Description:
In Bedrock Edition, ghast fireball explosions have a high probability of destroying loot items that drop from mobs they kill. This behavior is inconsistent with other explosive entities like TNT or wither skulls, which—despite also killing mobs—do not destroy the resulting loot. This inconsistency negatively impacts farms that utilize ghast fireballs for mob processing, significantly reducing loot collection rates and creating an unfair gameplay mechanic.
How to Reproduce:
Spawn a chicken or other loot-dropping mob.
Summon or guide a ghast fireball to directly hit and kill the mob.
Observe the explosion area after the mob’s death.
Observed Result:
The mob is killed by the ghast fireball explosion.
No loot items appear at the death location or surrounding area.
The loot appears to have been destroyed simultaneously with the mob’s death.
In contrast, using TNT or a wither skull to kill the same mob typically leaves loot intact.
Expected Result:
Ghast fireball explosions should not destroy loot items upon killing a mob.
Loot should drop and remain in the world as it does with other explosive sources.
Behavior should be consistent across all explosive damage sources in the game.
Additional Notes:
This bug likely stems from incorrect damage or loot protection flags applied specifically to ghast fireball explosions. The inconsistency not only penalizes players using ghast-based farms but also creates an unintended imbalance in explosion mechanics. Given that other explosions preserve loot, this is clearly a fixable oversight in the ghast fireball’s entity configuration.
Attachments
Comments 3
Then why are the drops from Ghasts killed by Ghast fireballs deflected back by players not destroyed by the explosion? Additionally, the Ghast music disc only drops when a Ghast is killed by a direct hit from a fireball, not when killed by the explosion damage—even though both types of damage can instantly kill the Ghast.
There is no such thing as a “loot protection flag.”
This behavior occurs because of the logical sequence:
projectile impact
projectile impact_damage applied to mob
mob dies
mob drops loot items
projectile explosion
explosion damage applied to loot items
items die
All of this happens within a single game tick. The sequence, impact_damage before explosion, has always been the case in all versions of the game. It ensures that mobs hit directly by an exploding projectile take the full damage that the projectile can give (see (MCPE-153740) and (MCPE-78714)) and that the damage is reduced by the projectile protection enchantment (see MC-178576)).
The reason that wither skulls do not destroy loot in Bedrock Edition is that they have not yet been fixed to give projectile damage (MCPE-153299).
The reason that TNT explosions do not destroy loot is that the explosion occurs while the mob is alive, so it kills the mob. The loot does not exist until after the explosion occurs.
Based on this explanation I believe that this report describes intended behavior and should be resolved Working As Intended.