How Minecraft’s New Creaking Enemy Might Shake Up the Mob Status Quo

The blocky world of Minecraft is filled with all manner of creatures inhabiting its varied biome landscapes, caverns, and dimensions. On the surface, players can encounter peaceful Villagers and farm animals. Meanwhile, in deep dark tunnels and at nightfall, players will encounter monstrous beats such as giant Spiders, Skeleton archers, and the enveloping Wardens. Should daredevils attempt to journey into the Nether or the End, they’ll encounter bloodthirsty foes in the form of the gold-loving Piglins, teleporting Endermen, and explosive Ghasts. However, there’s one new hostile mob that may shake up how future mobs are made and implemented in Minecraft: the Creaking.

Minecraft’s Creaking Mob Explained

First officially revealed in Minecraft Live 2024, the Creaking can only be found in a new biome called the Pale Garden, a dense forest filled with dark gray pale oak trees, leaves, eyeblossom flowers and overgrown hanging moss. Unlike other surface world biomes, animals cannot spawn within Pale Gardens but monsters can still spawn in the area at night. To add a more eerie and creepy feeling to the biome, no overworld music will play while players are in the Pale Garden.

From its appearance alone, the Creaking is unlike any other mob found in Minecraft; it features an asymmetrical body with its wood-like body visibly missing sections, far from the typically symmetrical body types of animals and other monster mobs. Both the pale oak trees and the Creaking feature gray bark skin, making it harder for players to easily locate a Creaking in the dense forest. The Creaking will only spawn at night, but instead of constantly attempting to attack the player no matter what, it will only attack players when they’re not looking at the mob. When players look at the mob, the Creaking will be frozen in place, similar to Doctor Who’s Weeping Angels.

The Creaking’s Weaknesses and Drops

The Creaking can’t simply be slain with a sword or axe. Instead, players will have to locate a Creaking Heart block found among the pale oak trees and destroy it, causing its connected Creaking mob to disappear. The Creaking is additionally resistant to damage from fire, cacti, sweet berry bushes and powder snow. When Creaking mobs and the Creaking Heart are destroyed, they can drop resin clumps that could later be crafted into resin blocks, resin bricks, and chiseled resin bricks, and can also be used for armor trimming. Players can pick up Creaking Hearts by using a Silk Touch enchanted tool or craft one for themselves with a resin block and pale oak logs.

Roaming bands of Illagers will often spawn in the overworld and attempt to attack the player, but in the Pale Garden, Illagers will become frightened by the Creaking and will run away.

The Creaking’s Influence on Future Minecraft Mobs

The environmental complexity required to take down a single creaking mob could inspire Mojang to create more Minecraft mobs with intricate methods to defeat or avoid them. Instead of simply having to hit a mob multiple times with a sword or bow and arrows, killing a Creaking is similar to solving a puzzle by forcing players to look for the right Creaking Heart while avoiding the charging Creaking mob. In that sense, Mojang could make a couple more mobs that require players to destroy some aspect of the nearby environment in order to defeat them, such as a mob that’s powered by a block underground or underwater.

Mojang could additionally introduce new ways to use the environment to circumvent mob attacks. For example, Mojang could allow players to place gold blocks on the ground in the Nether to briefly distract Piglins from attacking them. Similarly, players could use blocks of emeralds to temporarily distract Illagers. It could also make new mobs that are reactive to sound similar to the Warden, allowing for players to use Minecraft‘s jukeboxes and music discs or bells to potentially distract new hostile mobs. These sorts of environmental alternatives to fighting could make Minecraft’s combat more engaging and fun while also giving simple cosmetic blocks more utility in the game.