Endermen attack without being looked at

Mcpe iPad - same issue. Endermen attack without even looking at them first.

Cleaning up old tickets: This ticket has not been updated recently (1 year+) so is being closed as Cannot Reproduce. If you feel this is still a valid issue then please comment, or create a new ticket following the Issue Guidelines.

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Reopening based on recent duplicate reports. This issue has actually been reported many times over the years but has not had good follow-up.

Relates to MCPE-101703 and MCPE-101705.

@leo190: don’t see how Endermen attacking spontaneously is related to the player taking damage from the ender dragon and ender chests being deleted deep under the end fountain.

Affects 1.16.200.55 Beta.

Most commonly happens in the End

Yep, I recently reported this too. Was pillaring up to get an end crytsal

 taken care of, staring at the pillar, and got hit from behind. The Enderman End is so broken...

Just created a duplicate issue, didn't see this in my search results (didn't use the word "attack" when searching). This has happened to me on multiple occasions in all three main worlds, but two occasions in particular made me submit a report, because in both instances in would have been literally impossible for me to provoke the attacks in question.

1.) Walking through a small tunnel in the nether, climbing an incline with nothing but raised ground in front of me (netherrack), no mobs in sight (not that there was much room for any mobs, there were only a couple of blocks of air in front of me at a time) when two different endermen teleported into the tunnel I was in at the same time, already angry and screaming, and attacked me till I died.

2. ) Surveying the size of a very large gap beween two islands (the other island way too far away for me to provoke any endermen that could have been on it) when an enderman started screaming behind me, and started attacking my back. I had spent the last half minute staring at nothing but the abyss; no enderman had teleported in front of me, nor would they have had the room.

The only two cents I can offer is that Java edition has some anger tag weirdness with Endermen, but it shouldn't affect normal play, and I doubt it somehow carried over to Bedrock Edition.

Yeah this is crazy annoying. Had no issue before 1.17 but since it has been constant. Have been punted off high areas, into dangerous places and been attacked in narrow spaces where I don't want to risk killing a passive mob.

Still present in 1.17.30.22.  I first experienced this in 1.17.10 and all contemporaneous and later beta versions(not in 1.17.2).

Android platform. Single player survival mode, normal difficulty [edit: extra data requested below]

I have even been attacked while farming and looking down on the ground, unaware of the presence of the enderman until he teleports in and hits me.

I have this issue very commonly when playing in Multiplayer (using the friends tab), when in the End it is a constant fight for our lives. If I look at an obsidian pillar that an Enderman is behind, the Enderman engages me. Despite having potions and 5 other players it was the most difficult Ender Dragon encounter I have ever faced personally, and we were forced to retrieve carved pumpkins to explore the outer islands and raid end cities if we wanted to survive.

However, when I try to replicate this on Singleplayer, I did not get attacked once while running around the island, and I made sure to place some walls and look at pillars when I know Endermen are behind them, and I never once got aggro.

This issue seems to be a bit more complicated than first glance, hopefully others here can state whether they ran into this issue on Singleplayer or Multiplayer. Hopefully sometime soon I can try to provide more Multiplayer data.

Still present in 1.17.30.24.

This has been occurring constantly for a while now, we are playing on a realm server and the endermen constantly attack players who are not looking at them.

Persists in 1.17.30.25.

I think they should increase the time it takes for staring at an enderman to make it angry. I hope this would help, Mega Spud, can you add this to an enderman?

Persists in 1.17.40.21 beta (Android)

Single player survival.

Present in 1.17.40.23. (Single player survival)

I have noticed that endermen can be triggered into attack mode by being looked at through opaque structures (eg. If an enderman is behind a pillar of rock, looking at the pillar can cause him to start zipping around and hitting you,  even though there is no line of sight).

This could be the cause of some of these incidents.

I can confirm that in 1.19.2 that this is happening. See the video for a demonstration. Minecraft Bedrock, single player in survival. PS5
This video also shows them teleporting to glass blocks which have also been reported on a different ticket.

https://youtu.be/A6eyaw6mKhI

[MacBros]: I've watched your video and to me it sure likes like you are looking at the Endermen. You move back and forth in a straight line facing nearly straight ahead, and they come at you down the glass path.

@[Mod] GoldenHelmet - YEah, I just tried to recreate it and you may be right. They don't attack when not looking at them. It must just have been the chaos when I realized they were teleporting onto glass blocks. You can disregard my report. Sorry.

Still current in 1.19.1, You do not even have to look at them. In any dimension, they will attack you unprovoked. Extremely annoying when you're trying to build a sorting system in a Bastion in a basalt delta! 😛

Affects 1.19.40

This is so frustrating. I can barely survive a few minutes in the end without building structures everywhere.

