Alex's Mobs

Alex's Mobs is the modern successor to an old mod called Mo' Creatures and carries its legacy for better and for worse. It's used as a filler animal mod when in fact it's a detailed and verbose ecosystem of mobs across many different themes. They spawn frequently enough by default to overwrite normal vanilla mobs and completely transform the nature of the game. They rely on one of the more egregious core dependencies out there, Citadel. And while many issues of Alex's Mobs can be fixed with lots of config tweaking, Modpack developers fail to do so, creating a frustrating and sometimes terrifying experience from nothing at all.

First off, Alex's Mobs comes with a breathtaking roster of almost 90 Mobs, one of which being a boss. Each mob is beautifully textured in a way that is genuinely faithful to Minecraft's style. They are also charmingly animated, my favorite being the catfish. When damaged, he will bulge his eye like a cartoon character. Another favorite of mine is the Comb Jelly, a rainbow jelly fish that drifts under the ice of cold oceans.

The thumbnail for this mod might fail to properly explain however that there's far more than a few farm animals in Alex's Mobs. There's a reason why it's not just Alex's Animals. Some of the creatures in here are the worst Modded Minecraft has to offer.

• The Crimson Mosquito is a Nether Mob that can "latch" to your face, blocking your view and ticking you for damage, staying put until you kill it. Did I mention it has the same amount of health as a Spider? In a dimension where stepping in the wrong place often means the end of your life, and sometimes your items, this jumps the list as one of the worst mobs to encounter.
• The Murmur is a cave mob that can extend its neck through and around over 45 blocks. Their head does not de-aggro if you warp away either, creating a horrifying scenario where you could /home out of a cave, only for the creature's head to hit through your floor. Like the Crimson Mosquito, it has way too much health, sitting just above an Evoker with 15 Hearts by default.
• The Cave Centipede is a mind numbingly horrific creature that is also in the caves. It has 17.5 hearts, is about 5 blocks long, moves faster than you can sprint, poisons on contact, and of course, it can climb walls.

For most of the aggressive mobs in this mod, they will attack you unless you are wearing a specific bit of gear or are under the influence of a particular potion effect. Everyone has a weakness or interaction, usually in a way that's secular to the mod by itself or the vanilla game. An anaconda can be pacified with Raw Chicken. A Tusklin will attack unless you feed it Brown Mushrooms. In addition many of these mobs prey or interact with other mobs within Alex's Mobs. An Anteater will indeed eat Leafcutter Ants. And the AI for many of these mobs can be downright advanced, such as the Cockroach, which will run from areas with a Light Level at or above 7. They consume dropped food, get eaten by Cave Centipedes, run from players, can be fed sugar and bread, and can live without their head. They even dance next to a Jukebox or wear a sombrero if given a Maraca.

There's two issues with these mobs being as in-depth as they are.

1. It creates an insular environment. Unless twisted in the way that Intergrated MC twists Create to function, the mobs in here react with the very world they are overwriting and nothing else. While not as aggregious as the Aether, locking you out of your equipment and asking you to start progression over from almost nothing for this one dimension, Modpack developers really need to put the work in to make the Mobs in Alex's Mobs bearable for any playthrough or modpack. I will echo other users here in saying that this mod would do well in a Zoo pack just because it's fantastic on its own and holds up its own experience. It's built to be the star of a modpack, not an accessory, but that's how it is used.

2. All this advanced AI comes at a performance cost. I mentioned it before, but Alex's Mobs spawns a LOT of these guys if using the default config. It's not unusual to see vanilla mobs rarely because Alex's take the mob cap for themselves. And when there's so many of these guys running around with AI that's as complex as early Sims titles, especially in a modpack that's already bloated with 800 structure mods and zombie expansions, it's a killer. There's very few mods that you could blame for boosting the RAM requirements of a pack but this is one of them.

Alex's Mobs isn't buggy, I've never crashed or seen something that was functioning abnormally. It isn't ugly, everything fits in its own weird and charming way. It isn't poorly designed, the creatures are clever and have interesting behaviors that one could grow to love.

But if you're a Modpack dev, you have no business using Alex's Mobs unless you know what you are doing or if the Mod dev updates the default config for Alex's Mobs to be more friendly with little tweaking.

In short,

Use Naturalist instead.

