The bug
Pumpkin-equipped mobs spawning during Halloween never drop their pumpkins when killed.
The problem is that their ArmorDropChances is being set to 0 instead of 0.085.
Reproduction steps:
Set your computer time to Oct 31.
Start a new MC world
Give yourself a weapon with looting, the higher the looting is, the better
Set the time to night
Find some mobs with pumpkin on their heads
Kill them
→❌ No pumpkins
Note: If you stick to the maximum level of looting (3), you might need to kill many to actually reproduce this and to make you not think that you had bad luck.
Comments 14
Affects 20w49a
Relates to MC-145334
Respectfully, this is a garbage reason to exclude this function. It happens on one day in a 365 day period, so the novelty of getting them is limited. Furthermore, pumpkins on their own aren't obtainable as far as I'm aware from Carved Pumpkins or Jack o'Lanterns due to either of the items not providing pumpkin seeds required to renew your stock. Carved Pumpkins themselves by design (and by extension, Jack o'Lanterns) have to be made by shearing them, which drops the pumpkin seeds already.
Legitimately the only practical use you can get out of these drops (besides the decorative) is making Iron Golems and Snow Golems, which on their own do not provide anything that you wouldn't be already able to get to craft them in the first place (Iron Ingots and Snow Blocks respectively.) I sincerely implore Mojang to reopen this issue and give a serious look into re implementing this feature, as it largely affects nothing that's lobbied against it as detrimental to game-play.
Nah Panda, this does have some effects with Nether only worlds, namely providing access to iron golems that are otherwise inaccessible, which has implications for mob farms and farming methods, as well as available dyes through the poppy drops. While personally I would love for this to be changed back, I understand why it is the way it is
Dyes are functionally useless in a Nether-only world. They would only be applicable to signs from Nether trees, which practically affects nothing. Iron Golems is a more valid concern, but consider that in order to achieve this, you require Piglin Bartering and killing enough Halloween-applicable mobs that wear a Carved Pumpkin/Jack o'Lantern in order to get an Iron Golem.
From there, you have a limited use-case to use Iron Golems as either bodyguards or bait. Neither of these justify removing them as drops on a holiday based on their impact, especially since in the end, the reason they were removed have nothing to do with either of these. The fact that this change was made before 1.16 where it would make a functional impact is even more a reason why it had no standing being removed when it did.
This is not a discussion forum. If you feel the need to discuss this issue, please do so elsewhere, e.g. on our subreddit.
As a note, when testing such things, please use regular enchantment levels. I was able to reproduce however. ArmorDropChances for the helmet slot is set to "0F" for mobs wearing a pumpkin, so it's likely intended.
Issues like these are valid - they just don't usually get noticed until the event actually occurs in-game.