Scaling Mob Difficulty is a simple utility mod that adds extra challenge to the game by gradually increasing the difficulty of hostile mobs. As time passes, hostile mobs' health, damage, and movement speed, and armor-piercing capabilities will slowly increase, pushing the player to progress. Useful for modpacks to prevent stagnation!
Configs
The mechanics of the mod are fully configurable via the config file in config/scaling_mobs/main.toml.
List of config settings:
- Scaling speed: Change the global rate at which mobs' stats scale.
- Health: Change how mobs' health increases
- Damage: Change how mobs' attack damage increases
- Speed: Change how mobs' movement speed increases
- Armor Piercing: Change how much of mobs' attack damage bypasses armor
- Drops: Increase the loot dropped by mobs when they're killed over time
- Exponential scaling: make mobs' stats scale exponentially with time.
- Delay mob burning: Prevent hostile undead mobs from burning until a certain Minecraft day has passed
- Whitelist/Blacklist: Explicitly add or remove certain entities from the list of mobs that scale
Datapacks
Scaling Mobs also adds some features which are configurable via datapacks (JSON).
Milestones (data/<pack_name>/scaling_mobs/milestone/)
Milestones are certain events that mark progression for players. They are used to give the world a bump in difficulty when the player advances.
Format:
Note: all fields except "scale" are optional
{
# Trigger when player gets an advancement
"advancements": [
"minecraft:story/enter_the_nether"
],
# Trigger when player enters a dimension
"dimensions": [
"minecraft:the_end",
"#minecraft:some_dimension_tag"
],
# Trigger when player kills a mob
"killed_mobs": [
"minecraft:ender_dragon",
"#minecraft:raiders"
],
# Trigger when player attacks/attacked by/targeted by a mob
"encountered_mobs": [
"minecraft:warden",
"#minecraft:skeletons"
],
# Trigger when player has item in inventory
"acquired_items": [
"minecraft:nether_star",
"#minecraft:piglin_loved"
],
# Trigger when player breaks block
"mined_blocks": [
"minecraft:ancient_debris",
"#minecraft:beacon_base_blocks"
],
# The new world scale (can't decrease existing scale)
"scale": 50
}
Mob Modifiers (data/<pack_name>/scaling_mobs/mob_modifier/)
A simple way to modify the stats of entities, and control spawning based on certain conditions.
Format:
Note: all fields except "entities" are optional
{
# Apply to these entities
"entities": [
"minecraft:zombie",
"#minecraft:skeletons"
],
# Spawn with these base attributes (still affected by scaling)
"attributes": {
"minecraft:generic.max_health": 40,
"minecraft:generic.attack_damage": 2,
"minecraft:generic.movement_speed": 0.3
},
# Don't spawn in these biomes
"biome_blacklist": [
"minecraft:badlands",
"#minecraft:is_mountain"
],
## Don't spawn in these dimensions
"dimension_blacklist": [
"minecraft:the_nether",
"#minecraft:some_dimension_tag"
],
# Won't spawn less than 200 blocks from world spawn
"distance_from_spawn": 200,
# Won't spawn until scale > 10
"min_scale": 10,
# Won't spawn if scale > 100
"max_scale": 100,
# Disable mobs' spawning altogether
"disable": false
}

- Edition: Minecraft Java
- File type: .jar
- Minecraft versions listed: 1.20.1, 1.16.5
- How to install: Install the matching mod loader (Forge, Fabric or NeoForge) for your Minecraft version. → Download the .jar. → Put it in the .minecraft/mods folder and launch that loader profile.
- Where to get it: Opens on CurseForge — not every file is mirrored on our own servers.
Install steps are the general flow for this file type — How to install Minecraft Java mods & modpacks walks through it step by step.
Scaling Mob Difficulty is a free Minecraft Java mod. Compatible with Minecraft 1.20.1, 1.16.5. Downloaded 4,221,489 times (via CurseForge). Download it and open it directly in the game.