Zombie Awareness

Overview

Zombie Awareness overhauls hostile mob AI to make survival significantly more challenging. Instead of vanilla Minecraft's simple aggro radius, mobs now track players through three distinct sense systems: blood scent, sound sources, and light awareness. When you take damage, you leave a blood trail. When you mine blocks or open Chests, you create noise. When you place Torches in the open at night, nearby Zombies can spot the light from far away and come to investigate.

By default, the mod enhances Zombies, Skeletons, Witches, and Spiders with these new AI behaviors. Other hostile mobs from vanilla or other mods can be enabled through configuration. The mod also adds optional features like wandering hordes, extra surface and cave spawning, and random speed boosts for Zombies. It requires CoroUtil as a dependency.

The Three Sense Systems

Blood Scent

Whenever you take damage, a blood scent source spawns at your location with a base strength of 60 (configurable via scentStrength). If your health drops below 60% of your maximum, you also passively bleed every 30 seconds, creating additional scent sources even if nothing is actively hitting you. These scent entities persist in the world for 600 ticks (30 seconds) and gradually fade over time. Their effective detection range scales with strength: a strength-60 scent at full age creates a detection radius of about 38 blocks (calculated as strength/100 multiplied by the 64-block max pathfinding range).

If a scent source already exists near you (within a configurable cutoff range, default 1 block), repeated damage buffs the existing source rather than spawning a new one. Rapid damage within 1000 milliseconds applies a stacking 10% multiplier, meaning sustained combat dramatically increases your scent signature. The maximum scent strength is capped at 300.

Sound Sources

The sound system monitors in-game sound events and converts certain ones into trackable sense sources. Mining blocks is the most common trigger, with a 1-in-20 chance per block break tick and a 1-in-3 chance on harvest to create a sound source. The base strength for sound sources is 60 (configurable via soundStrength). Different actions have different sound multipliers that amplify or reduce the base strength.

Explosions are the loudest events with a 3.0x multiplier and 128-block detection range. Pistons produce sound at 2.0x strength with a 128-block range (when enabled). Doors, Gates, Buttons, Levers, and Pressure Plates trigger at 1.3x within 30 blocks. Placing blocks generates 1.3x sound. Eating (player burp sound) creates 1.1x noise, and Note Blocks are detected at 1.3x up to 64 blocks away. Playing Music Discs in a Jukebox creates an extremely powerful sound source with a fixed strength of 300, the maximum allowed value.

Zombie groaning also attracts other Zombies when the Noisy Zombies feature is enabled (on by default), creating 0.8x sound sources at a 48-block range. This means a single Zombie spotting you can call in reinforcements over time.

Light Awareness

During nighttime, Zombies (and optionally other mobs) actively scan for light sources near players. The system checks random positions in progressively larger rings around the closest player (32, 64, 96, and 128 blocks out) and looks for any block with a light level above 4. If a Zombie has line of sight to that light source, or is more than 64 blocks away (with a 1-in-20 chance to bypass the line-of-sight check), it will pathfind toward it.

By default, only Zombies respond to light sources (awareness_Light_OnlyZombies is true). You can change this in the config to make all enhanced mobs light-aware. Light awareness only activates at night, so your Torch placement during the day is safe.

Enhanced Mobs

By default, four mob types receive the enhanced AI: Zombies, Skeletons, Witches, and Spiders. These mobs gain the ability to track sense sources (blood, sound, light) and pathfind toward them from much greater distances than vanilla. The mod also gives extra-spawned Zombies a random speed boost of up to 30% faster than normal (configurable via zombieRandSpeedBoost, default 0.3), making some Zombies noticeably quicker than you might expect.

The enhanced sight range defaults to 16 blocks on top of vanilla's own detection, and the maximum pathfinding range for tracking senses is 64 blocks. Any mob that extends EntityMob or implements IMob can be enabled in the config file located at config/ZombieAwareness/MobLists.cfg. This means mobs from other mods can also receive the enhanced AI, though results vary depending on how those mods implement their mob pathfinding.

Audio Cues

Zombie Awareness adds three custom sound effects that provide critical audio feedback during gameplay. When an enhanced mob first targets you, it plays an alert sound (or an alternate alert sound if soundUseAlternateAlertNoise is enabled in the config). This is your warning that something has spotted you. The target sound plays at the player's position so you always hear it, with a default volume of 0.5. When a mob is investigating a sense source near you (within 6 blocks of your position), you hear a distinct investigate sound at 0.5 volume, alerting you that something is approaching even if you cannot see it yet.

