Features

Pets That Look Before They Leap

Tamed pets gain a survival instinct — the deaths that were your pathing's fault stop happening.

Tamed wolves, cats, and parrots treat lava, fire, and cactus as walls when they pathfind — they walk around, or stay put if there is no safe route. When a creeper's fuse lights within reach, pets immediately move to a 4-block berth at 1.4× speed; a sitting pet stands, steps clear, and sits back down at its new spot. Stay means stay — minus the blast radius.

The follow-owner teleport is suppressed while you are falling more than 3 blocks, swimming in lava, or gliding on elytra — your wolf keeps walking toward you on safe ground and teleports again the moment you land.

Your own hand is off the table too: your damage never lands on your own pets — the arrow that overshoots, the splash potion, the TNT you set off all pass them by. Other players' hits are untouched — this is about your own aim, not invulnerability — and livestock stay vulnerable to their keeper. Turn it off with enableOwnerFriendlyFireProtection.

A parrot on your shoulder rides steady, too. Vanilla drops it the moment you jump, take a short fall, or catch a scratch, so nobody carries one anywhere that matters — here it stays put through all of that. Double-tap sneak to set it down on purpose, so crouching to place a block or peek over a ledge leaves it where it is; take a real hit and it takes to the air; swimming, flying, and sleeping still put it down as usual. If you play with Sneak set to Toggle, that is three presses — on, off, on — because the gesture reads your crouch state rather than the key. Tune the threshold with steadyShoulderDismountDamage, the gesture with shoulderDismountGesture (set it to SNEAK for a plain one-press drop), and how quick the two taps must be with shoulderDismountDoubleTapTicks.

The horse family — horses, donkeys, mules, camels, and llamas — gets the same hazard-aware pathing and creeper berth while riderless, so a tamed mount stops walking into lava or standing next to a hissing creeper. A mount you are riding follows your lead, not its instinct.

Veteran Pets

Pets quietly grow stronger the longer they survive with you.

Every pet counts the in-game days since you tamed it — even while it waits at home. At 10, 30, and 60 days it gains a rank: Seasoned, Veteran, Venerable. Each rank adds one heart of max health and +1 attack damage, up to +3 hearts and +3 damage (a species with no attack stat — some modded companions — gets only the hearts). Rank-ups heal the new heart, burst heart particles, play a warm chime, and tell you in one quiet line.

Each rank also teaches the pet something an old animal would know. A Seasoned pet warns you in its own voice — growl, hiss, squawk — when a monster sets its eye on you, once per threat, even while sitting. A Veteran keeps clear of your sweeping blade, ducking the arc so your own sweep never catches it. A Venerable one steadies the young — pets near it earn their days 25% faster, whoever they belong to. Raising your first pet to Venerable earns the Old Friend advancement.

Crouch and look at your pet to read where it stands: ✦ Rex has seen 43 days — Veteran. Veterancy is individual — puppies start at zero, and losing an old pet costs something a bone can't replace. Thresholds, bonuses, and the learned behaviors are all configurable; enableRankBehaviors turns off just the three behaviors, enableVeterancy the whole system.

Quality Genetics

Well-tended breeding produces better animals; crowded pits produce worse ones.

Livestock carry a bloodline grade — ordinary, sturdy, or prime. Breed animals within 8 blocks of a hay bale (or trough-fed within the last day) and the offspring has a 50% chance to climb a grade; breed in a crush of more than 12 animals within 8 blocks and it risks slipping one. Newborns of graded stock also inherit one perk — hardy (tougher), fleet (quicker), fertile (fecund — breeds, lays, and re-wools sooner), or placid (holds calm under startle — cattle, pigs, sheep, and chickens) — biased toward the parents' perks when the pen is well-fed, so a tended bloodline stabilizes line by line.

