Golem Gladiators 1.4.0 — Complete Changelog Since 1.1.4

For Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge 47.4.10, and Java 17.

This release combines all changes developed after version 1.1.4, including Patrol mode, death reports, inventory and loot storage, combat healing, skeleton retaliation, improved targeting, new 3D gauntlets, and purple eyes.

Patrol and Guardian Behavior

• Reworked the previous Wander command into a complete Patrol mode.

• Commands now cycle through Follow → Stay → Patrol by sneak-right-clicking the bonded golem with a stick.

• Patrol operates within a configurable territory around the location where the command was given.

• The default patrol radius is 16 blocks and can be changed with wanderRadius.

• Patrol targets visible hostile mobs such as zombies, skeletons, creepers, and other enemies.

• Neutral mobs are attacked only while actively aggressive.

• Calm neutral mobs are released instead of being chased indefinitely.

• Villagers, peaceful animals, and other non-hostile mobs are protected in Follow, Stay, and Patrol modes.

• Protected mobs also cannot be damaged by the golem’s melee attacks or rock projectiles.

• Eligible non-owner Survival and Adventure players can still be attacked when:

  • Server PvP is enabled.
  • patrolAttackPlayers is enabled.
  • The player is not the owner.
  • The player is not in Creative or Spectator mode.

• The owner, the owner’s tamed animals, and golems bonded to the same owner are protected.

• Invisible targets are ignored.

• Patrol requires line of sight.

• Targets must remain inside the patrol territory.

• Displaced golems stop pursuing enemies outside their territory and return toward their patrol post.

• Switching away from Patrol clears the golem’s current target and anger.

• Target searches and navigation updates are staggered to reduce unnecessary server work.

• Existing saved Wander commands automatically become Patrol commands.

Golem Inventory

• Added an owner-only Iron Golem inventory.

• The interface contains:

  • Five equipment slots.
  • 27 collected-loot slots.
  • A live health bar.
  • A storage occupancy counter.
  • Shift-click item transfer support.

• The inventory opens by right-clicking your bonded golem with an empty hand.

• Only the owner can open and use the inventory.

• Invalid, dead, missing, or out-of-range golems cannot keep the menu open.

• Fixed an issue where the inventory could close automatically.

• Fixed the inventory test controller accidentally activating an F1-style hidden HUD state.

• The inventory can now remain open normally without changing the HUD.

Automatic Loot Collection

• Bonded golems collect item drops from mobs they personally kill.

• Drops from both melee kills and rock-projectile kills can be collected.

• Loot is inserted only after the dropped item entities actually exist.

• This prevents duplicated or phantom items when another mod cancels a drop.

• Full inventories leave excess items on the ground.

• Partial stacks are inserted when space is available, with the remainder left in the world.

• The system does not collect:

  • Experience.
  • Player inventories.
  • Items from unrelated kills.
  • Unrelated items already lying on the ground.

• Stored loot persists after saving and reloading.

• Stored items are returned when the golem dies.

• Loot storage is returned independently of the equipment-drop configuration.

• Other mods can still cancel the final death drops.

Kill Healing

• Bonded golems recover health after killing an enemy.
• Healing is based on the actual health damage caused by that specific enemy.
• Damage is tracked independently for each attacker.
• Damage removed by armor, absorption, or canceled events is not counted as lost health.
• Healing cannot exceed the golem’s maximum health.
• If an enemy caused no recorded health damage, killing it restores two health points—one heart—by default.
• The fallback healing amount is configurable.
• Combat memory is limited to the 64 most recent damaging enemies to prevent unbounded data growth.
• Damage records persist across saving and reloading.

Skeleton Rock Retaliation

• Skeletons, strays, and wither skeletons can trigger a rock counterattack.
• Four successful health-damaging hits from the same skeleton trigger the throw.
• Hits from different skeletons cannot be combined.
• Fully absorbed or canceled hits do not count.
• The system supports separate retaliation counters for multiple skeletons.
• Only two retaliations can be queued per enemy.
• Completed throws have a two-second cooldown.
• Interrupted throws do not consume the accumulated hit counter before release.

