Critters and Companions

Critters and Companions is a content mod that adds about 17 creature types to the Overworld, along with a few utility items, armor and two blocks. Most of the new creatures are ambient critters, and many of them can be tamed as pets. A few are water animals. The mod gives the natural landscape of Fear Nightfall a layer of small living detail, and it adds a silk leash, a grappling hook and a necklace that improves swimming.

The creatures are listed under Pets and Companions and Mobs in the wiki, and the mod's utility items are listed under Accessories and Curios where they use the necklace slot.

Overview

The mod targets NeoForge 1.21.1 and version 2.7.0. It requires Architectury API, GeckoLib and YetAnotherConfigLib (client only, for the configuration screen). The Pearl Necklace is worn in the Curios necklace slot, so Accessories and Curios must be present for that item to be used. The mod does not add dimensions, ores, enchantments, status effects or damage types. It adds no new biomes or structures of its own, but its creatures and silk cocoons are placed in existing biomes.

In Fear Nightfall the mod's loot reaches the chests that the pack maps to vanilla structure chests (see the In Fear Nightfall section below).

Content

Land and air critters

• Dragonfly: a tameable flyer that drops Dragonfly Wings. It can wear the Dragonfly Armor described below.
• Ferret: a tameable mammal that digs for loot, sleeps on beds and sits on blocks.
• Jumping Spider: a tameable spider that leaps and is the strongest melee critter. It drops silk and spider eyes.
• Ladybug: a tameable flyer that heals nearby tamed mobs.
• Leaf Insect: an ambient insect with three variants that eats leaves.
• Red Panda: a tameable panda that makes nearby hostile and neutral mobs flee when it is alert.
• Roly Poly: a tameable creature that carries a chest and can serve as a mount for baby zombies.
• Shima Enaga: a tameable flying bird that drops feathers.
• Snail: a tameable wall climber that gains armor when it hides in its shell.
• Stag Beetle: a tameable beetle with a knockback melee attack. It is immune to projectile damage.
• Stick Bug: a tameable, passive insect that illagers avoid.
• Weevil: a tameable insect that fires mud balls at targets.

Water animals

• Dumbo Octopus: an ambient water creature with four variants that sometimes bubbles nearby players. It can be bucketed.
• Koi Fish: a schooling fish with 21 variants. Nearby Koi give the player Luck, and cats and ocelots eat them.
• Sea Bunny: an ambient, breedable water creature with three variants. It sticks to slime blocks and can be bottled for slime.
• Otter: a water creature that eats clams and can drop pearls.

Items of the mod include the Silk Lead, the Grappling Hook, the Pearl Necklace (levels I to III), the Acorn Hat, and the Iron, Gold, Diamond and Netherite Dragonfly Armor. The Silk Cocoon and the Sea Bunny Slime Block are the mod's blocks. The mod also adds Clams, Pearls, Silk, Dragonfly Wings, Acorns and slime bottles as materials, and a bucket for each water creature.

Mechanics

Spawning

Most of the land creatures use the vanilla spawner and are added to biome groups: forest, jungle, plains, swamp, river, snowy, floral and lush biomes, along with ocean biomes for the water creatures. The default weights and group sizes are set in the mod's configuration. The bug-type creatures outside Lush Caves must stand on a bug spawn block (dirt, sand, gravel and similar) with a raw light level of 5 or higher.

Lush Caves are the exception. In Lush Caves, a custom spawner runs every 40 server ticks for each player who is underground in that biome. It spawns one weighted creature within 24 blocks of the player, and no more than 8 such creatures exist within a 48-block box around the player. This spawner ignores the vanilla mob cap. The configuration option preventMonsterSpawnsInLushCaves is off by default. When it is enabled, hostile natural spawns in Lush Caves are stopped.

Silk Cocoons

Silk Cocoons are placed as top-layer features in forest and jungle biomes, at a density of 4 per chunk between Y 60 and Y 140. In Lush Caves they appear at 8 per chunk from the bottom of the world plus 32 up to Y 140. Each cocoon has a standing variant and a hanging variant. Cocoons break instantly and drop silk, ender pearls, name tags, slime balls, spider eyes, and other items with varying weights.