A prime cow drops 2 extra beef and 1 extra leather; prime sheep shear +2 wool and prime chickens lay 20% faster. Grade also quickens what a living animal renews — a prime sheep regrows shorn wool faster, and a fertile hen lays faster still on top of her grade. Goats carry grade and perk but keep their own products. A Pedigree Treat (golden carrot + hay bale + honey bottle) guarantees an animal's next offspring is born prime. Crouch-look reads any animal's grade and perk in one line, and breeding a prime animal earns the Best in Show advancement.

Because the bonuses ride on well-tended pastures instead of breeding pits, the best farm is also the least laggy one.

Flocking & Herding

Lured animals follow like a herd, not a mosh pit.

Hold wheat, carrots, or seeds and the matching animals form a flock behind you — 15% faster than vanilla, holding a loose 2-block spacing instead of shoving into your back, and stopping at arm's length while you stand still. Moving twelve cows across a river becomes a drive, not a scrum.

Your pets work the drive with you. Lead a flock of three or more and up to two of your following pets fall in behind it on their own, each getting behind a straggler — an animal lagging more than 8 blocks back — and pressing it toward you until it catches up. Pets press, never bite: a driven animal is never hurt and never panics, and any pet herds, so a cat drives cows as well as a dog does. A pet breaking off to keep its own berth from a creeper always wins over the drive.

Water is no longer where the drive dies. A flock swims a river behind you in formation instead of scattering at the bank — slower than on land, but together, with your flanking pets still working the rear — and a following pet takes your boat's spare seat once you're aboard, riding along and stepping back out when you land. Drowning stays vanilla, so leading a flock into open ocean is still on you.

The Dog That Guards the Pen

A pet on Stay near livestock turns wild predators from the pasture.

Leave a pet on Stay by your animals and it watches the fence line. A fox creeping in on the chickens or a wild wolf stalking the sheep finds its hunt broken and itself driven back from the pasture — and your dog stands off its seat to put its body between the predator and the pen, then settles again once the coast is clear. Any pet guards, so a cat turns a fox as a wolf does; a wolf also fights what it reaches, the way vanilla wolves already do.

It costs no command and touches nothing it shouldn't. A predator with no stationed pet nearby behaves exactly as vanilla, and a guardian with no livestock in range leaves passing animals alone — the watch is for a pasture, not a patrol. Predators default to foxes and wild wolves, and like every animal set they are edited by tag or config, so a modded prowler joins the watch by name. Self-preservation still comes first: a lit creeper always sends the guardian fleeing before it guards.

The Feeding Trough

Passive, low-lag farm automation in one wooden block.

Built from planks and a fence, the trough holds one stack of feed — wheat, carrots, potatoes, beetroot, or seeds, and a hay bale converts to 9 wheat on insert. Animals within 10 blocks help themselves when ready to breed (one item per meal) and pair off on their own; babies may snack for a 10% growth boost. Hoppers can fill it; comparators read it.

The trough self-limits: when more than 16 animals stand in its radius it keeps feeding babies but stops starting new breeding — your passive farm can't overflow into a lag machine.

The Command Whistle

One item that moves the whole pack.

Cut from copper and bone, the whistle speaks to every tamed pet within 20 blocks. Left-click toggles the pack between Stay and Follow — one press, one coherent pack state, answered in one dry line (✦ 3 pets will stay.). Right-click while pointing at a mob up to 24 blocks away and every combat-capable pet stands and attacks it.

Point instead at one of your livestock and it becomes a round-up: your pets fall in behind that animal and its whole nearby herd — same species, within 8 blocks — and drive the group home to you, up to two pets working at once, until every animal is at your side or thirty seconds pass. A short shared cooldown paces the whole thing.

Sneak and right-click a spot and the pack holds it: every combat-capable pet posts up within guardRadiusBlocks (8 by default) of the block you aimed at and engages hostile monsters that wander in — never your livestock, never another player's pets — returning to post once the threat is down (✦ 3 pets will hold here.). The order rides the pet through unloads and restarts until any new whistle command replaces it.