Rock Projectile

• Added a real 3D projectile with collision detection.
• Added synchronized wind-up, raised-rock, release, and recovery animation stages.
• The golem holds a visible cobblestone rock during the animation.
• The rock rotates while flying.
• Rock impacts produce stone particles and sound.
• Rocks require line of sight and a target within 32 blocks.
• Patrol territory and ownership protections apply to thrown rocks.
• Rocks pass protected peaceful entities without damaging them.
• Rocks never break terrain.
• Rocks do not drop farmable cobblestone.
• Missed rocks expire after four seconds.
• Rock kills are correctly attributed to the golem for healing and loot collection.
• A lethal rock hit no longer interrupts the recovery animation.
• The recovery animation continues through tick 23 and returns to idle at tick 24.
• A golem cannot throw a second rock at an already-dead target.

Increased Rock Damage

• Default rock damage increased from eight to 24 health points—12 hearts—before armor.
• One rock now kills a standard, full-health, unarmored skeleton.
• Armor, resistance effects, custom mob health, or a customized damage value can change the result.
• Gauntlets continue to multiply melee damage only; they do not multiply rock damage.

Death-Report Books

• Bonded golems drop a readable Golem Death Report when they die.

• The report records:

  • Golem name.
  • Owner name and UUID.
  • Current command.
  • Killer name and UUID.
  • Damage cause.
  • Death coordinates.
  • Dimension.
  • World day.

• Projectile deaths identify the shooter.

• Environmental deaths are recorded separately.

• A recent attacker is not incorrectly shown as the direct killer.

• Canceled deaths and totem rescues do not create a report.

• The report survives the explosion or fire that killed the golem.

• Death reports remain ordinary dropped books:

  • Any player can collect them.
  • Normal item despawn still applies.
  • This release does not create an unbreakable sign.

• Equipment and death reports use Forge’s captured death-drop system, improving compatibility with other mods that alter or cancel drops.

Rebuilt 3D Gauntlets

• Completely rebuilt the gauntlet model around the Iron Golem’s real arm dimensions.

• Replaced the old oversized block appearance with fitted armor.

• Added:

  • Narrow fitted cuffs.
  • Leather lining and joint seams.
  • Overlapping metal plates.
  • Shaped palm armor.
  • Four separately segmented fingers.
  • Proper mirrored thumbs.
  • Knuckle plates and material inlays.
  • Distinct iron and diamond details.

• Each hand uses 45 carefully fitted cuboids.

• Gauntlets follow their corresponding arms during normal movement and rock-throwing animations.

• Left and right hands use correctly mirrored geometry.

• Removed overlapping coplanar surfaces that could cause edge flickering or z-fighting.

• Kept the silhouette close to the vanilla golem’s arm size.

• Gauntlets use normal Minecraft entity lighting and damage tint.

• No fullbright or translucent rendering pass is used.

• No external animation or shader library is required.

New Gauntlet Textures

• Added a shared 128×128 texture atlas.

• Model UV density is equivalent to 32 texels per block.

• The atlas contains dedicated materials for:

  • Dark forged steel.
  • Brushed iron.
  • Faceted cyan diamond.
  • Worn leather.

• Textures are fully opaque to avoid transparent-edge artifacts.

• UV regions have safety margins to reduce texture bleeding.

• One shared material render is used for both hands to keep rendering efficient.

• The original item icons remain available for inventory and recipe displays.

Purple Eyes

• Player-built Iron Golems now have purple irises.
• Naturally spawned village golems retain their original red eyes.
• Only the iris pixels are changed.
• The original pupils and face texture remain visible.
• Purple eyes follow the golem’s head movement.
• The eye layer uses regular scene lighting instead of an always-bright emissive effect.
• No additional entity texture, capability, or synchronization packet is required.

Flower Taming

• Eligible player-built Iron Golems can be bonded using any item in the Minecraft flowers tag.
• Flower taming works with standard flowers and compatible modded flowers using #minecraft:flowers.
• Natural Iron Golem taming remains configurable through allowNaturallySpawnedGolemTaming.
• Existing ownership data remains compatible.

