The AI governing sunlight and fire avoidance for skeleton variants is broken.It fails to independently evaluate three key factors:
vulnerability to sunlight.
vulnerability to fire.
the helmet's intended effect of blocking sunlight damage (and not affecting fire avoidance)
Instead, it uses a overgeneralized check, leading to widespread illogical behavior where mobs ignore real threats or engage in useless actions.
Specific Issues Observed (Categorized by Traits & State):
The following table outlines the expected behavior versus the observed buggy behavior across five distinct scenarios.
Category | Expected Behavior | Observed Behavior (The Bug) |
|---|---|---|
Afraid of Sun & Fire Skeleton, Stray, Bogged No helmet, no Fire Resistance | Seek shade/water when either in sunlight or on fire. | Only reliably reacts when both on fire AND exposed to the sunlight. Does not seek water when on fire at night (incorrectly ties fire response to sunlight exposure). |
Unafraid of Sun, Afraid of Fire (A) Parched No helmet, no Fire Resistance | Seek water only whenever on fire, ignoring shade and sunlight entirely. | ① Reacts only when both on fire AND exposed to the sunlight (ignores fire at night). ② Seeks useless shade for fire. ③ Does not leave unneeded shade/water when not on fire. |
Unafraid of Sun, Afraid of Fire (B) Helmeted skeleton variants (excluding Wither Skeletons) no Fire Resistance | Seek water when on fire, but ignore sunlight (because helmet blocks it). | Performs no avoidance behavior at all (even for fire). The helmet globally disables the entire AI instead of only blocking sun response. |
Unafraid of Sun & Fire Skeleton with fire_resistance effect no helmet | Trigger no avoidance behavior (due to fire damage immunity). | Still performs the full, useless routine of seeking shade/water. |
Cannot be Set on Fire Wither Skeleton No helmet | Never trigger the avoidance AI. | Idles uselessly in shade or water during the day. |
Expected Result:
The avoidance AI should make separate,intelligent decisions:
For Sunlight: Trigger only if the mob is vulnerable to sunlight, is not wearing a helmet, and is exposed to the sunlight.
For Fire: Trigger only if the mob is on fire and is vulnerable to fire damage, seeking water only. Whether it is under the sunlight or not should be irrelevant.
Immunity Priority: If a mob is immune to fire damage (by its nature or the Fire Resistance effect), the fire avoidance routine should not run at all. A helmet should only affect the sunlight check.
Observed Result:
The AI seems to activate a single“flee to shade/water” goal based on a flawed rule,likely: “Run if I am on fire, am in sunlight, and am not wearing a helmet.”
This one rule explains all bugs: it mistakenly links fire response to the sunlight, and lets a helmet wrongly shut down the entire system instead of only disabling the sunlight check, which is its intended function.
Yea, this is such a pertinent bug report, also they should make spider jockeys have more sense of self-preservation since i lost a a invisible spider jockey because the skeleton keeps acting like his bounding box is a normal skeleton wide bounding box and starts climbing to the ceiling and kills himself which is a very bad behavior for such a rare mob and can be frustrating