🛡️ Shielded Zombies

Shielded Zombies makes Minecraft's undead far more dangerous by giving zombie-type mobs the ability to spawn with shields and actually use them in combat.

Instead of simply carrying a shield, a shielded zombie can raise it to block incoming attacks from players, forcing you to change your strategy. Think you can just rush in with a sword? You might want to bring an axe.

🧟 What Does It Do?

Shielded Zombies adds shield mechanics to:

Zombies
Husks
Drowned
Zombie Villagers
Zombified Piglins
Other compatible vanilla zombie variants

Zombies have a configurable chance to spawn with a shield in their offhand, allowing them to continue using their normal weapon.

🛡️ They Actually Block

This isn't just an equipment change.

Shielded zombies can actively:

Detect threats and face attacking players
Raise their shield when defending themselves
Block incoming attacks
Stop blocking when the threat passes
Move while blocking
Have their shields disabled by axes
Lose their shield permanently if it breaks

🪓 Bring an Axe

Axes can disable a zombie's shield, giving players a reliable way to break through their defenses.

However, shield disabling isn't permanent. After the cooldown expires, the zombie can raise its shield again.

✨ Enchanted Shields

Shielded zombies can spawn with enchanted shields.

Supported enchantments include:

Unbreaking I
Unbreaking II
Unbreaking III
Mending

Each enchantment can have its own configurable weight/chance.

⚙️ Configuration

The mod is designed to be highly configurable.

You can control:

Shield spawn chance
Shield spawn chance for individual zombie variants
Chance for shields to be enchanted
Unbreaking I weight
Unbreaking II weight
Unbreaking III weight
Mending weight

For example, you could make normal Zombies commonly spawn with shields while making Drowned shields extremely rare.

All settings are stored in a Forge .toml configuration file.

⚔️ Shield Durability

Shields use normal Minecraft durability mechanics.

They can:

Take durability damage while blocking
Benefit from Unbreaking
Benefit from Mending
Eventually break

When a zombie's shield breaks, it loses the ability to block and doesn't receive a replacement shield.

🔧 Technical Details

Minecraft: 1.20.1
Mod Loader: Forge
Dependencies: None

Shielded Zombies is designed to be lightweight and suitable for modded multiplayer and zombie-apocalypse servers.

The mod avoids unnecessary entity scanning and expensive per-tick operations wherever possible, while using Minecraft's existing combat and shield mechanics when appropriate.

The goal is simple:

Make zombies that don't just attack you — make zombies that can defend themselves.