Once I got attacked using the pumpkin head... I walk looking at the floor and got attacked!! There is nothing I can do. It's rather annoying! I'll try a invisibility potion next... but pretty much believe will be attacked too...

Affects 1.19.73

Affects in 1.20.1

Can confirm this bug is still active in 1.20.1, and I have spotted this issue filmed on a YouTube video. Go to the 17:35 timestamp on this video.

Affects 1.20.10 hotfix

Affects 1.20.12 hotfix and 1.20.20.22 preview

Affects 1.20.51 hotfix and 1.20.70.20 preview

Affects 1.20.62 hotfix and 1.20.70.24 preview

This bug just cost me my very first hardcore world ever in Minecraft Preview 1.21.0.20. I was running through a cave from a zombie and a baby zombie and was completely jumped out of nowhere from behind by an enderman I had not seen before, ever looked in the direction of, nor attacked. 

I've attached a clip of the incident here, as well as uploaded it to YouTube; https://youtu.be/ugdttUQEHw8?si=cWNmybz1zujg2zrg

You will notice the enderman seems to be heard teleporting around me as I'm running through the cave before it eventually jumps my back, and you will notice I never once looked in it's direction, attacked it, or saw it. It later busts through my shield and kills me with the baby zombie it was attacking me with which is not captured in the clip. This bug has existed for years and I'm almost convinced it won't ever be fixed simply due to how difficult it is to reproduce. But it's bugs like this that could have a really negative impact on hardcore mode.

Reply from @unknown:
In the attached clip, the player looks at the enderman's head and angers it at 0:01. Here is a frame with the enderman circled and the crosshair pointed at its head.

The most likely reason I think this might be happening is that the Players crosshair comes into contact with the Enderman while they are teleporting.

If you pay attention closely in Bedrock, when an Enderman teleports, they do not disappear in one location and then appear in another like in Java. Rather in Bedrock, when an Enderman teleports they appear to slide from one place to another incredibly fast. During this movement is when I think the their head somehow comes into contact with the crosshair causing them to become Aggro.

I've attached a video of how an Enderman moves when it teleports (in slow motion) to explain this better:

Reply from @unknown:
The appearance of movement when endermen teleport is just visual interpolation. Server-side they move instantly. This "animated" teleport is how all movement is rendered by the client since 1.16.100, as reported in MCPE-179969. I have made a new report just about teleports at MCPE-188176.

Affects 1.21.40.20 Preview and 1.21.23 Release.

I believe the cause of this bug is described by MCPE-188134: enderman get triggered the instant the player's crosshair points at their head. This means endermen can be angered by random sweeping movements of the player's crosshair. There is no time allowed to confirm that the player is actually looking at the enderman. This behavior is not in parity with Java Edition. In Java enderman need to be looked at continuously for 5 ticks to become angry. According to MC-258644 the 5 tick requirement is intended behavior.

I have attached test worlds for Java and Bedrock that can be used to reproduce the disparity/Bedrock bug:

In each world there is an enderman trapped in place by a repeating command block. The button on the command block next to the enderman can be used to kill it and summon a new one. Command blocks in the ground make the player look at the enderman's face and then quickly look away when the player steps on the pressure plate. The number of ticks that the player looks at the enderman's face is set in the Bedrock world by the delay setting of the chain command block, and in the Java world by a repeater.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open in the test worlds.

2. Set the desired duration for looking at the enderman in the chain command block (Bedrock) or on the repeater (Java)

3. Step on the pressure plate.

4. Repeat steps (2) - (3) with delays of 0 and 1 game tick (Bedrock) and 1, 2, and 3 redstone ticks (Java).

Expected results

Enderman have to be looked continuously for the same number of ticks in Bedrock as in Java.

Observed results

Enderman have to be looked at continuously for only 1 game tick in Bedrock, compared with 5 ticks ( >2 and <=3 redstone repeater ticks) in Java.

I took a look at my clip I attached to this report on April 4th, 2024, and was able to notice that at the start of the clip, my crosshair did indeed seem to briefly cross contact with the head of an enderman in the very far distance (at least 20 blocks away). This would make GoldenHelmet’s theory about enderman instantly becoming aggravated by a player’s crosshair briefly pointing at their head correct. The way to fix this would indeed be to increase the amount of ticks a player has to look at an enderman for in order for the endermen to become aggravated, as it seems like it can sometimes be instantaneous, and they can become aggravated almost instantly after the player’s crosshair comes in contact with their head. 

THANK YOU MOJANG!

This seems like a perfect opportunity to fix MCPE-43530 now that the aggro delay has been added.