Both alert and investigate sounds have a 60-second cooldown per mob (1200 ticks), preventing audio spam. You can adjust their volumes independently through the soundVolumeAlertTarget and soundVolumeInvestigate config options, or disable them entirely by setting soundAlerts and soundInvestigates to false.

Optional Features

Wandering Hordes

Disabled by default, wandering hordes cause enhanced mobs to group up and roam the surface together. When enabled, each player has a 1-in-100 chance per tick to spawn a waypoint within 256 blocks. This waypoint acts as a sense source that draws nearby mobs to a random location, causing them to cluster and migrate across the terrain. Spider Jockeys (Spiders with Skeleton riders) can also spawn their own waypoints when this feature is active. The result is packs of mobs wandering the landscape, creating dangerous encounter zones.

Extra Surface Spawning

Also disabled by default, this feature spawns additional Zombies on the surface at night. Spawning only occurs when the light level is below 6, the location is between 50 and 100 blocks from the nearest player, and the total surface mob count is below the configurable maximum of 50. Mobs spawn in groups of up to 3 and receive the random speed boost. You can change this to use the biome's natural spawn list instead of just Zombies by enabling extraSpawningUseNaturalSpawnList, which could include hostile mobs from other mods.

Extra Cave Spawning

Disabled by default, this spawns additional mobs in caves where existing Zombies are present. It checks for dark cave locations (light level below 5, underground, on Stone) within 50 to 100 blocks of the player. Cave groups can be up to 5 mobs and the system makes 15 attempts per tick to find valid spawn locations. Combined with sound awareness from mining, this makes caving considerably more intense.

Sound Source Reference

Not all in-game sounds attract mobs. The mod specifically filters which sounds generate trackable sources. The following table shows the key sound triggers, their strength multipliers relative to the base sound strength, and the maximum range at which they can be picked up.

Configuration Guide

Zombie Awareness generates six configuration files in the config/ZombieAwareness/ directory. The most important settings to understand are spread across the General and Features configs.

General Settings

The maxPFRangeSense value (default 64) controls the maximum distance mobs can pathfind toward sense sources. The scentStrength and soundStrength values (both default 60) set the base strength for their respective sense types. Higher values mean mobs detect you from further away. The senseMaxStrength cap (default 300) prevents any single sense source from becoming infinitely powerful through repeated buffing.

The sightRange setting (default 16) adds extra sight range on top of vanilla targeting. Setting omniscient to true makes mobs always target the closest player from 512 blocks away, which is extremely challenging but performance-heavy. The seeThroughWalls option skips line-of-sight checks for targeting.

Feature Toggles

Each sense system can be independently toggled: awareness_Sound, awareness_Scent, and awareness_Light are all true by default. The optional spawning features (wanderingHordes, extraSpawningSurface, extraSpawningCave) are all false by default. The mod also overrides Forge's zombieSummonHelpBaseChance to 0.0 (vanilla Forge default is 0.1) and zombieBabyChance to 0.0 (vanilla Forge default is 0.05). Set these to -1 to restore Forge's defaults.

Spawning Settings

If you enable extra spawning, the Spawning config controls the details. Surface spawning caps at 50 mobs (extraSpawningSurfaceMaxCount), spawns groups of up to 3, and requires mobs to be 50-100 blocks from the nearest player. Cave spawning also caps at 50 mobs but allows groups of up to 5 and makes 15 spawn attempts per tick. The maxZombiesNight value (default 50) limits how many Zombies can exist in loaded chunks before the mod stops duplicating them at existing Zombie locations.

The /za Command

Server operators (permission level 2+) have access to the /za command for runtime diagnostics and config changes. Use /za get counts to see how many enhanced mobs are active on the surface and in caves. Use /za get time to check how long since the last Zombie Awareness spawn event. You can modify config values at runtime with /za set <option> <value> and check current values with /za get <option>. The /za isActive command tells you whether the mod's features are currently active (useful if you have set a daysBeforeFeaturesActivate delay). The /za profile command runs a 10-second performance profile showing which entity classes are being processed and how many of each.

Survival Strategies

The most effective defense against Zombie Awareness is controlling what information you give away. Enclose your base fully in walls and a roof before nightfall, keeping all light sources inside. When caving, bring plenty of food to keep your health above 60% and avoid triggering the passive bleeding mechanic. Mine in short bursts rather than long continuous sessions to limit how many sound sources you generate.

Avoid Redstone contraptions using Pistons near areas where you spend time at night, since each Piston activation creates a powerful sound source at 2.0x strength detectable from 128 blocks. If you need to use Piston-based farms, build them far from your living quarters or disable the noisyPistons config option. When traveling at night, avoid placing Torches on the surface. If you must light your path, use enclosed structures or recessed lighting that blocks line of sight from ground level.