Sculk Horde for Fabric 26.2 (Unofficial Port)

Sculk Horde adds a new end-game era: once the ancient sculk horde wakes up, it spreads across the world, infects mobs and blocks, and grows stronger over time until you fight back.

This is an unofficial port of Sculk Horde by Team Peril, taken from Forge 1.20.1 to Fabric on Minecraft 26.2, with a big server performance overhaul.

Everything from the original

• Nearly 30 sculk mobs, including bosses, all with their original animations
• The Gravemind and its evolution stages
• Sculk Nodes, block infestation, and purification
• Sculk raids, ghast deployments, scouting phantoms, and hit squads
• The Soul Harvester, items, tools, effects, and potions
• The Sculk Tomb structure, advancements, music discs, and config options
• JEI support for Soul Harvester recipes, if JEI is installed

Much less server lag

The original mod was known for heavy lag once the infection started. This port fixes the causes rather than turning features off. Measured on a dedicated server with an active horde (2 nodes, about 200 sculk mobs, 150 other mobs, spreading infection):

What changed:

• Harvester bees no longer scan about 2 million blocks every 10 seconds to find a hive. This used 25% of all server time and caused most of the freezes.
• Chunk loading is rewritten. The horde used to force-load chunks and sometimes never release them, so leaked chunks piled up in the world save permanently. Chunks are now held only while the horde needs them, and are never saved as force-loaded.
• Scouting phantoms no longer leave a trail of hundreds of loaded chunks behind them, and no longer plan a full flight path every tick.
• Infection cursors check their surroundings far more efficiently.
• Sculk mobs re-plan chase paths at a vanilla-like pace instead of every tick, and wait before retrying when a target can't be reached.
• Other mobs' horde checks (animals and villagers fleeing, other mobs attacking) are skipped entirely in dimensions with no sculk mobs.

Gameplay is the same as the original.

Server-friendly

• Tested on dedicated servers, with all network syncing checked.
• The dev block warning and /sculkhorde statusall are operator-only.
• If a structure file fails to load, the mod logs it and retries instead of crashing the server.
• Tip for busy servers: an active node keeps a 15×15 chunk area loaded. Lower sculk_node_chunkload_radius in the config to reduce this.

Requirements

• Fabric Loader 0.19.5+
• Fabric API
• GeckoLib 5.5.5+
• Optional: JEI

Compatibility

• Works with Alex's Caves Continued: Sculk Nodes can still be destroyed by nukes, as in the original.
• Forge worlds and Forge addons for Sculk Horde won't carry over. Start the horde fresh in a Fabric world.

Credits

All credit for Sculk Horde's design, art, models, and code goes to Team Peril (source). This port is distributed under the original Apache 2.0 license. Please report bugs in this port here, not to Team Peril.