Thornshell Crab

Thornshell Crab
Mod	Born in Chaos
Type	Passive
Health	25 ♥×12.5
Attack damage	4
Armor	14
Speed	0.25
Follow range	14
Knockback resist.	0.8
Size	0.9 × 1 blocks
XP dropped	7
Spawns in	6 biomes
Category	Creature
ID	born_in_chaos_v1:thornshell_crab

The Thornshell Crab is a passive creature added by Born in Chaos. It lives in coastal and river biomes, where it wanders the shore and shallows. It is not hostile: it does not attack players on sight. It fights back when struck, and every hit it takes costs the attacker health. It is worth knowing about because it is the main source of the Born in Chaos Spiny Shell, the material used for the Spiny Shell armour set and the Spiny Shell Trap.

The Thornshell Crab Spawn Egg summons one, and the egg stacks to 64.

Spawning

The Thornshell Crab appears only in six biomes: River, Beach, Frozen River, Stony Shore, Mangrove Swamp and Swamp. Each of these biomes has a spawn weight of 8, and natural spawns are single creatures with a group size of 1.

A spawn also needs the following at the spawn position:

• The block below must belong to the vanilla #minecraft:animals_spawnable_on block tag.
• The raw light level must be above 8. The check ignores the darkening of night, so crabs can spawn in daylight as well as at night.

Crabs are not tied to a structure, an event or a summon. Because of the weight, they are common along the shores of the six biomes, but they do not appear in the rest of the overworld.

Behavior

The Thornshell Crab is a passive mob with 25 health (12.5 hearts), 14 armour and a movement speed of 0.25. It has a knockback resistance of 0.8, which makes it hard to push back, and a follow range of 14 blocks. Its size is 0.9 blocks wide and 1 block tall. Its melee attack deals 4 damage.

Its artificial intelligence uses the following goals, in priority order:

1. It attacks in melee at a speed of 1.0, but only when a target is within reach and in line of sight. The target is whichever entity last hurt it.
2. It wanders at a speed of 0.8.
3. It is tempted at a speed of 1.0 by Rotten Flesh and by Rotten Fish, which makes it follow a player holding either item.
4. It looks around at random when idle.

The crab does not despawn. It is set to persist and is never removed for being far from players. It cannot be bred: its food list is empty, so no item can start a breeding pair, and the breeding routine only produces adult crabs.

Retaliation

Every time the crab takes damage, it damages the attacker in return:

• The retaliation deals 1 damage per hit on Normal and Easy difficulty, and 2 damage per hit on Hard.
• A player wearing both the Spiny Shell Helmet and the Spiny Shell Chestplate is not hit by the retaliation. Mobs and monsters are always hit.
• Cactus and drowning damage are ignored entirely, so the crab takes no damage from either.

The retaliation runs before the crab's own damage check, so it happens on each hit that reaches the crab.

Feeding

A player can feed the crab by right-clicking it while holding Rotten Fish or Rotten Flesh in the main hand. A feeding is refused if the crab already has the saturation effect or the player has the Barbed Attack effect. Each feeding consumes one item and applies the following effects to the crab:

• Saturation for 15 ticks. This is the feeding state, and the crab cannot be fed again while it lasts.
• Slowness level 6 for 15 ticks.
• Resistance level 6 for 15 ticks.

The player gets a 15-tick cooldown on the food item they used. The first feeding also awards the advancement "Waste Recycler".

About 10 ticks after the feeding, the crab drops one item at its position. The drop is a Spiny Shell with a 35% chance, and Bone Meal otherwise. The saturation effect is then removed, so the crab can be fed again. Each feeding therefore gives at most one Spiny Shell.

Drops

The Thornshell Crab always drops one Spiny Shell when it dies. It also drops 0 to 2 Rotten Fish. It gives 7 experience points when killed. The table below lists the drops.

Item	Amount	Conditions
Spiny Shell	x1.0-1.0
Rotten Fish	x0.0-2.0

Related items

The Spiny Shell is the main reason to hunt the Thornshell Crab. It is used in the following items:

• Spiny Shell, which stacks to 64 and is the base material of the items below.
• Spiny Shell Helmet, which has 220 durability.
• Spiny Shell Chestplate, which has 320 durability.
• Spiny Shell Trap, a block with a hardness of 1 that can be waterlogged.

The Barrel Zombie also drops Spiny Shell. The recipes that use the Spiny Shell are shown below.

Spiny Shell Trap · Crafting

Spiny Shell Helmet · Crafting

Spiny Shell Chestplate · Crafting

Tips

• Every hit on the crab costs you 1 health on Normal and Easy, and 2 on Hard. Expect this before you strike it with a weak weapon.
• Wear both the Spiny Shell Helmet and the Spiny Shell Chestplate before fighting crabs. Wearing the full set stops the retaliation from reaching you.
• Carry a stack of Rotten Flesh or Rotten Fish if you plan to feed crabs for Spiny Shell. A crab accepts a new feeding only after the saturation effect from the last one has been cleared.