Taming and pets

Most of the creatures are tameable. Tamed creatures of the mod can sit next to chests and count as cats sitting on a chest, and Ferrets sleep on beds. Roly Poly carries a chest, so its inventory is shown in a chest-style screen, and it freezes while the screen is open.

Silk Lead

The Silk Lead is a leash that can attach to many mobs at once. Leashed creatures are pulled toward the holder once they are more than 14 blocks away, and they unlink beyond 28 blocks, dropping a Silk Lead. Ordinary lead use is blocked on any mob while a Silk Lead is held in hand. The Silk Lead is crafted from silk and a slime ball.

Grappling Hook

The Grappling Hook is a thrown projectile that attaches to a block or entity and pulls its owner. The pull speed is one quarter of the launch speed each tick. The hook has a maximum speed of 2.0 and a maximum distance of 32 blocks. Its durability is enabled by default.

Pearl Necklace

The Pearl Necklace has three levels. Each level adds 20% to base swim speed and reduces the detection range of Drowned by 10% per level. The Guardian detection reduction applies only at level II and above. The necklace is crafted from pearls, and each level is an upgrade of the previous one.

Dragonfly Armor

Dragonfly Armor is worn in the body slot of a Dragonfly, not by a player. Iron, gold and diamond armor are crafted, and Netherite Dragonfly Armor is made by a smithing upgrade from diamond armor. A Dragonfly that wears armor cannot be eaten by a frog.

Acorn Hat

The Acorn Hat is a helmet with 55 durability and armor value 1. Acorns come from oak leaves through the Fortune enchantment, with a 5% to 10% chance. While the hat is worn, it adds 2 hearts of maximum health.

Other creature behaviour

• Dumbo Octopus bubbles nearby players and then rests for 200 to 600 ticks.
• Ferret digs in dirt, sand and gravel. Its digging loot is common, trash or treasure, with weights of 80, 18 and 2.
• Koi Fish give a player the Luck effect for 210 ticks when three or more Koi are within 10 blocks.
• Otter eats clams and has a 25% chance to drop a pearl from each clam it eats.
• Red Panda makes Zombified Piglins and the neutral mobs of the mod's list flee within 16 blocks while it is alert.
• Stick Bug makes illagers flee.
• Jumping Spider hunts untamed Endermites, Silverfish and Dragonflies.

Changes to vanilla

• Clams: a Clam drops in shipwreck treasure and underwater ruin chests with a 10% chance. A fishing catch has a 15% chance of being replaced by a Koi Fish or a Clam. Drowned loot has a 50% chance of being replaced by a Clam. A Drowned has a 5% chance to spawn holding a Clam.
• Recipes: an ender pearl can be made from a Pearl and a popped chorus fruit. String can be made from silk. Three bone meal can be made from a clam. Slime balls can be made from snail and Sea Bunny slime bottles.
• Tags: Vanilla tags are extended with the mod's creatures. The arthropod tag covers most of the land critters. The aquatic and breath-underwater tags cover the water creatures, so axolotls hunt Dumbo Octopuses, Koi Fish and Sea Bunnies. Cats and ocelots eat Koi Fish.
• Avoid goals: Endermites, Silverfish, illagers, Zombified Piglins and several neutral mobs gain avoid goals that respond to the mod's creatures.
• Baby zombies: a baby zombie has a 5% chance to ride a Snail or a Roly Poly.
• Brewing: the mod adds Resistance potions to vanilla brewing, using the Snail Slime Bottle. Resistance lasts 3:00, Long Resistance 8:00 and Strong Resistance 1:30 at level II.
• Lush Caves: creatures spawn in Lush Caves through the custom spawner described above, which bypasses the vanilla mob cap.
• Compostables: the mod adds some items to the compost list.

In Fear Nightfall

• Loot: the pack maps the mod's structure chest tables to vanilla chests, so Critters and Companions loot reaches the mapped chests. The original loot is kept, and mod additions are added on top.
• Configuration: the mod's defaults are kept, including that Grappling Hook durability is on and that Lush Caves do not block hostile spawns. The mod's configuration is in config/crittersandcompanions-common.json5.
• Horror: the pack's horror content is covered in Horror and Spooky Content. The Jumping Spider has the strongest melee attack of the land critters (8 attack damage), and the Weevil attacks at range with mud balls that deal 3 damage.