Mob In A Bucket

README.md

Mob In A Bucket

A Fabric mod for Minecraft 26.3 that lets you scoop up (almost) any mob — passive or hostile — into a single bucket and pour it back out wherever you like. Inspired by JustDoom/VillagerInABucket, but generalised to work on every creature instead of just villagers.

Unlike the original (which uses a per-entity mixin for villagers, wandering traders and zombie villagers), this mod hooks the generic item/entity interaction methods, so it works on anything that lives — cows, horses, creepers, villagers, axolotls, zombies, you name it — with no mixins at all.

What it does

• Scoop: sneak + right-click any non-player living entity with an empty Mob Bucket to capture it. The creature's entire state is saved — health, age, variant, custom name, tamed owner, inventory, everything — so you get the exact same mob back, not a fresh one.
• Release: sneak + right-click a block with a full bucket to drop the creature onto the block face you clicked. The bucket empties and is ready to reuse.
• The sneak requirement means a normal right-click still works as usual while you hold the bucket — trading with villagers, mounting horses, opening chests, and so on.
• The captured creature's name shows in the item tooltip.
• Found in the Tools & Utilities creative tab.

It captures any LivingEntity (every mob, plus armor stands). It does not catch non-living entities such as boats, minecarts, item frames or dropped items.

Crafting

Shapeless: 1 bucket + 1 ender pearl → 1 Mob Bucket (reusable forever — one bucket is all you ever need). You can also get it from the Tools & Utilities creative tab or with /give @s mobbucket:mob_bucket.

To change the recipe, edit src/main/resources/data/mobbucket/recipe/mob_bucket.json and rebuild.

Requirements

Building

The project uses the Gradle wrapper, so you don't need Gradle installed — only a Java 25 JDK. On Gentoo you likely have it at /opt/openjdk-bin-25:

JAVA_HOME=/opt/openjdk-bin-25 ./gradlew build

The finished mod jar is written to build/libs/mobbucket-1.0.0.jar (ignore the -sources.jar).

Installing

1. Install Fabric Loader 0.19.5+ for Minecraft 26.3.
2. Drop both of these into your .minecraft/mods/ folder (or a server's mods/):
   • mobbucket-1.0.0.jar
   • the matching Fabric API jar for 26.3.
3. Launch the game. The Mob Bucket appears in the Tools & Utilities creative tab, or give yourself one with /give @s mobbucket:mob_bucket.

Testing it quickly

JAVA_HOME=/opt/openjdk-bin-25 ./gradlew runClient   # single-player client
JAVA_HOME=/opt/openjdk-bin-25 ./gradlew runServer   # dedicated server

How it works

Everything lives in two small classes:

• MobBucketMod — registers the mob_bucket item and adds it to the creative tab.
• MobBucketItem — the behaviour:
  • interactLivingEntity(...) captures the entity. The entity is serialised with the 26.3 ValueOutput API (TagValueOutput.createWithContext(...) → entity.save(...)) and the resulting NBT is stored in the stack's CUSTOM_DATA component under CapturedEntity. The entity is then discard()ed.
  • useOn(...) rebuilds the entity from that NBT (EntityType.by(input).flatMap(type -> EntityType.create(type, input, level, BUCKET))), snaps it to the clicked block face, adds it to the world, and clears the component.

No capture/release state is stored anywhere except on the item stack itself, so filled buckets survive being dropped, put in chests, traded, etc.

Notes & limitations

• It captures any non-player living entity, including hostile mobs and bosses that allow serialisation. If you'd rather restrict it to passive animals only, change the guard in interactLivingEntity from entity instanceof Player to !(entity instanceof net.minecraft.world.entity.animal.Animal).
• Passengers/leashed entities are captured in the NBT but only the single ridden creature is re-spawned on release (vanilla single-entity behaviour).
• Water creatures released onto land will behave exactly as if you'd emptied a vanilla fish bucket there.
• A dispenser-based auto-release (like the original mod's dispenser behaviour) is not included, but would be a straightforward addition.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.