Tainted Dirt

Tainted Dirt

Force hostile mobs to spawn exactly where you want them — no spawner, no machines.

Tainted Dirt is a small, focused mob spawning mod. Throw a Tainted Egg onto grass or dirt to corrupt the ground, and the biome's own hostile mobs will start spawning on it. Switch it off with redstone, or keep it lit with torches. No conveyor belts, fans or killing machines: just the ground, the dark, and whatever crawls out of it.

Built as a companion to Ranked Adventurer, Adventurer's Market and Magic Building Staffs, but works perfectly on its own.

Features

• Tainted Egg — throw it like a normal egg to taint a 5x5 patch of grass or dirt.
• Tainted Dirt — spawns hostile mobs native to the biome it's in.
• Redstone control — power Tainted Dirt with redstone to stop spawning, remove the signal to start again.
• Light control — any light source (torches, lanterns, glowstone) stops spawning where its light reaches, without destroying the dirt.
• Redstone Conduit — a block that carries redstone with no signal loss over distance. Put it under your Tainted Dirt and run your whole spawning floor off a single lever.
• Nether support — bring your own dirt; in the Nether, Tainted Dirt spawns blazes, wither skeletons and piglins.
• Configurable — spawn rate, spawn cap, radius, a mob blacklist and more.
• JEI support — info pages for every block and item.

Getting Started

1. Craft a Tainted Egg

2. Throw it

Throw the Tainted Egg onto a grass or dirt block. It taints a 5x5 area centred on where it lands, converting grass and dirt at the same height into Tainted Dirt.

3. Keep it dark

Hostile mobs spawn on Tainted Dirt while a player is nearby. Mobs come from the biome's own hostile spawn list and still follow their normal spawn rules, so build somewhere with enough room for the mobs you want.

Tainted Dirt

• Spawns hostile mobs when a player is within range (24 blocks by default).
• Stops spawning when:
  • it receives a redstone signal, or
  • any block light reaches the space above it.
• Direct sunlight burns it back into normal grass or dirt. Torches and other placed light sources never damage it, so you can light a patch to turn it off without losing it.
• Breaking it drops normal dirt. Use Silk Touch to pick up the Tainted Dirt itself.

Nether

Tainted Dirt works in the Nether, but you'll need to bring your own grass or dirt — the egg can't taint netherrack. By default, Nether Tainted Dirt ignores biomes and spawns:

• Blazes
• Wither Skeletons
• Piglins

This can be switched back to normal biome spawning in the config.

Redstone Conduit

Vanilla has no solid block that can sit under dirt and carry a redstone signal. The Redstone Conduit fills that gap.

• Carries a signal through any connected conduits at full strength, with no distance loss. No repeaters needed.
• Powered by levers, buttons, redstone torches, redstone blocks, repeaters and redstone dust.
• Powers redstone dust and other conduits connected to it.
• Place conduits under your Tainted Dirt to turn a whole spawning area on or off with one switch.

Configuration

Settings are in config/tainted_dirt-common.toml.

Mod Compatibility

• Tainted Dirt uses each biome's own spawn list, so hostile mobs added to biomes by other mods spawn too.
• Don't want a particular modded mob? Add it to excludedMobs, or block a whole mod with "modid:*".
• excludedMobs only affects Tainted Dirt. Normal world spawning is untouched.

FAQ

Do I need a player nearby? Yes. Like normal mob spawning, Tainted Dirt only spawns mobs when a player (not in spectator mode) is within the spawn radius.

Why is a mob not spawning? Mobs still follow their own spawn rules. Spiders need extra width and endermen need three blocks of headroom, so tight rooms will favour smaller mobs.

Why am I getting slimes? You're probably in a slime chunk, or the biome's spawn list includes slimes. Add "minecraft:slime" to excludedMobs to turn them off.

Can I use this in a modpack? Yes — go ahead.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1
• NeoForge
• JEI is optional

License

Released under the MIT License.

Made by ArmedBOB.