Mobs and other entities freeze and start to move around invisibly

I suspect the game is treating the mobs as having a 5 minute despawn timer similar to dropped items, so after 5 minutes the game tries to "clear" the mobs and wants nothing more to do with them despite the mob still existing, causing the mob to visually freeze while it continues to act normal (other than invisibility).

It happens after I updated to 1.16.100 as well with the Villagers and endermen.

This is probably the same underlying issue as MCPE-101202.

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The entities affected by this occasionally can be hit both in their visually frozen locations and in their actual, not visible locations. I have been able to attack a frozen cow and see the meat drop elsewhere; similarly on a multiplayer world two players have been able to hit a villager that each player sees in a different location. Please see this clip for an example in which I am attacked by a slime that is visually frozen some distance away. https://twitter.com/Dahlia990012/status/1329469436915539968?s=19

This has happened to me with endermen and horses, but the horses have to be dropped while jumping/falling in order to cause it. 

https://youtu.be/hE4jOQ1N1io

Video of a frozen cow. Making sounds, but it was not able to move and I couldn't interact with it.

yeah the villagers will start going through a wall once they sleep, it happens due to collision all i know is a collision with another villager or with the player will push it out of its bed and through walls, im not sure if other mobs affect this

For flying/phasing villagers please see MCPE-101202

My active dogs freeze in place looking up. Seems to coincide with the night cycle. Dogs that have been sitting are unaffected. They release themselves after I sleep orr anew night cycle but not immediately. May also be related to not being able to place blocks ( occurs intermitantly).

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I want to confirm that I have also encountered the freezing dog problem. He gets stuck and can't move unless I log off and log back on.

I have had this same issue manifest in a few ways:

• On my farm, all of a single type of animal will freeze. You will still HEAR them, and see grass get eaten (where no animal is). You cannot interact.

-This has seemed to cause my animals to disappear and load outside my farm as well and animals to die because they fall or get stuck in something (bushes)

*I have found the only way to stop this is to save and quite and reload.  

-When I am in caves, I will HEAR mobs, but not SEE them. They will mob up and attack me but I cannot retaliate. As I speed run OUT of the cave, I will find a collection of their 'soulless bodies' standing around frozen. THIS is most aggravating as I can't even retaliate.

I noticed that it seems to happen too near areas with an elevation change, such as the edge of a level of blocks or near stairs.

I have had an issue where random mobs would freeze and would be invincible, and if I reload the world they dissapear, for some reason a mod said it was a duplicate of this when it is pretty much different https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oXnpIGzObjI5fTv9flESoYh58kY2ykLX?usp=sharing

I've started getting this issue frequently since I updated to v1.16.100. I've noticed it affecting cave spiders, villagers and iron golems. I believe it may occur with other mobs as well.

Am experiencing this in 1.16.100 Bedrock on PS4, most obviously seen with skeletons. (Just built an XP farm using a skeleton spawner.) Haven't seen the frozen mob model in the XP farm (it's likely in an area I can't see) but have seen it elsewhere in the same world. May have happened with multiple mobs at once. (judging by the number of shield impacts during one occasion) Only remedies I've found are quitting or switching to peaceful mode and back. Arrows shot by invisible skeletons are visible, but the invisible mobs are unkillable and the frozen mob bodies don't respond to being attacked either. (An invisible creeper would probably still blow itself up, but I can't say for sure that I've encountered one of those.) I did not have this problem prior to 1.16.100. I can't say that I've seen shadows of invisible mobs.

Based on my XP farm, the odds for a mob to be invisible seem to be pretty low, but I don't have any theories as to why.

107142 also duplicates this one.
I’ve been attacked by invisible zombies, spiders, possibly creepers while mining a basement under a woodland mansion. I sometimes found a motionless body but not always. On PS4

Since the 1.16.1 version update on bedrock there have been multi bugs one major one is the increase in lag on both single player and realms, I am not sure as to what is the cause of it but since the 1.16.1 update Mobs have not been working correctly. A few people on single world and realms have notice being hit by random damage with no mobs around, dying to a mob that was not even in view range, and attacking mobs that appear to be invincible and not taking damage... this included passive mobs like the Invincible Llama >.> Reloading Minecraft does help but for a limited amount of time like 30 minutes before it accrues again. Over all what ever is causing this issue is greatly taking from the enjoyment of playing the game.

