Hollow Steve 2.0.0

Hollow Steve 2.0.0 is a major update that turns each encounter into a full progression challenge. Hollow Steve can follow sounds, choose targets in multiplayer, interact with the environment, give personal rewards, and return stronger in New Game+. Most features can be adjusted in the server config.

Added

• A hearing system. Breaking blocks, using blocks or items, and sprinting can reveal a player's location.
• Smarter multiplayer targeting based on nearby threats and damage dealt.
• A boss bar that shows the current phase and rage level to nearby players.
• Personal rewards for every eligible online player, including Creative and Spectator players.
• A reward recovery system for loot that is destroyed, unsafe, left behind in a loaded dimension, or dropped near the void.
• A sleep trap. Sleeping is canceled, a Creeper may appear near the bed, and one of ten random horror messages is shown.
• The ability for Hollow Steve to open doors, gates, and trapdoors and break selected light sources in later phases.
• The final advancement, Alone Again, for defeating phase 10.
• New Game+ with configurable health, damage, and speed increases.
• Server configuration for hunts, horror events, AI, hearing, multiplayer scaling, difficulty, rewards, environment effects, the boss bar, and endgame features.
• Protection against multiple real Hollow Steve encounters running at the same time.
• New swimming and jumping animations.
• Cross-dimension hunts that continue through the Overworld, Nether, End, and compatible modded dimensions while preserving the active encounter.

Changed

• Hollow Steve now follows the last location he saw or heard instead of always knowing the player's current position.
• Creative and Spectator players can watch encounters and receive rewards, but they are not attacked and do not increase multiplayer difficulty.
• Hollow Steve grows from a distant watcher into a hunter, an ambusher, and finally a three-stage enraged boss.
• Each victory gives useful supplies for the next phase without making the next fight too easy.
• Jumping and teleporting now have a short warning and require a safe landing space.
• Hollow Steve now swims toward his target while using the swimming animation.
• When a player is within the configured jump range, Hollow Steve can leap diagonally toward them using the jumping animation. Otherwise, he continues chasing normally.
• Sleeping is blocked by default, but every part of the sleep trap can be changed in the config.
• Existing config files are updated after they load successfully so new options become visible.
• The phase 10 victory package now includes five stacks of diamond blocks, six stacks of netherite blocks, two stacks of iron blocks, and four stacks of enchanted golden apples.

