Embodied Intelligence

Give your undead a brain.

具身智能 / Embodied Intelligence is a configurable combat-AI overhaul for hostile mobs. Vanilla zombies walk at you and swing. These ones hold your weapon's reach, orbit you in squad slots, dart in when you look away, throw blocks with movement prediction, dodge your arrows mid-flight, tunnel through walls to reach you, and share your position with the horde. Everything is opt-in per mob type — one line in the config turns a feature on for the mobs you choose.

What it does

Combat

• Keep-distance kiting — holds just outside your weapon reach and orbits, in slots distributed around you by group size.
• Dart attacks — charges when you look away, interrupts you while you eat, drink or draw a bow, and counter-charges after being hit.
• Thrown blocks — picks up loose blocks, leads your movement, throws for damage, breaks soft blocks on impact, and builds a 2-block cover wall when shot.
• Projectile dodging — arc-aware prediction for arrows, tridents, snowballs, eggs, potions, fireballs and thrown blocks; sidesteps to the safe side with a smoke puff.
• Low-HP guerrilla — below 25% health it retreats further, stops charging and throws more often.
• Flanking — orbit slots are centred on your blind side.

Movement and pathing

• Wall climbing, tunnelling through obstacles, bridging, trap escape, group flow-field pathfinding, jumping chases, jockey riding (baby mobs on adults).

Team and perception

• Last-seen target memory with blind throwing, hive-mind position sharing between mobs, smart target priority, one-sided hostility rules.

Everything is a list

Open config/embodied_intelligence-common.toml and add mob IDs to the lists you want:

• climbEntities — wall climbing
• diggingEntities / diggingTargetBlocks — tunnelling and target-block seeking
• targetingEntities / hostilityRules — target selection and one-sided hate
• broadcastEntities / broadcastReceiverEntities — hive-mind sharing
• memoryEntities — last-seen memory and blind throwing
• keepDistanceEntities — kiting (the flagship combat behaviour)
• dodgeEntities — projectile dodging
• jockeyEntities — baby mobs riding adults

ID lists accept full (minecraft:zombie) or short (zombie) IDs, and modded mobs work too. Empty list = feature off. Typos and IDs from uninstalled mods are reported in the log at startup instead of silently doing nothing.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.19.2, Forge 43.x, Java 17
• Server-side mod: no client mod required. displayTest="IGNORE_ALL_VERSION" means vanilla clients can join a server running it (the debug overlay channel is skipped for clients without the mod).

Optional integrations (not required)

• Better Combat — if installed, mobs use its weapon attack ranges for spacing.
• Sona / Sona Survival — if installed, thrown-block hits can spread infection.

In-game helpers (operator)

/embodiedintelligence features (alias /ei) prints feature switches, resolved config lists with invalid-ID markers, and behaviour counters. /embodiedintelligence status | probe | dump | blocks <r> help diagnose mob behaviour. The legacy command /smartmobs still works as an alias.

Performance

All features are per-mob, per-type and throttled; idle mobs cost almost nothing. The mod does not touch world generation or rendering, and it needs no client rendering at all.

Upgrading from Smart Mobs 1.x

Replace the jar and rename config/smart_mobs-common.toml to config/embodied_intelligence-common.toml (keys are unchanged). Existing worlds keep working.

License

MIT. See the LICENSE file in the jar distribution.

Changelog

2.7.4 — 2026-10-24

• Code hygiene only: removed a dead hive-mind helper, fixed a stale comment, and the utility AI's retreat action is now executed explicitly.

2.7.3 — 2026-10-24

• Fixed: interrupting item use (drinking a potion / drawing a bow / eating) had been suppressed by the utility combat AI — mobs charge to interrupt again.

2.7.2 — 2026-10-24

• Getting hit now provokes a charge (unless below 25% HP, where self-preservation wins).

2.7.1 — 2026-10-24

• Fixed: on-hit reaction no longer forces a dart charge when the utility score chose orbit/retreat.

2.7.0 — 2026-10-24

• Added utility-score combat AI: rush / orbit / dart / retreat are scored from distance, facing, item use, approach speed and health (combatUtilityAi, combatAggression).
• Added opt-in conservative climb pathfinding (climbPathfinding, default off).

2.6.x — 2026-10-24

• Hive-mind broadcast hot path: nearest idle receiver in one pass (O(R) instead of O(R²)).
• Fixed custom melee attack cooldown (was up to 20 hits/second); it now scales with the mob's own ATTACK_SPEED.
• Mob block placement fires Forge's EntityPlaceEvent and no longer buries living entities.
• Flow-field fallback avoids lava and one-block-high gaps; checked-empty memory clears persist across reloads.