Affected Version- Win 10 PC

Platform- Single worlds/realms (setting was on HARD)

Reproduce- any world generation 1.16.1

Set Time to accrue - unknown, 30 Mins +

Locations- Infinite locations.

Affected- All entities Mobs/Passive Mobs.

P.S- This update 1.16.1 will forever be known as the Haunted Update...

Same , a golem became invisible and was hitting me even if the real golem was still and couldn’t move and when I managed to kill the invisible mob the iron dropped where the real golem image was and I was pretty impressed it happens to me often since this snapshot even with withers be carful 

Getting this since last update: besides what is mentioned it is also happening with minecarts and tamed horses. Never had to reload the game so much!

Invisible creepers will explode, I had one blow up on me while working around my base. I have a video clip of it but I am unable to upload it. If anyone from the Mojang team would like to see clip I would more than happy to send it to you.

This also affects blazes and wither skeletons. I was in a nether fortress and I just flew away to reset the mob cap that was mostly full (I dunno if this matters). When back to the fortresses, after a while I got withered while the nearest wither was at least 10-20 blocks away, so I ran away, but then I still got hit probably by a blaze in melee mode, I died but I had a totem so I ran away again, and then I started being fired by an invisible blaze. I tried hit him but I couldn’t, I dunno if because I didn’t actually hit him, or because it couldn’t be hit at all, but I was in a closed tunnel, so the space was limited, but still I could have missed him.

Hi, this is the player [redacted]. I didn’t know where to report a bug so I just did it here.

when I join Minecraft pe, after a minute it crashes and kicks me out of the app! Mojang, if you are reading this, please fix this bug.

Zu dieser bug möchte will ich auch anschließen und es melden da ich es nicht direkt an einer Support melden kann(

?) Plattform: Nintendo Switch (=>Screenshots stehen deswegen nicht zur Verfügung!)

Soeben (22.11.2020 ca um 15.30h) ist es mit mir auch passiert und habe aus irgendeiner Grund auch mein ganzes Items verloren obwohl ich nicht im Lava gefallen bin.

Der Mob hat mich im Nether angegriffen, frierte ab und hat mich als unsichtbare getötet. Finde ich extrem schlecht, brach mein Spiel ab und erwarte das es korrigiert wird, sprich meine Items wieder zurück geben. Für weitere Infos stehe ich gern zur Verfügung!

Gruß

Ed: Each bug must be tracked in its own report. Please see this guide for how to use the bug tracker, then search for a prior report and if you don't find one, create one. Also, I have redacted your gamertag. You shouldn't publish personally identifying information such as that in a public place.

@unknown: Sorry, we're unable to accept comments that are not in English. You might want to use a web translator and try again.

In further experiments, I've found that to kill the affected mobs (as a workaround until this gets fixed) you have to find and kill the frozen body. Though that didn't seem like that was working the first time I experienced this bug. The first time I quit and re-entered and the affected mob seemed to appear some distance from the frozen image.

Hi, we've been experiencing this a lot today. We're in lan multiplayer xbox one and android. The mobs seem to freeze on the screen, but they're actually still moving around. Annoying with passive mobs but deadly with hostile. Also villagers randomly go invisible too. They still have happy and angry sparkles, but you can't see them. We've had to close and relog about 15 times today. This fixes the frozen mobs but the villagers are still invisible. This only started happening on 1.16.100

Okay, english, thank you for the Hint.

I also want to connect to this bug and report it because I cannot report it directly to a support (

?) Platform: Nintendo Switch (=> Screenshots are therefore not available!)

It happened to me just now (November 22nd, 2020 around 3:30 p.m.) and for some reason I lost all my items even though I didn't fall in lava.

The mob attacked me in the Nether, froze and killed me as invisible. I find it extremely bad, I broke up my game and expect it to be corrected, i.e. to give my items back. I am available for further information!

