Netherite Octoarachnopod (The Netherite Spider)

v1.8.5 (latest) — all six builds

• THE BITE HAS A REAL COOLDOWN NOW. 🕰️ Every variant used to be able to hit you once per second, which turned any moment you couldn't break away into a shredder. It's now one bite every 3 seconds — the same for the netherite juggernaut, the camo stalker, the poison tarantula's lunge, the hunter, and the enraged boss. You still lose the fight if you stand there, but you now get a real window to drink, block, or run. Tune it with attackCooldownTicks (default 60 ticks; anything from 10 = twice a second to 120 = once every six seconds).
  • Existing config files update themselves. If you never touched the old value it moves to the new default automatically; if you customised it, your number is kept exactly as-is.
• KEEP IT OUT OF THE DIMENSIONS YOU DON'T WANT IT IN. 🌍 Two new keys decide where the hunt happens. spawnDimensions is the list of the only dimensions it may spawn in — spawnDimensions = "minecraft:overworld" makes it an Overworld-only mod — and blockedDimensions is the opposite, banning it from the ones you name ("minecraft:the_end" = everywhere except the End). Both accept comma-separated lists, work with modded dimensions, and are case-insensitive, so a bare overworld, nether or end is understood. Both are empty by default, so nothing changes unless you set them. This also governs following: it will no longer chase you through a portal into a dimension it isn't allowed in. Spawn eggs and /spider newinstance stay unrestricted, so you can still summon one anywhere on purpose. (Community request.)
• ONE SIZE, IF YOU WANT IT. 📏 New enableGrowth (default true, so nothing changes). Set it to false and every spider — all four variants and the enraged boss — holds one fixed size, fixedSizeBlocks tall (default 2 blocks, floor to the top of its legs): no towering at range, no growing in water, the same size while you ride it. It can still shrink below that to get through a doorway, under a low ceiling or into a 1×1 hole after you, because that is what keeps it out of your walls — it just never grows. Speed follows size, so a fixed-size spider loses its long-range sprint; raise chaseSpeedBlocksPerSecond if you miss it. (Community request.)
• NEW BLOCK: THE WARDING IDOL — a safe zone you can run to. 🛡️ The mod's first craftable block (4 diamonds, 4 deepslate and a netherite ingot, the metal the spider is made of): chiseled deepslate with red eyes watching from every face, glowing as bright as a redstone torch (light level 7). Place it and everything within wardRadius (default 128 blocks, a cylinder from bedrock to sky) is off-limits. No spider spawns inside it, even when it is anchoring on someone else — and the spider physically cannot come in: its body stops one block past the edge, whatever it is doing. Being chased? Run home. Get more than a block inside and it loses you: the chase breaks off at the line, it backs out, and it waits outside to hunt whoever comes back out (or strays into that last block of the edge, where it can still bite). Anyone deeper inside can't be hunted, bitten or blinded. A spider caught inside — the idol woke up around it — runs straight away from the idol until it is out. The enraged boss is the one exception: no idol stops it — it walks right in, and blows apart any idol it gets within 16 blocks of (no crater, but the idol is gone). You chose that fight. A fresh idol takes wardArmingSeconds (default 5 seconds) to wake up, and two idols must be wardMinSpacing apart (default 256 blocks), which is what stops a group carpeting the map. Positions are saved in the world folder, so your base stays protected while its chunks are unloaded — an offline base is exactly when it matters. Switch the whole feature off with wardEnabled = false. (Community request: "a protective pole… so our time at base is mostly peaceful, while exploring the rest of the world is scary.")
• THE SPIDER LASER POINTER, AND THE DEBUG VIEW FROM THE VIDEOS. 🔴 Two things people kept asking after watching Cymaera's originals. The Spider Laser Pointer (creative only, no recipe — a black barrel with a red emitter) replaces the old carrot-on-a-stick following: right-click and the spider scurries to wherever the dot lands, up to laserPointerRange (64 blocks) away, for laserPointerLureSeconds (4) per click. It outranks a chase, so the pointer genuinely pulls it off a player — and because chasing the dot is not hunting, it will not bite while distracted. And /spider debug switches on Cymaera's debug view from those videos, rebuilt from his own code with the same parts in the same places: gold bars where each leg looks for ground, cyan trigger zones (red when a leg is stretched too far), feet in diamond (planted), lapis (touching) or redstone (in the air), lime glass step targets, and the green outline of the feet holding it up, with its centre of mass and normal force inside. Run it again to switch it off. (It can't be bound to F3: F3 is client-side state, and everything this mod draws is server-side so that it works for vanilla clients.)
• ITS OWN CREATIVE TAB. 🗂️ Everything the mod adds — the spawn egg, the Warding Idol, the Spider Tamer, the laser pointer and the config book — now sits together in an ArachnoMod tab, so it is easy to find in creative. They still appear in their usual vanilla tabs too.
• IN-GAME SETTINGS: THE SPIDER CONFIG BOOK. 📖 No more hunting through commands. Right-click the book for a screen with every setting, grouped by category with a search box: hover one for what it does, its default and its range; type or toggle a new value; ↺ puts that one back to its default, and Reset ALL puts everything back (it asks first). Edits go through the same checks as /spider config and save to the config file instantly. It works on servers too: operators (and the owner of a single-player world) can change things, everyone else gets a read-only view. Operators are handed one on their first join (giveConfigBook, default on); it is in the creative tab, and /spider menu opens the same screen. (Community request: "a UI config... with a desc and a reset settings.")