Wither's despawn in creative. I don't think this should happen. The EnderDragon does not despawn in peaceful.
The player purposefully spawns it. How would you feel if you spent hours gathering the heads, placed them, only to realize you were in peaceful?
Its not like the wither ever spawns without the player's consent, therefor peaceful should not affect it.
An alternative is to prevent spawning the Wither and leave the blocks in the form so long as it is in peaceful.
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Torabi
Ezekiel
Yes, however the player purposefully spawns it. How would you feel if you spent hours gathering the heads, placed them, only to realize you were in peaceful?
Its not like the wither ever spawns without the player's consent, therefor peaceful should not affect it.
This is intended behaviour. Regardless of if the mob is player summoned in peaceful all hostile mobs despawn. This is also true for mob eggs which are also player-summoned entities.
You do however have a point about the heads being lost. Instead of spawning the wither then having it vanish it would be nice if it simply did nothing on peaceful instead.
Nathan Adams
Fixed by making it not spawn at all (so you'll keep the skull and soulsand structure).
Can I just ask about the behaviour of the fix? If a player makes the structure in peaceful, moves far enough away and then activates normal or higher, will the wither spawn? Or does it check just when the skulls are being placed?
Ezekiel
The code is in the heads. When you place a head, it checks for a configuration of soulsand and other heads.
This is a suggestion and not a bug and does not belong here
Ezekiel
Joshua, Dinnerbone already implemented it. 😛
I believe this should be reopened; when you try to spawn a wither only one of the heads remains and sometimes it turns into a skeleton head.
Relog, that sounds like a client-side issue. Also, that would be an entirely separate bug: the client not being updated about the non-summoning of a wither.
Further, make sure that's happening to you on vanilla. I've only witnessed it on a Bukkit server set to block their spawns.
The EnderDragon is a unique mob, in that it only naturally spawns once. It's intended to persist until you kill it. The Wither, however, does not spawn naturally, but is created by the player, and multiple of them can be created.