Best regards.

Mobs are invisible to player but cast shadow - not true for me (Bedrock 1.16.100, Win10 Home 20H2).

I am using some texture pack, could be the difference, but frozen mobs (cow, spider, slime, ...) do cast shadow where they are rendered, not where they actually are (yes, was attacked by invisible mobs as well, that is even bigger problem than invisible villagers).

I too believe it is related to MCPE-101202 (and Auldrick: we met at MCPE-104337, I believe it is rendering glitch and am very surprised MC has different coordinates for rendering and physics ...or it seems to be the case from what I can see... could be client vs. server problem). Just to clarify, do not want to polute comments more than necessary. Good luck finding it.

Hi, this isn't mention in the above list of invisible things, but we have a double chest, where half of it vanishes sometimes. It then looks like a single chest - but you can't open in. Then it randomly turns back into a double chest.

We're on android and Xbox and there are no shadows moving. Just invisible or apparently frozen mobs... 

I have updated the list of reported symptoms in the bug description based on everyone's additional information, and I'll continue doing this as we understand more about what's happening. If you see anything that you're sure is incorrect, please leave a comment telling me about it.

It's now clear that this issue has a lot of similarities to what happens to villagers in MCPE-101202, but for now we'll keep them separated because much of what the villagers do only happens when they sleep, and these other mobs don't sleep.

@unknown: Are you saying an entire herd of animals freezes simultaneously? If so, do they all become active again and move suddenly and sharply when you get closer? I think that's normal, or at least it's not exactly the same bug as this. This bug should only happen to mobs individually, and just moving closer wouldn't rejoin their split aspects.

@unknown: Your comment prompted me to revise the description. Hopefully now you can see that it actually is the same problem.

@unknown: Thank you. I'm just going to add "and more" to the list of affected mobs, because once the number and variety of them reaches a certain level, it's best to assume it can affect any of them.

@unknown: Being killed by an invisible mob is certainly what this report is about, but losing all your items isn't part of it. That must be a different bug, but you haven't given, and probably can't give, enough details for us to describe it well enough to be able to reproduce it. If it happens again, you should search for a bug report that describes your experience, and if you can't find one you should create a new report for it. The Bug Reporting Guide can help you with that. Unfortunately, there's no way to recover your lost items. If you don't have a backup, I'd recommend making it a habit to back up your important worlds every time you finish playing for a while. (Every platform's backup capabilities are unique; I don't know what's possible on yours.)

@unknown: I think I had that wrong in the description, please check it now. Regarding separate coordinates, the server and client components of the game run in separate processes and don't directly share data space, so each has to have its own copy of the mob and player data (and a lot of other stuff). The components are designed to keep their own copy updated in parallel, so normally they would stay in sync, but even when there's no bug they can get out of sync far lots of reasons, so the game is designed to make the server send updated information to the client at critical times, and the client is supposed to use those updates to replace whatever I has in its records, thus getting everything back in sync again. Looking at this bug from a technical standpoint, it seems to have broken this built-in correction process in certain situations, most likely random ones.

@unknown: That's the first clear report I've noticed of something like this happening to non-mob entities. Thus, I'm not sure at this point whether it's a manifestation of this bug or some other one. If others can confirm it or report something similar, I'll modify the description to incorporate it. In the meantime, your comment is available to the developers.

Everybody: Thank you all for staying focused on using comments to add new information. At this time I think we can do without further comments just to add new platforms or mobs as they all seem to be affected. I would like to have reports for any other entities, though, and of course anything of significance that hasn't already been reported.

when npc are hit in creative mode they dissaper

I have encountered this many times and I don't think they are invulnerable. You can kill the "ghosts" with arrows and the "statue" shows the burning animation (I have a flame bow and done this many times.) Swords are useless however. I can't confirm whether thrown tridents will work against them but I will try if I get the chance.

So far no ghost creepers yet so phew

One thing I don't see mentioned anywhere; I have been hit several times in mid air by an invisible hostile mob, this was in broad daylight so no phantoms were present and I was far too high up to be hit by an arrow, also no trees of land masses were present at that height, I did not loose my flight/fall, a couple times I was only hit once but another time I was hit twice in a row.

