Ecto Slab

Ecto Slab
Mod	Jaden's Nether Expansion
Type	Hostile
Health	15 ♥×7.5
Attack damage	4
Speed	0.4
Follow range	28
Size	1.375 × 0.75 blocks
Fire immune	Yes
Spawns in	2 biomes
Category	Monster
ID	netherexp:ecto_slab

The Ecto Slab is a hostile, fire-immune mob added by Jaden's Nether Expansion. It is a flat, hopping monster that lives in Soul Sand Valley and Black Ice Glaciers, and it chases players, Piglins and Iron Golems. Slabs merge into stacks of up to four, and each extra slab in a stack makes the whole stack faster, stronger and harder to knock back. A stack that is petrified with a Ghast Tear becomes an immobile block that can be shattered with explosions or by repeated hits. A slab that is left alone grows, so a player who meets one small slab may later face a stack that hits much harder.

Spawning

Ecto Slabs generate naturally in two Nether biomes: Soul Sand Valley and Black Ice Glaciers. Both biomes give them a spawn weight of 10 and a group size of one, so each spawn event places a single slab. The mod's spawn check refuses a natural spawn when a petrified Ecto Slab is within 48 blocks or when six or more living Ecto Slabs are already within 48 blocks, so the mob cannot fill a valley by itself.

Naturally generated slabs come in two forms. Most spawn as small packs of two to five separate slabs, placed within a few blocks of each other. On a 12% chance, a natural spawn is instead a petrified stack of eight to twelve slabs. Petrified stacks never despawn and do not move, so they stay in place as landmarks.

No structure or summon produces Ecto Slabs.

Behavior

Targeting and melee

An Ecto Slab targets players, Piglins and Iron Golems within its follow range of 28 blocks. It has 15 health (7.5 hearts), a base attack damage of 4, a base movement speed of 0.4 and a box about 1.375 blocks wide and 0.75 blocks tall. A slab deals its attack damage when it touches a target at melee range with line of sight. The same contact damage applies to a player who walks into a slab, and a slab that pushes a Piglin or Iron Golem damages it too. A burrowed or petrified slab does no contact damage. The mob is immune to fall damage.

Each stack size changes the slab's stats as shown below. The values are for the default configuration, in which a stack holds up to four live slabs.

Attack damage gains 2 per stack, and speed gains 0.05 per stack above the first. Each stack above the first also adds 0.05 to jump strength. The default speed cap is 0.6, and the damage and knockback caps are disabled. A killed stack loses one slab and returns to full health, so a stack of four takes four kills to remove.

Burrowing

While it has a target and is standing on the ground, an Ecto Slab counts down a burrow cooldown. When the countdown ends, the slab burrows. Burrowing starts with a 20-tick animation during which the slab stops moving. The slab then stays underground for up to 80 ticks. For most of that time it moves toward its target, but for the final 30 ticks it stops and waits. At 30 ticks remaining, it plays a warning sound, roughly 1.5 seconds before it surfaces.

When the burrow timer ends, the slab emerges in an emergence burst. Every living entity within about 1.2 blocks of the slab's box takes double its attack damage, except other Ecto Slabs. The burst also shakes the screen for nearby players. After a burrow, the slab's cooldown resets to the values in the stack table. A burrowed slab is not pushable and cannot be hit by normal attacks, but a hit with a shovel forces it out early. That forced emergence shortens the burrow to 10 ticks and fires the same burst.

Stacking

A single Ecto Slab that has a target looks for another Ecto Slab within 24 blocks that has room in its stack. The search prefers petrified stacks, then the smallest stacks, then the closest. The slab walks toward that slab, leaps at it, and merges into it once the two are within 2 blocks. The merged slab adds one to the target stack's size and is removed. Slabs that are burrowed or dying are not merge targets. Live stacks stop accepting slabs at the limit of four, while petrified stacks accept slabs up to the absolute maximum of 16.

Petrification

An Ecto Slab can be petrified by using a Ghast Tear on it when it is not burrowed. This consumes one tear. A petrified slab stops moving, stops attacking and takes no damage from hits. Instead, the damage it would have taken is added to a disturbance counter. The counter drops by one every 40 ticks, and when it reaches 20 the stack splits into individual slabs, each with a 20-tick cooldown before it can merge again. A petrified stack also petrifies nearby Soul Swirls within 32 blocks, plus 4 blocks for each slab beyond the first in the stack.

Explosion damage splits any stack of two or more slabs into single slabs. Each piece then has a 300-tick cooldown before it can merge. Silver weapons deal 1.8 times normal damage to an Ecto Slab and apply Slowness V for 3 seconds. The silver weapons tag includes Caverns and Chasms silver and necromium tools and weapons, as well as Oreganized electrum tools and weapons.

Drops

Item	Amount	Conditions
Phasmo Shard	x0.0-3.0 +looting bonus	inverted
Pearlescent Frogmist	x1.0-8.0	damage_source_properties
Verdant Frogmist	x1.0-8.0	damage_source_properties
Ochre Frogmist	x1.0-8.0	damage_source_properties

An Ecto Slab that is killed by a player or any non-frog source drops Phasmo Shards. The count is 0 to 3, and each level of Looting can add one more. A slab killed by a frog drops no shards. Frogmists are dropped only when a frog of the matching colour kills the slab. A warm frog drops Pearlescent Frogmist, a cold frog drops Verdant Frogmist and a temperate frog drops Ochre Frogmist. Each Frogmist drop is 1 to 8.

Related items

Ecto Soul Sand is generated in Soul Sand Valley, the same biome as the Ecto Slab, and Wisps emerge from it. Ecto Soul Sand is soft, has a hardness of 0.5 and a blast resistance of 0.5, and it emits light level 4. It is crafted from Wraithing Flesh and soul sand, as the recipe grid below shows. The Ectoplasm Bucket holds the Ectoplasm fluid, which fills the Ectoplasm Lake feature in Soul Sand Valley and applies freezing and rusts netherite.

2

Ecto Soul Sand · Crafting

Tips

Kill single slabs before they gather. A lone slab with a target will walk up to 24 blocks to merge into another slab, so one that is left alone can grow into a four-slab stack within a short time. A stack of four moves at 0.55 and hits for 12 damage, which is more than most early armour can take in a few blows.

Stay out of the burst radius when a slab is about to surface. Watch for the warning sound, which plays roughly 1.5 seconds before the slab emerges, and move out of the box around it. A burrowed slab does not damage anything while it is underground, but its emergence burst deals double damage to anything within about 1.2 blocks of it.

A shovel forces a burrowed slab out early, so a player can use one to break a burrow that would otherwise catch them. Silver weapons deal 1.8 times normal damage, so bring one to the valley.

A Ghast Tear locks a single slab or stack in place, which stops it from attacking or merging while it is petrified. Explosions split any stack of two or more slabs, so an explosion can break a large stack into single slabs that are easier to kill one at a time.