Awakened Mobs

2026-09-02 — Modded weapons get the smart AI

Mobs armed by other mods can now guard, parry and dodge. Until now the defensive AI recognised only a fixed list of item types — vanilla swords and axes plus Epic Fight's own weapons — so a zombie holding, say, a Tinkers' Construct sword simply stood there and took the hit.

• Any melee weapon counts now. A mob's held item is judged by the attack damage it declares rather than by which mod's class it happens to extend, so weapons from Tinkers' Construct and other mods with their own item hierarchies are picked up automatically — no per-mod patches.
• Tridents defend too. Vanilla's own trident was missing from the old list.
• Pickaxes, shovels and hoes still don't count. They carry attack damage but are not weapons. Axes remain weapons, as before.
• Pack authors get an override. Put any item in the #awakenedmobs:melee_weapons item tag to force it to count, for the rare weapon that deals its damage in a way the automatic check cannot see. The tag ships empty.
• The check stays off the hot path. Defence is now tested only on hits that actually come from a player, so fire, fall, drowning and mob-on-mob damage no longer inspect the mob's weapon at all.