Golem Gladiators 1.6.3 — Full Changelog

Combined changelog covering all updates since version 1.1.4, including the October 3, 2026 updates from 1.5.0 through 1.6.3.

Commands and Combat

• Added territory-based Patrol behavior with configurable range, line-of-sight checks, and return-to-post navigation.

• Patrol targets hostile mobs and eligible non-owner players while respecting server PvP settings.

• Villagers, peaceful mobs, owners, and their pets are protected. Neutral mobs are targeted only while aggressive.

• Fixed Follow with regular pathfinding updates and collision-safe long-distance teleporting.

• Fixed Stay so idle wandering no longer overrides the command.

• Added healing after kills based on the health damage caused by the defeated enemy, capped at the golem’s maximum health.

• Added skeleton retaliation: four damaging hits from the same skeleton, stray, or wither skeleton trigger a rock throw.

• Added synchronized wind-up, held-rock, release, and recovery animations.

• Increased default rock damage to 24 health points (12 hearts), enough to defeat a standard full-health, unarmored skeleton in one hit.

• Rocks respect ownership and peaceful-mob protections, never damage terrain, and do not drop farmable cobblestone.

Loot Inventory and Death Reports

• Added an owner-only 27-slot loot inventory with shift-click support, a health bar, and storage occupancy information.

• Drops from mobs killed by the golem are collected automatically, including thrown-rock kills.

• Full inventories leave excess drops on the ground.

• Fixed unexpected inventory closure and HUD changes.

• Added death-report books containing the golem’s name, owner, command, killer, damage cause, coordinates, and dimension.

• Projectile death reports identify the shooter; environmental deaths are reported separately.

• Preserved ownership, equipment, stored loot, and combat data through saving and loading.

• Death drops respect Forge cancellation and other mods’ drop handling.

Gauntlet Models and Purple Eyes

• Rebuilt both gauntlet variants around the golem’s actual arm dimensions.

• Added fitted cuffs, shaped palm armor, separate finger segments, and mirrored thumbs.

• Added a shared 128×128 texture atlas at 32× texel density, with detailed metal and inset materials.

• Improved geometry and addressed overlapping-face flicker risks.

• Preserved normal world lighting and damage tint without requiring custom shaders or fullbright rendering.

• Added purple eyes to player-built golems while preserving their face and head movement.

• Fixed missing gauntlets and purple eyes when Epic Fight replaces the Iron Golem renderer.

Chunk Loading

• Tamed golems now keep a moving 3×3 chunk area active by default, including while their owner is offline, as long as the world or server is running.

• Added configurable enablement, loading radius, and a maximum number of chunk-loading companions per dimension.

• Chunk tickets persist through saves and are released after death, removal, dimension changes, or disabling the feature.

• Added saved-lease validation and cleanup of missing companions.

• Optimized ticket handling to avoid repeated requests while a golem remains stationary.

Experience and XP Belt

• Enemies killed by tamed golems now reward XP, including thrown-rock kills, without duplicating player-assisted rewards.

• Added a slim black-metal 3D XP belt with a green buckle and materials matching the gauntlets.

• The belt stores up to 640 raw XP points, shared between its reserve and four bucket slots.

• Each bucket holds up to 160 points. Partial buckets can be withdrawn or topped up through later eligible hostile-mob kills.

• XP buckets can be consumed to receive their exact stored experience and recover an empty bucket.

• Excess experience drops as normal XP orbs when the belt is full.

• Belt contents persist when saving, unequipping, transferring between golems, or recovering the belt after a golem’s death.

• Added 32×32 item sprites for the belt and XP bucket.

• XP rewards respect doMobLoot and Forge event cancellation or reward modifications.

• Added safeguards against excessive supplemental XP rewards.

Important: 160 points is enough to advance from level 0 to level 10. It does not grant ten levels at every starting level. Four buckets store 640 points—not a fixed 40 levels. Experience is stored and consumed as exact points.

Equipment Menu and Crafting

• Simplified the equipment menu to show only gauntlet and belt slots, alongside the loot inventory.

• Armor stored in retired equipment slots is returned to the owner when opening the menu.

• Empty-hand right-click opens an equipped XP belt.

• Sneak + empty-hand right-click opens equipment and loot storage.

• Without a belt equipped, ordinary empty-hand right-click opens equipment.

• Added the belt recipe: iron ingot in slot 4, emerald in slot 5, and iron ingot in slot 6.

• The belt and both gauntlet variants use standard crafting recipes compatible with JEI.

• JEI remains optional.

XP Indicator Vines

• Golem vines now reflect the experience stored in an equipped belt:

  • 0 points: charcoal black.

  • 320 points: dark forest green.

  • 640 points: lighter, soft jade green.

• Colors transition gradually and darken again when experience is withdrawn.

• Replaced the initial fluorescent green with a more natural, restrained palette.

• Preserved vine texture detail, normal world lighting, and animated movement.

• The effect does not recolor the golem’s body or yellow flowers.

• Golems without a belt retain their original vines.

• Added the local experienceVines setting in golemgladiators-client.toml. Disabling the visual effect does not disable XP storage.

Fresh Animations Compatibility

• Added support for Fresh Animations 1.10.4 and FA+ All Extensions 1.8.1.

• Gauntlets follow the pack’s actual animated arms rather than empty vanilla attachment points.

• The XP belt follows the independently animated waist with a fitted offset.

• Held rocks follow the animated right hand.

• Purple pupils follow animated eye positions, visibility, and blinking.

• XP vines follow the actual animated body, waist, arms, and legs without repainting hats or facial details.

• Preserved vanilla rendering when the optional animation pack is absent.

• Tested using EMF 3.3.9 and ETF 7.2.4 for Forge 1.20.1.

• Resource packs and optional animation engines are not bundled with the mod.

Optimization and Compatibility

• Cached animated attachment paths and waist offsets to avoid repeated render-time hierarchy searches.

• Vine masks are generated and cached during resource reloads rather than every frame.

• Rendering uses ordinary world lighting without requiring custom shaders.

• Unsupported models, alternate skin locations, and incompatible texture layouts are guarded instead of being overwritten.

• XP appearance synchronization sends small updates only when experience changes, at most once every ten ticks, and when a player starts tracking the golem.

• Nearby players no longer receive private belt contents through equipment appearance packets.

• Visual XP values cannot modify stored experience.

• Reduced death-attribution bookkeeping to relevant belt-equipped golem kills.

• No new mandatory animation library or shader dependency.

Verification

• Passed 88 automated server tests.

• Passed connected-client checks with and without Fresh Animations.

• Passed a combined test with Fresh Animations, All Extensions, EMF, ETF, JEI, and Epic Fight.

• Checked equipment removal and re-equipping, inventory stability, XP belt filling and withdrawal, vine synchronization, resource reloads, Follow, and Stay.

• Verified gauntlet geometry, nested model attachments, waist fit, visibility handling, and vanilla fallback.

• Visually inspected actual in-game equipment and all three vine-color stages.

Installation Notes

Requires Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge 47.4.10, and Java 17.

Back up your world and install 1.6.3 on both client and server. Keep only one Golem Gladiators JAR installed. Older clients using previous network protocols are incompatible.

For Fresh Animations, install the appropriate client-side animation engines and enable All Extensions above Fresh Animations.

Compatibility checks do not guarantee support for every shader, custom model, resource pack, OptiFine configuration, or complete modpack. Chunk loading has a server performance cost and does not bypass vanilla player-distance requirements for natural mob spawning.