Minecraft creaking mob: Features, spawning, and more
The creaking is Minecraft's latest mob, initially referenced in the game's official website leaks before being hinted at on social media. Now, during the Live 2024 event, the creaking has been shown in all of its eerie glory. The creature has a tree-like appearance with three glowing orange eyes, and it finds itself as a native of the upcoming Pale Garden biome filled with decaying pale oak trees and moss.
The creaking is something of a stealth mob in Minecraft. It has natural camouflage to blend in with its surroundings, and it's capable of stalking and attacking players who take their eyes off it.
While not much is known about it at the moment, it's worth examining what the Live 2024 presentation showed about the creaking and how it works.
What we know so far about the creaking in Minecraft
Spawning and behavior
Based on the information from Minecraft Live 2024, the creaking can only spawn within the Pale Garden biome. This new biome contains decrepit pale oak trees complete with pale moss blocks, but pale oak trees can also contain a third block: the creaking heart. This unique block is capable of spawning the creaking at night, effectively linking to the mob after doing so.
After spawning, the creaking will roam the Pale Garden and upon finding a target, it will make an approach unless the target is looking at the creaking, where the mob will then stop in its tracks. While connected to its creaking heart block, the creaking is also impervious to damage. The only way to defeat the creaking (at least according to Minecraft Live) is to destroy the creaking heart it's tied to.
According to Mojang, the creaking is simply the "puppet" of the creaking heart block. As long as these blocks are present at night, they're capable of spawning the creaking, even if players move the creaking heart elsewhere. However, without being placed in alignment between two pale oak logs, the creaking heart won't activate and spawn the creaking.
Features of the creaking
Because of its wooden body complete with bits of moss, and because it only spawns at night, the creaking is a naturally stealthy hostile mob. The only aspect that gives it away is its glowing orange eyes, and by the time players are close enough to notice, it might already be too late to escape.
This presents an interesting dynamic where players can either proactively remove creaking hearts they find while exploring the Pale Garden biome or risk being overwhelmed by groups of creaking. Considering the Pale Garden can contain a vast multitude of pale oak trees at once, getting rid of all of the creaking hearts in the biome can be tough, but reducing their numbers might be a good idea.
Unfortunately, the brief nature of Minecraft Live 2024 didn't give an immense amount of details surrounding the creaking, but more information is likely to come to light when the Pale Garden game drop arrives in the coming months. According to Mojang, the Pale Garden release should arrive in Java snapshots/Bedrock previews soon, so more info about the creaking should be forthcoming.