Mortal Golems

Iron Golems are no longer immortal.

In vanilla Minecraft, Iron Golems are practically indestructible — they don't drown, they're immune to fall damage, and they never age. This leads to a common server problem: dozens of forgotten golems accumulate underwater, in caves, or in inaccessible places, slowly overloading the server with useless entities that never despawn. Your iron farms keep spawning golems that get trapped and pile up forever, eating server resources for nothing.

Mortal Golems fixes this. Golems now degrade over time, drown underwater, and take fall damage like any other mob. They become a resource that requires active maintenance — repair them with iron ingots, or let them rust away. No more immortal iron statues clogging up your world.

Features

🗡️ Fall Damage

Iron Golems now take fall damage like any other mob. No more dropping them from heights without consequence.

🌊 Drowning

Iron Golems now lose air underwater and can drown. The vanilla immunity to drowning is removed.

⏳ Aging Degradation

Iron Golems slowly deteriorate over time:

4 HP damage per in-game day (configurable)
~25 day lifespan with 100 HP base health
Visual iron block particle effects when degradation ticks
Catch-up logic: if a chunk is unloaded while the server runs, accumulated damage is applied when the chunk reloads (capped at 5 days to prevent instant death)
Players must repair golems with iron ingots to keep them alive

🔧 Configuration

All values are editable via config/mortal_golems.json:

{
  "damagePerDay": 4.0,
  "maxCatchupDays": 5,
  "checkIntervalTicks": 20,
  "enableFallDamage": true,
  "enableDrowning": true,
  "enableAging": true
}

Hot-reload with /mortalgolems reload — no server restart needed.

💬 Commands

Available to all players:

Command	Description
`/mortalgolems`	Shows mod status and active configuration
`/mortalgolems scan`	Scans Iron Golems within 50 blocks — HP, days remaining, crack state, position
`/mortalgolems reload`	Reloads configuration from JSON

Installation

Requirements

Minecraft 26.2
Fabric Loader 0.19.3+
Fabric API 0.153.0+

Server

Download mortal-golems-<version>.jar from Releases
Place it in your server's mods/ folder
Restart the server
(Optional) Edit config/mortal_golems.json to customize

Client

This is a server-side only mod. No client installation needed.

FAQ

Q: Do server restarts cause damage to golems? A: No. The mod uses in-game time (getGameTime()), which only advances while the server is running. Restarts cause zero damage.

Q: What happens if a chunk is unloaded for a long time? A: When the chunk reloads, accumulated damage is applied with a configurable cap (default: 5 days max). This prevents instant death from long absences.

Q: Can I disable specific features? A: Yes. Set enableFallDamage, enableDrowning, or enableAging to false in the config.

Q: Is this compatible with other mods? A: Yes. Mortal Golems uses standard Fabric mixins and data-driven tags. It should be compatible with most mods.

Building from Source

git clone https://github.com/cmarfil/MortalGolems.git
cd MortalGolems
./gradlew build

The output JAR will be in build/libs/.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

Author

cmarfil — GitHub