Renner's Zombie Overhaul

Renner Zombie Overhaul transforms Minecraft 1.20.1 into a harsh, slowly escalating zombie apocalypse. The world starts quiet, with very few zombies, but every day makes survival more difficult. Zombies grow stronger, shelters become vulnerable, and resources must be scavenged from the dead.

This is an early beta. Feedback, bug reports, balancing suggestions, screenshots, and videos are welcome.

Features

• Replaces normal zombies with custom apocalypse zombies.
• Removes other hostile monster types, making zombies the main threat.
• Removes baby zombies.
• Zombies survive daylight.
• Natural zombie spawning begins very low:
  • Day 0: 1% spawn chance
  • Spawn chance rises by 1% each day
  • Maximum natural spawn chance: 35%
• Zombies have randomized health from 0.5× to 2× normal health.
• Zombies have different speed types, from slow walkers to dangerous fast zombies.
• Zombies become stronger every day:
  • Health and damage increase by 2% per day.
  • Speed increases by 0.4% per day.

Smarter zombie behavior

• Zombies detect players through direct line of sight.
• Trees, walls, and solid cover block visual detection.
• Crouching makes players much harder to detect.
• Zombies remember players briefly after losing sight.
• Zombies hear movement, combat, doors, chests, furnaces, buttons, levers, and other interactions.
• Rain weakens zombie hearing.
• Zombies can investigate sounds they hear.

Shelter breaching

• Groups of zombies can break into enclosed player shelters.
• Four or more zombies can begin a breach.
• Zombies mine common construction blocks such as logs, planks, and cobblestone.
• Strong blocks such as obsidian and stone bricks are protected.
• Larger groups can make larger openings:
  • 4+ zombies: one-block breach
  • 8+ zombies: two-block breach
  • 20+ zombies: wide breach
• Zombies should rush through an opening after breaking in.
• Zombies only breach when the player is inside a real shelter with walls and a roof, avoiding random tunneling through natural terrain.

Swarm climbing

• Zombies can stack together to reach players on raised platforms, ledges, and poles.
• Climbing requires zombie support below them instead of allowing single zombies to climb freely.
• Hiding high above the ground is not always safe.

Bed raids and progression loot

• After killing a player, nearby zombies can target and destroy that player’s respawn bed.
• Zombies drop 0–2 rotten flesh.
• Zombies can also drop useful survival resources, including gunpowder, blaze powder, iron, string, bones, spider eyes, and quartz.
• Ancient debris is an extremely rare zombie drop.
• The Nether and End are locked; their resources are intended to be found through rare zombie drops instead.

Beta status

This mod is still in active development. Horde systems, large-group behavior, advanced sound events, breaching across different house designs, climbing on tall structures, and performance with huge groups are still being tested and balanced.

Installation

Requires:

• Minecraft Java Edition 1.20.1
• Forge 47.4.28 or compatible Forge 1.20.1 version
• Java 17 or newer

Feedback

When reporting a bug, please include:

• Minecraft, Forge, and mod version
• Single-player or multiplayer/server
• What happened and what you expected
• Steps to reproduce the issue
• Screenshots, video, latest.log, or crash report if available