Alex's mobs is one of those mods I used to really enjoy as a player. A good chunk of the mods are incredibly well designed and textured and when I was playing packs they played really well. Even a lot of the modern mobs still have great textures, and if you just want to build a zoo or play in creative that's all that matters.

In survival however, configuring this mod is a mini nightmare and the amount of mobs that have been added, some of which don't live up to the quality of others makes this mod very hit and miss. For a mod that describes itself as incredibly customisable this isn't good enough. Making a pack with this mod can be a chore.

Then, the performance, many of these mobs have quite complex AI and spawn so frequently that this mod can be a nightmare on servers, it can bring entire packs down to a halt especially if spawns haven't been significantly reduced. if you are a server owner, I'd advise turning all the spawns down significantly.

Try this mod out in creative, maybe try it in a small pack in survival, but I wouldn't recommend this on servers.

If a mob/animal mod is BETTER than Alex's Mobs, thats a good mod.
If a mob/animal mod is WORSE than Alex's Mobs, that's a bad mod.

Alex's Mobs is the baseline. Not amazing, not terrible. While it does add some cool animals, it seems focused on quantity > quality at this point. They could work on making the config simpler, they could work on configuring the mod better so I don't have to immediately start tweaking the config, they could work on improving the current animals and textures, but they seem to be focused on adding more mobs instead.

One big problem I face is their spawn frequencies. A weird bug or mob will spawn frequently, while the more immersive and realistic mobs rarely spawn, or will spawn in weird places or in weird group sizes (too small or too big).
Of course, this is all customizable, but with 85+ mobs, it takes hours in the config just for it to more polished and more immersive. Also, the newer mobs seem to have little info online, which makes config-editing even harder.

I think if their config was better designed and more set-up from the start, I would increase my rating. The fact that I have to start tweaking a ton of config files in the big 2026 and have to think about a lot of weird new mobs with little wiki info is not great.

Alex's Mobs is not great, it has a lot of one note mobs with "uses" that don't really add much besides some flavor, and no ambient mobs. The mod strives to have only useful mobs but will shoehorn uses into mobs that wouldn't really need them solely to justify their existence when they're already justified. Many mobs are just vanilla thing but "better", such as almost every tame being a better wolf, the hummingbird being a better bee for crop pollination, and the Laviathan being a better strider. Most mobs don't have interesting interactions with one another or the world, so a lot fail to add much life to the game either, outside of existing at least. The art isn't very vanilla-fitting, most mobs in the mod lack the goofy stylization that vanilla mobs have, rather having more basic "accurate" proportions. There's some gems, like the catfish, but unless you need filler for a modpack, especially a zoo modpack, where the collection aspect is more important than the immersion and usefulness, I wouldn't suggest Alex's Mobs. Use a mod like Spawn instead for more interesting animals use/design-wise, or Species for more interesting fantasy creatures.

It's my favorite animal mod (and I'd say many people's too). It brings tons of animals to life, each with its own unique mechanics. It's very comprehensive; in my opinion, nothing else comes close.

For a mod that seeks to add mobs to the game, alex's mobs is second to none. At a glance, it adds everything from the realistic to the fantastical.

When playing with the mod, it's easy to get lost in the sheer amount of content present. Almost every single of the dozens of new mobs added have detailed behaviors and functions. Populating nearly every nook and cranny of the world, the mobs liven the place up, provide new friends to tame or foes to fight, new gear to acquire and resources to obtain, as well as one boss in the End.

One thing after playing with this mod extensively - it is nigh impossible to play without configs. Whether it be adjusting spawn weights to compensate for regular mobs or other modded mobs, tweaking spawns since those goddamn mosquitoes won't stop harassing me, or just causing noticeable lag spikes upon loading new chunks and simply playing around, I can't give this mod anything higher than a 3.5. Additionally, despite being a touch above the Vanilla mobs, the mod has not updated in nearly two years (the creator is probs js busy), and the last few updates have left a bit to be desired.

Good mod, adds a marvelous menagerie, but can be rough around the edges. Worth a download, but I think you can find better alternatives for the real and the fantastical.

Mobs that feel both fun and vanilla-esque in design. This one is a real gem.

The mod is okay, I would like to see more of a focus on performance as it can get pretty laggy. I do like the animals though and I would like to see a version of it with only mobs that exist IRL.

Great mod, I include it in my packs because it adds a really nice amount of variety.