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MC-308230

Endermen prioritize attacking the player who looked at them, ignoring other mobs attacking them

Short description of the issue

When an Enderman becomes hostile toward a player after being stared at, it will permanently prioritize attacking that player, even if other mobs (e.g., Iron Golems, Skeletons) deal damage to it. The Enderman will not retaliate against the attacking mob and continues to chase the player. This behavior does not occur in Bedrock Edition.

Steps to reproduce the issue

  1. Create a new Survival world in the affected Minecraft Java Edition version.

  2. Spawn an Enderman and an Iron Golem near each other in the same area.

  3. Look directly at the Enderman’s eyes to make it become hostile to the player.

  4. Let the Iron Golem attack the Enderman (or use any other mob to attack it).

  5. Observe the Enderman’s behavior.

Expected result

When an Enderman is attacked by another mob while already hostile to the player, it should switch its target to the attacking mob and retaliate, or at least react to the damage. This is how the behavior works in Bedrock Edition.

Actual result

The Enderman completely ignores the mob that is attacking it, and continues to chase and attack the player who stared at it, even taking fatal damage from the Iron Golem without reacting.

Currently, Enderman do not have a natural hostility toward Iron Golems, even though they are large, non-player mobs. Adding this behavior would make the Enderman’s AI more consistent with other hostile mobs (such as Zombies attacking Iron Golems) and improve world interaction logic. This change would make the game feel more immersive, as Enderman would react to being attacked by Iron Golems by default, rather than ignoring them entirely.

Environment

This bug is confirmed to occur on multiple systems (Windows, macOS, Linux) and Java versions. It is not platform-dependent.

Comments 1

This is working as intended. Iron Golems do not change their target either once they have been attacked by a player.

Victor

(Unassigned)

Confirmed

26.1.2

Retrieved