@unknown: I suspect, though I haven't proved it, that the server (which owns the "ghost") detects projectile attacks while the client (which owns the "statue") detects melee attacks. So I would expect the trident can kill the "ghosts". This also suggests that the client would apply damage from melee attacks to the "statue", but I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen for technical reasons. (Basically, damage has to be reported to the server, but the server replies "Sorry, can't accept it because there's no such mob at those coordinates".)

@unknown: That's intriguing, but also perplexing. How high were you exactly? Did you take damage? Offhand, the only thing I can think of is that they're invisible phantoms that aren't dying in the sunlight because they're invisible, but that's just a guess. If you can provide a copy of your world saved immediately after you take such a hit, I might be able to confirm that. Or, if you make a creative copy and give yourself Operator permissions you could run the command testfor @e right after being hit to find out what kinds of mobs are within your player ticking area. It's not guaranteed to be listed, but there's a good chance it would be.

@unknown: Although chests have been mentioned in these comments before, they're not currently included in this bug report. Please search for a different report to add your comment to, or if you can't find one, create one.

The damage midair might be due to MCPE-65094 desync, see MCPE-105490 comments

@Auldrick It's on singleplayer so I can't really understand lol

Anway a special case for horses,donkeys and mules: The player can ride the "statue" but it stays in place. The statue itself can be interacted with in this case since one time, my donkey freezed and with the behavior of the horse family in minecraft, the "ghost" donkey should have been quite some distance from the "statue" donkey but still I was able to mount the "statue". It can't move though. Reloading the world fixes it.
I found out this case affects horses and mules too since it happened just earlier to them.
I can't confirm yet if this applies to striders too but it probably does.

I have killed invisible mobs using a sword by attacking the frozen visible body rather then the invisible ghost. (I even recorded a video of me killing an invisible skeleton that was in my XP farm by going to where I figured the frozen body was and killing it. But it was too big to upload here.) For my XP farm, the bodies seem to get frozen in the same spot. I think I have attacked a ghost without success via bow, but I don't know for sure and I can try it again next time one shows up in my XP farm. XP from killed invisible mobs seems to drop at the location of the ghost rather then the body.

As a sidenote, I've had this bug happen to a pair of chickens at the same time, and also had it happen two a couple of horses. (And a zombie villager.) In the case of the chickens, I removed a shulker box that they had been standing on and they froze. I could still hear them, but they were standing on thin air and not moving, I didn't realize it was this bug at first so I tried various methods to get them down to the ground, nothing worked. (At some point I think that the invisible chickens got out of that base when I opened the door because when I reloaded the game the chickens were gone.) In the case of the horses, I encountered a couple of wild horses and tried to tame them. The first horse froze right after bucking me off the first time, so once I realized that I tried the second one. It happened again the exact same way. So that might be useful for trying to reproduce the bug. After reloading the save, the horse I tried worked fine and they were some distance away from where their frozen bodies were before reloading the save. All of this was done in PS4 Bedrock singleplayer.

I have had similar issues in single player on Android. I have a zombie spawner experience farm and since1.16.100 I have seen zombies floating through walls and standing inside blocks, zombies which were immobile and could not be hit, invisible zombies attacking me and zombies which had to be 'killed' several times (dropping xp and loot each time) before finally disappearing. I suspect it may have something to do with multiple mobs in close proximity to each other.

I have this happen in my game at a rate of once every half hr to hour. It affects horses, cows, and hostile mobs. I'm playing on switch and my other players on PS4 also experience this. Sometimes they can see and interact with the mob when  someone else can't. This started to happen only after the recent update.

@@unknown: as Auldrick explained to me: the server and client components of the game run in separate processes - yes, pretty normal for this kind of games, your single-player game is actually server hosting one client, both running at your own hardware.