Fixed

• Every legitimate Hollow Steve death now invalidates older unloaded encounters, preventing stale bosses from skipping progression or duplicating rewards.
• Dead Hollow Steve entities now stop all combat, environment, vehicle, horror, and enrage processing while their death animation finishes.
• Hollow Steve can now breathe underwater, preventing water pursuit from ending in an unintended drowning victory.
• Vehicle destruction now enforces its enable switch, minimum phase, allowed vehicle types, and mobGriefing rule from every attack path.
• nightmaresBeforeHuntOnly now restores normal sleeping after the configured hunt begins.
• Reward recovery now checks deliveries only at the configured interval and relocates only missing, unsafe, cross-dimension, or distant items.
• Operator command messages now use translation keys, and the build validates every literal translation key referenced by Java code.
• Reward recovery no longer copies item entities that Minecraft has persisted into an unloaded chunk; the original item remains available when that chunk loads again.
• GeckoLib compatibility is constrained to major version 5 so incompatible future APIs are rejected during mod resolution.
• Safe teleport now uses the exact checked landing height and validates it again after the teleport warning.
• Reset, phase-setting, and New Game+ now invalidate persistent encounters stored in unloaded chunks.
• Apparitions now vanish safely when their player logs out, is removed, or changes dimension.
• Non-damaging apparitions can no longer destroy Creative players' vehicles.
• Vehicle destruction now respects mobGriefing and is limited to boats and minecarts unless modded vehicles are explicitly enabled.
• Door interaction is limited to tagged doors, trapdoors, and fence gates instead of changing every modded block with an open property.
• Anti-shelter block breaking ignores modded blocks by default and can be enabled explicitly for modded blocks.
• Reward recovery now clears immediately when disabled, while configured Spectators receive rewards directly in their inventory.
• Sleep traps no longer replace daytime, occupied-bed, or exploding-dimension bed behavior.
• Stalking resets safely when its target becomes invalid or the encounter transfers dimensions.
• Multiplayer rewards can no longer be taken by only one player or duplicated as shared loot.
• Creative and Spectator players are no longer selected as attack targets, including after attacking Hollow Steve.
• Changing targets no longer keeps information from the previous target.
• Losing sight of a player no longer gives Hollow Steve unfair real-time tracking.
• Jumping, teleporting, and stalking no longer overlap or ignore their cooldowns.
• Personal rewards keep their owner and can be recovered while actively tracked during the current server session; chunk-persisted items remain at their saved location.
• Hollow Steve no longer heals unexpectedly after the world or config is reloaded.
• Apparitions, anomalies, and sleep traps now use separate settings and behavior.
• Spawn and teleport checks now use the entity's full height.
• Players who are far apart can no longer create multiple bosses that duplicate phases or rewards.
• Rewards that disappear while their owner is offline are no longer treated as collected.
• Spectator rewards wait quietly until the player leaves Spectator mode.
• Temporary event data is cleared when the server stops, preventing it from leaking into another world.
• Block breaking respects the mobGriefing game rule and protects blocks with stored data by default.
• Door, light, and shelter checks run less often to reduce unnecessary server work.
• Repeatedly clicking a bed can no longer create unlimited Creepers.
• Sleep-trap Creepers only spawn when there is enough free space.
• Multiplayer threat levels now decrease correctly over time.
• Creative and Spectator players can no longer hold an encounter open by repeatedly making noise.
• Reset, phase-setting, and New Game+ commands remove the previous encounter before changing progression.
• Emergency teleports are no longer delayed by the normal teleport cooldown when a target is too far away.
• Doors and light sources are now detected along Hollow Steve's path instead of only directly around its feet.
• Opening a door no longer prevents nearby light sources from being processed during the same environment action.
• Bed interactions now trigger the sleep trap directly, preventing short sleep attempts from being missed between server ticks.
• Creative players now experience configurable horror anomalies and non-damaging apparitions while remaining excluded from hunt targeting and difficulty scaling.
• Hunt days are now counted from the first time Hollow Steve is installed in a world instead of using the world's existing age; changing the vanilla time no longer skips progression days.
• Phase encounters now introduce PHASE 1 through PHASE 10 with native fade timing, followed by Hollow Steve's message; shorter horror messages remain in the action bar.
• Targets that log out, die, or switch to a protected game mode now end or redirect the encounter safely instead of leaving stale pursuit state.
• Long-distance and stalled pursuits now retry bounded safe teleports, respect the world border, and reschedule the same phase after repeated failure without force-loading chunks.
• Multiplayer difficulty now counts only active huntable players near the encounter target instead of players in distant dimensions or unrelated parts of the world.
• Phase titles, Hollow Steve's encounter messages, intro notices, apparition warnings, victory text, and boss-bar names now use translation keys so resource packs can replace or localize them.
• Changing dimension now transfers the same Hollow Steve encounter to a safe loaded position near its target while preserving phase, health percentage, enrage state, and important cooldowns.

Removed

• The shared reward pile at Hollow Steve's death location.
• Overpowered rewards that made the next phase too easy.
• Unfair tracking that followed players without sight or sound clues.
• Old behavior that caused Hollow Steve to stop being a threat in water or after losing sight of a player.

Notes

• The config file is created at config/hollowsteve.json.
• After editing the config, run /hollowsteve reloadconfig.
• Hunts begin on Day 3 by default. This can be set from Day 1 to Day 30.
• /hollowsteve newgameplus becomes available after phase 10 is completed.
• Reward items remain normal world entities after a server restart. Active reward recovery only tracks deliveries created during the current server session.