports, and some of them shoot arrows. As your level rises you also unlock retaliation skills that affect you directly: slowness, lightning, setting you on fire and more.

Player Levels

25 kills = 1 level, up to level 25 (625 kills).

A kill counts only if the victim is a monster (the game's "monster" family) or one of these 16 animals: cow, pig, sheep, chicken, horse, donkey, mule, wolf, rabbit, goat, fox, llama, polar bear, panda, cat, ocelot.

Bosses are excluded entirely: Ender Dragon, Wither, Warden, Elder Guardian.

Kills are stored per player in world data and survive death.

Leveling up shows a title and sound to you and announces it in chat. It also announces any skill you just unlocked.

Level     Skill

  5      Killing a mob/animal: 10% chance you get Slowness I for 5 s

10    Hitting a mob/animal below 60% health: 50% chance it bounces back to
        full health. Rolled once per mob, can happen only once.

15 A mob that hits or shoots you: 7% chance you catch fire for 5 s

20 Killing an animal: 10% chance it drops nothing

 25 Killing a mob/animal: 2% chance lightning strikes you

The Retaliate Item

A red enchant-glow book, stack size 1.

 when you join and every time you respawn. It is re-given if missing.

Locked in your inventory (can't be dropped) and kept on death.

Using it (right-click or tap-and-hold) opens the menu: your level and kills, kills to next level, stats of mobs spawning near you at your level, the skill list with locked/unlocked status, and every online player's level.