🧟‍♂️ Undead Riders

Undead Riders is a Fabric mod for Minecraft that adds naturally spawning undead horsemen to the overworld surface. Six types in total, each tied to a fitting biome. Fully configurable and difficulty-scaled.

✨ Features

• 🐴 Zombie Horseman — Zombie on a Zombie Horse. All biomes except Desert. Night only.
• 🏜️ Husk Horseman — Husk on a Zombie Horse. Desert only. Night only.
• 💀 Skeleton Horseman — Skeleton on a Skeleton Horse. All biomes except Desert/Swamp/Frozen. Night only.
• ☀️ Parched Horseman — Parched on a Skeleton Horse. Desert only. Day and night.
• 🌿 Bogged Horseman — Bogged on a Skeleton Horse. Swamp and Mangrove Swamp only. Night only.
• ❄️ Stray Horseman — Stray on a Skeleton Horse. All frozen biomes. Night only.
• 🎁 Saddle drop — Horses only spawn with a saddle at a low configurable rate (default 15% zombie, 10% skeleton). Saddles are looting-aware: Looting III gives ~20% drop chance. Players must hunt at night for saddled horses!
• 🛡️ Horse armor — ZombieHorses have a configurable chance to wear armor (default 60%). 40% spawn without.
• 🔑 Tameable Skeleton Horses — After killing the rider, Skeleton Horses can immediately be saddled and ridden.
• 🛡️ Shield on Hard — Zombie and Husk riders have a 40% chance to carry a shield.
• 🏹 Enchanted bow on Hard — Skeleton, Parched and Stray riders have a 30% chance for a Power I–III bow.
• ⚠️ Unarmed on Easy — Zombie and Husk riders have a 25% chance to spawn without a weapon.
• ⚔️ Difficulty-scaled weapons — Zombie/Husk riders carry tier-appropriate weapons including 1.21.11 Spears.
• 🔀 Independent toggles — Each type can be enabled/disabled separately.
• ⚙️ Fully configurable — Spawn rates, saddle/armor chances, distances, timing, and more.
• 🧭 Optional Open Parties and Claims support — When OPAC is installed, Undead Riders respects claimed chunks where hostile natural spawning is disabled.
• 🖥️ Optional Mod Menu support — On clients with Mod Menu and Cloth Config installed, the config can also be edited through an in-game screen.
• 🔄 Live reload — /undeadriders reload applies config changes without a restart.
• 📋 Info command — /undeadriders info shows the current status of all types in-game.
• 🚫 Non-interfering — Never touches vanilla's spawn system.

📊 Difficulty Scaling

Zombie / Husk Horseman — horse armor

Difficulty Option A Option B Option C Easy Leather Horse Armor Copper Horse Armor Iron Horse Armor Normal Copper Horse Armor Iron Horse Armor Gold Horse Armor Hard Iron Horse Armor Gold Horse Armor Diamond Horse Armor

Armor only spawns at the configured probability (zombieHorseArmorChance, default 60%).

Zombie / Husk Horseman — rider weapon

Difficulty Options (1 chosen at random) Easy 25% chance: no weapon. Otherwise: Stone Sword, Stone Axe, Stone Spear, Wooden Sword, Wooden Axe, Wooden Spear, Wooden Shovel, Stone Shovel Normal Copper Sword, Copper Axe, Copper Spear, Iron Sword, Iron Axe, Iron Spear, Golden Sword, Golden Axe, Golden Spear, Iron/Copper/Golden Shovel Hard Iron Sword, Iron Axe, Iron Spear, Diamond Sword, Diamond Axe, Diamond Spear, Diamond Shovel

Drop chance: 5%. On Hard: 40% chance of a shield in offhand (no drop).

Skeleton / Parched / Stray Horseman

Rider equipment handled by vanilla's finalizeSpawn(). On Hard: 30% chance for a Power I–III enchanted bow (drop chance 10%).

Biome restrictions

Type Biomes Zombie Horseman All overworld biomes except Desert, Frozen Ocean, Deep Frozen Ocean, Snowy Beach Husk Horseman Desert Skeleton Horseman All overworld biomes except Desert, Swamp, Mangrove Swamp, and all frozen biomes Parched Horseman Desert Bogged Horseman Swamp, Mangrove Swamp Stray Horseman Ice Spikes, Snowy Plains, Jagged Peaks, Frozen Peaks, Snowy Slopes, Frozen Ocean, Deep Frozen Ocean, Snowy Beach

⚙️ Configuration

Generated automatically on first launch at:

<game>/config/undeadriders.json

With Mod Menu + Cloth Config API installed, you get a full in-game config screen.

Option Default Description zombieHorsemanEnabled true Enable Zombie Horseman huskHorsemanEnabled true Enable Husk Horseman (desert) skeletonHorsemanEnabled true Enable Skeleton Horseman parchedHorsemanEnabled true Enable Parched Horseman (desert) boggedHorsemanEnabled true Enable Bogged Horseman (swamp) strayHorsemanEnabled true Enable Stray Horseman (frozen biomes) zombieHorsemanSpawnRate 0.15 Spawn chance per attempt, 0.0–1.0 huskHorsemanSpawnRate 0.15 Spawn chance per attempt, 0.0–1.0 skeletonHorsemanSpawnRate 0.10 Spawn chance per attempt, 0.0–1.0 parchedHorsemanSpawnRate 0.10 Spawn chance per attempt, 0.0–1.0 boggedHorsemanSpawnRate 0.15 Spawn chance per attempt, 0.0–1.0 strayHorsemanSpawnRate 0.10 Spawn chance per attempt, 0.0–1.0 zombieHorseSaddleChance 0.15 Chance a ZombieHorse spawns with a saddle. 0.0 = never skeletonHorseSaddleChance 0.30 Chance a SkeletonHorse spawns with a saddle. 0.0 = never zombieHorseArmorChance 0.30 Chance a ZombieHorse spawns wearing armor. 0.0 = never spawnCheckIntervalTicks 400 Ticks between spawn rounds (20 = 1 s) spawnAttemptsPerPlayer 6 Spawn attempts per player per round minSpawnDistance 24 Minimum spawn distance from player (blocks) maxSpawnDistance 64 Maximum spawn distance from player (blocks) nightOnly true Night/thunderstorm only (ignored for Parched) maxHorsemenPerPlayer 5 Max per type per online player openPartiesAndClaimsSupport true Respect Open Parties and Claims hostile natural spawn protection when OPAC is installed

⚠️ After updating the mod, delete config/undeadriders.json once to regenerate it with any new fields.

Open Parties and Claims compatibility

If Open Parties and Claims is installed and openPartiesAndClaimsSupport is enabled, Undead Riders checks OPAC claim settings before spawning a horseman.

Claims that have hostile natural spawning disabled, for example through OPAC's "Allow Hostile Spawn" setting, will block Undead Riders natural spawns in that claimed area.

🔄 Commands

Both commands require gamemaster permission (op level 2).

Command Description /undeadriders reload Reloads the config from disk without a server restart /undeadriders info Shows enabled/disabled status, spawn rates, and current caps in chat

📦 Installation

1. Download the latest JAR.
2. Place the JAR in the mods/ folder.
3. Make sure Fabric API is also installed.
4. Optional for claim protection support: install Open Parties and Claims on the server.
5. Optional for in-game config editing on the client: install Mod Menu and Cloth Config.
6. Start Minecraft — the config file will be created automatically.

🏜️ Test Server

Feel free to join my Minecraft server to test my mods: play.swordfishbe.eu