Recipes and JEI

• Added crafting recipes for Iron Golem Gauntlets.
• Added an upgrade recipe for Diamond Golem Gauntlets.
• Recipes appear automatically in JEI when JEI is installed.
• JEI remains optional and is not required to run the mod.

Configuration

Added or expanded the following configuration options:

• wanderRadius
  • Controls Patrol territory and detection radius.
• patrolAttackPlayers
  • Allows eligible non-owner player targets when server PvP is enabled.
• golemDeathReportOnDeath
  • Enables death-report books.
• golemEquipmentDropsOnDeath
  • Controls equipped-item drops.
• collectMobLoot
  • Enables automatic collection of the golem’s mob drops.
• healOnKill
  • Enables healing after defeating enemies.
• minimumKillHeal
  • Controls fallback healing when the defeated enemy caused no recorded damage.
• skeletonRockCounterattack
  • Enables skeleton rock retaliation.
• rockDamage
  • Controls rock projectile damage.

Configuration Migration

• Previous default configurations containing exactly rockDamage = 8.0 automatically migrate to 24.0 once.
• Other customized rock-damage values are preserved.
• After migration, you may deliberately configure the value back to 8.0.
• Leave rockDamageRevision = 1 unchanged after migration.

Persistence and Compatibility

• Existing golems preserve:

  • Owner.
  • Owner name.
  • Command.
  • Patrol anchor.
  • Equipment.
  • Stored loot.
  • Combat memory.

• Golems saved before the inventory update begin with empty loot storage without losing ownership or equipment.

• Saved Wander commands become Patrol.

• In 1.4.0, those Patrol golems now protect villagers and peaceful mobs.

• The inventory and network protocol introduced after 1.1.4 is incompatible with older clients.

• Install version 1.4.0 on both client and server.

• JEI is optional.

• Third-party replacement Iron Golem models are preserved, although their custom models may not display the rock-holding animation.

• Shader packs and resource packs that replace the golem model or face layout may require separate testing.

Optimization and Safety

• Target searches are rate-limited and staggered.
• Navigation recalculation uses cooldowns.
• Combat memory is bounded.
• Gauntlet meshes are baked once instead of constructed every frame.
• Both gauntlets share one opaque texture and render material.
• Only small throw-state synchronization packets are sent.
• Inventory data uses Minecraft’s normal container synchronization.
• Client-only tests, server GameTests, and generated test arenas are excluded from the release JAR.

Verification

Version 1.4.0 was verified on September 30, 2026.

• Release build and isolation checks passed.

• All 54 required Forge server GameTests passed.

• One rock successfully killed a standard full-health unarmored skeleton.

• Lethal-impact recovery completed correctly.

• Villager, peaceful-mob, owner, pet, PvP, and neutral-mob protections passed.

• Both iron and diamond gauntlets passed geometry and texture audits.

• Tests verified:

  • Correct dimensions and arm fit.
  • Mirrored hands and thumbs.
  • 45 rendered cuboids per hand.
  • Valid UV boundaries.
  • Outward normals and face winding.
  • Fully opaque 128×128 texture.
  • No overlapping coplanar outward faces.

• Diamond/player-built and iron/natural-golem client sequences rendered correctly.

• Purple player-built eyes and unchanged natural red eyes were visually verified.

• The real golem inventory was reopened twice per client test and stayed open for 200 ticks each time.

• HUD visibility remained unchanged.

Shader packs, third-party replacement models, and complete modpacks are not universally certified. Back up your world before updating.

Upgrade Instructions

1. Back up your world.
2. Remove the old Golem Gladiators 1.1.4 JAR.
3. Install Golem Gladiators 1.4.0 on both the client and server.
4. Keep only one Golem Gladiators JAR in each mods folder.
5. Start the game and allow the rock-damage configuration migration to run.
6. Test important golems in a backed-up world before deploying to a live server.