@@unknown: the horses and donkeys reminds me, that I got stuck in a boat. Sounds very similar (although not a mob). The boat would not move, could not turn around and it was shaking, like if the boat was fighting my command. Reloaded the world and everything was fine, I could turn the boat and travel again. (And the desync makes sense, yes, two positions, two sides of physics/rendering - client/server - fighting who is the boss)

Nintendo switch 10.2.0

minecraft version 1.16.101

Entered villager breeding area where I knew I had left three adults and at least one child. Nothing visible. After breaking all the beds and replacing them, two adult villagers appeared.  I tossed carrots and one visible adult had a child with evidently another invisible adult. Hearts only appeared over visible adult villager.  Repeated and now have 3 kids.   Soooo frustrating to play like this 😞

A little bit more info for you. It was night and I was firing arrows at mobs. I actually saw them vanish and the arrow I had just fired froze mid air. I could actually walk around the arrow that was frozen in the air. I don't know if that helps with figuring out what's going wrong. 

As more reports have come in from players via comments, we've learned that these problems aren't limited to mobs; they also affect other entities: boats, minecarts, and at least certain projectiles such as arrows. So don't be surprised if you see a comment about disappearing or freezing snowballs, potions, tridents, ghast fireballs, TNT, or the like. And by all means, if you find a new one, tell us about it.

Arrows do work on the invisible ghosts, and swords on the visible frozen body.

I explored a nether fortress on hard difficulty, adventure mode with Resistance 10 and Regeneration 10(making myself immortal) on android 1.16.100 on my own singleplayer world, and experienced this:

After running around for about 40 minutes, I started getting knockback, the wither effect, and got set on fire from unexplained sources.
Because I was immortal, I was able to retrace my steps. And I saw a wither skeleton hacking away at where I was 40 seconds before, explaining the knockback and wither effect. The fire probably came from a blaze shooting me.
I hit the wither skeleton from its side with my fist until it died. It received knockback from the direction I(my detached ghost?) hit it(not from the direction that it was hitting 'my body'). The wither skeleton's damage, knockback and death animations were very laggy.

So I surmise that 40 seconds ago, 'my body' got frozen on the spot, while 'my detached ghost' left and went on walking. To the wither skeleton 'my body' was a frozen target it could see that was completely immune to knockback. While it was hitting 'my body', 'my detached ghost' received knockback and the wither effect. After that 'my detached ghost' went back and killed the wither skeleton, with 'my detached ghosts' attacks seeming to come from where 'my detached ghost' was standing, not where 'my body' was standing.

After that I saved and reloaded my game, and everything was back to normal.

edit: so sometimes its the player that freezes and becomes a ghost and not always the mob? 😃

Just ran into this bug with an Enderman and got killed .---- --I run into this bug daily, but have noticed that it occurs most often after 30 minutes to an hour of playing and rebooting the game fixes the issue. Of course, in combat, that's not an option. One the easy mobs (Skeletons, zombies, etc) it's not a big deal as swinging wildly will eventually kill them (the knockback from the arrow at least lets me know which way to charge). But this is a game breaking bug once you reach higher lvl mobs. No enchanting for me for a while now...

The ghost mobs ARE invulnerable. I was in a raid when one of the vindicators froze and still attacked me and I could not hit it back.

@Jaicraft Mine Swords don't work against "ghosts" but they are not invulnerable as I have killed them using a bow. I had to locate the general vicinity of the "ghost" using shields and shooting in that direction has a good chance of hitting the "ghost" and eventually killing it. Thrown tridents too may work.
@Auldrick i can confirm "ghosts" really do not produce any sound at all.

edit: saw a previous comment saying he noticed the bugs occur when there's an elevation change. Well, when my horse, mule and donkey froze, all their "statues" were around this haybale decoration that rises 1 and 2 blocks above the ground so maybe this could be a clue and lead to a faster way to reproduce this bug.

Swords/melee attacks only work on the frozen mob if you are actually near enough to the invisible mob, else they don't work.
Arrows work only when you shoot it at the invisible mob.
Any sound is usually from the position of the invisible mob.
Relogging/changing dimensions/reloading the chunk by going away and coming back usually (I would say always) fixes the issue for the affected mobs, but only temporarily.