Lost track of one? Sneak and left-click, and the whistle answers for every bonded pet beyond its 20-block voice — one dry line each, nearest first: Rex — 240m northwest, sitting. Distance and compass bearing, or just the dimension for a pet you took to the Nether, and a downed one is flagged so you know which is the patient. No map markers, no arrows — the chat line is the whole surface, and it only finds pets in chunks still loaded around you.

Commanding fifteen wolves stops meaning fifteen crouch-clicks — and pets sent after a creeper still break off when the fuse lights. Commanding ten or more pets with a single press earns the Pack Leader advancement. Turn enableWhistle off and the whistle still crafts, but goes quiet in the hand.

Downed, Not Dead

A pet's death becomes a rescue, not a funeral — at a price.

When lethal damage would kill a pet, it collapses instead: helpless, whimpering, ignored by monsters, invulnerable, and it waits — indefinitely, across saves and logouts — until someone brings it back. Revive it with a golden apple or a Vet Kit (paper + string + honey bottle); it stands at half health with regeneration, and the rescue costs one veterancy rank. Bringing a downed pet back earns the Back from the Brink advancement.

A tamed mount from the horse family goes down the same way instead of dying — it lies where it fell (ejecting its rider) and revives from the same golden apple or Vet Kit, with no rank to lose. Losing a maxed horse to one creeper stops being permanent.

A downed small pet — a cat, parrot, or pup — can be scooped up and carried clear of the fire. Sneak-use it to lift it onto you, walk it out of danger, then sneak-use a block to set it down and revive it. Carrying occupies no inventory slot but slows you modestly, so a rescue under fire still costs something; full-size pets and mounts stay where they fall.

Fire, lava, and the void are beyond saving — which is exactly what their survival instinct is for.

A pet lost that way is not lost without a trace. It leaves a keepsake collar engraved with its name, and its rank if it earned one — a memento with no gameplay use, dropped clear of the fire or laid on safe ground above the void. A sixty-day companion deserves better than an empty lead.

A Home for the Pack

One placed block your pets call home — and beside which a downed pet mends on its own.

Place a kennel post — a humble block of planks, a fence, and a bone — where your animals belong, then point the command whistle at it: every pet in earshot takes it as home (✦ 3 pets will call this home.). From then on a Stay order sends your homed pets walking back to their post to settle, instead of dropping them wherever you happened to stand — un-homed pets still sit on the spot.

A pet that goes down beside a post recovers on its own — slowly, over about five minutes, spending no item and losing no rank. The golden apple and the Vet Kit stay the instant path back in the field, at the cost of a rank; the post is the patient, no-cost path at home, so a small pet carried back to its post, or one downed near it, is on its feet by the time you return. Only your pets recover this way, and it never punishes an absent player — the post keeps no state of its own.

It is a place, not a system: no storage, no spawn point, no block entity. Turn enableKennelPost off and the post is plain decoration; kennelRecoveryRadiusBlocks and kennelRecoverySeconds tune how close and how slow the healing is.

Modded Animals Welcome

Third-party animals are covered by convention, not per-mod code.

Any modded animal that behaves like a vanilla one joins automatically: a tameable otter or ferret reads as a pet (self-preservation, veterancy, whistle, downed), a breedable critter reads as livestock (genetics, flocking, trough). Animal mods and datapacks can opt species in or out with one tag entry, add their feed to the trough's menu, and give their species proper product yields with one small data file — no code, no dependency. Server owners get the final word by name in the config.

Species without curated data still work: drop bonuses mirror the animal's own loot, so even an unknown creature gets sensible yields.

Better Together

Instinct is complete on its own — two siblings light up extra touches, never required.

With Tribulation, days survived at difficulty tier 3+ count double toward veterancy. With Prosperity, outlands- and depths-tier chests occasionally hold a Vet Kit or a Pedigree Treat. With neither installed, nothing is missing.

For a look under the hood, Jade and WTHIT read Instinct's state straight off your crosshair: an animal's grade, perk, veterancy, and downed status, and a feeding trough's stock and the herd it counts against its cap. And with Mod Menu plus Cloth Config, every setting is editable in-game.