What @unknown appears to be describing is possibly a related, opposite issue happening to the player instead of the mobs, i.e. the player location is frozen while the player continues to move from their POV.

Confirm what Skaijie says. They didn't mention that sounds are only audible up to 16 blocks away, so it's normal not to be able to hear sounds in some circumstances. I would think if you're close enough to melee you would always hear them, though.

Folks, we're getting a little chatty in here. (Yes, that includes me.) Please remember to keep comments focused on providing new information to the developers.

Invisible mobs can be led by leads

Is this still an issue in the latest 1.16.200.57 beta?

We believe this bug is fixed in the latest beta version, and the fix will be included in a future update when that is ready for full release (no specific date can be given). We will leave this ticket open as a point of reference until the fix has been fully released.

Scary situation when I almost lost 111 levels because of an invisible pair of zombies. I was in my chest room and I set the controller down for a moment. I then come back to see I’m taking damage from said zombies and had 1-1/2 hearts left. Scary stuff

I have this issue too!  I was being attacked by an invisible mob! Turned out being a polar bear. I had to hide in a house then get on the roof to see it.

I just lost two villagers that were walled into an area. They have been fine for a while, but one night they went to sleep and vanished. The beds are adjacent and up against a wall. Weird thing is that the smithing block one was linked to had green sparkles over it and and angry poof appeared above when I removed the smithing block.

I believe that this bug MCPE-108118 is related to this issue. But its not duplicate. The difference  about it is that sometimes the mobs escape through block and freeze ,and you can interact with the them, but the hostile mob can not attack the player.

.. The invisible mob can be also interacted with by other mobs. In the attached video the dog was attacking the invisible skeleton, and ignored the freezed one. 

I'm not sure if this is the same issue or if I need to raise a new one, so I thought I'd check. I play on LAN network and one of us os on xbox and the other on android. My husband was in the Nether and my villagers were sliding about while they were sleeping, so I logged out of the game to re-set them. They did reset but so did the day! It went straight to morning, but I'd not slept. The phantoms kept on coming the next night, so the game knew I'd not slept. It happened twice, so I don't relog while he's in the Nether now. 

@unknown: I assume the issue you have the question about is the change from night to day while you were logged out. There's nothing in the current report or about the current issue that would explain that, so I'd say it's definitely not the same issue.

But then, changing from night to day while you're logged out isn't necessarily an issue at all; it's normal under some conditions. I can't tell whether your world meets those conditions because you didn't provide enough information, and this report isn't the right place for us to trade questions and answers about a different issue. So feel free to search for an existing report of your issue, or to create a report if there isn't one. Be sure to mention which device was hosting the world and how you decided that it shouldn't be morning yet when you logged back in.

Here is another interesting thing. Playing with my friend in a Realm server I've noticed that almost all our villagers disappeared. But when my friend came to check this he actually saw them all alive, but randomly laying around on the floor sleeping. At the same time I saw nothing.

@unknown: We're tracking that as a separate issue, MCPE-101202. However, we thought it likely that it has the same underlying cause as this issue, and the fix for this issue in 1.16.200.57 Beta seems to have fixed both of them, so we just need to wait a bit for the next non-Beta release.

Do the ghost mobs drop anything?

@unknown: I think it depends on what kind of weapon (melee or ranged) was used, and possibly other factors, but I'm not sure.

In future, please reserve comments for providing new information that might help the developers find and fix the bug (which in this case is no longer necessary, as they have already developed the fix). The bug tracker is not a community forum or chat tool, it is only for reporting bugs. If you need to converse with other community members, please use the Minecraft Discord (or a similar forum) for that.

Sometimes the mobs freeze for a bit and then come back.

i have also experanced this in the 1.16.100 update with creepers, zombies, and minecarts on the realm i play on. the issuse is solved by logging out and then back in again 

All my nether mobs have become invisible, but I can move them through a portal to the overworld. Can't make a screenshot, because, well, they are invisible. Except for Ghasts that spawn normally.

In the overworld you see mobs teleport when they are out of render range, and when you get them back within render range they appear in the wrong place. You can't kill them or interact with them. Logging off and on at least shows them again.