I brought ZombieMod back – build your own undead in Minecraft

Back in 2013 I wrote a Bukkit plugin called ZombieMod that turned zombie types into config entries – a coward that ran from you, a stalker that watched from a distance, a climber that came over the wall. It’s been a long time since Bukkit was the only way to mod a server, so I’ve rebuilt it from the ground up: ZombieMod ReForged, a full NeoForge rewrite for modern Minecraft, with 58 zombie types in the box and a lot more underneath them than the original ever had.

Your players don’t need to install anything

ZombieMod doesn’t add any new mobs to the game – every “genus” is an ordinary vanilla zombie (or husk, or drowned, or skeleton, or iron golem) wearing changes a stock Minecraft client already knows how to draw: size, colour, name, equipment, and a real player-head face for 51 of the 58. Install it on the server and that’s it – your players can join from an unmodified launcher and meet the whole cast. It’s been tested for real, twice, against a genuinely vanilla client.

A cast, not a mob pack

There’s a Runner that’s fast and fragile and only comes out in the dark, a Clicker that’s nearly blind but hits like a truck, a Breaker that chews through your walls when it can’t reach you, and Townsfolk, Commuters and Field Hands wearing the faces of the villagers they used to be. There are bosses with health bars and phases you summon by building a ritual out of blocks, horde events that arrive in waves, and infection that spreads through your livestock if you’re not careful (milk cures it, for you and the cow).

And then there’s Herobrine – weight 1, zero damage, no attack. He just watches, from far away, and vanishes the moment you get close or loose an arrow at him. He can’t hurt you. That’s the point.

What you get

• 58 zombie genera out of the box, each one a JSON file you can override or copy as a starting point.
• Write your own: 11 goal types, 21 abilities and 14 spawn conditions to recombine, on any vanilla mob as a base.
• Bosses with boss bars, health-triggered phases, loot tables and summon rituals built from blocks in the world.
• Horde wave events with a director, a boss bar, and a bell you can ring to find the last straggler.
• Infection, conversion (what a zombie kills gets back up as one of them) and player corpses that carry your things.
• The ZombieDex – a per-player bestiary that works in chat, as a written book on a vanilla client, or on a proper screen if you do install the mod.

Balanced on purpose

The shipped roster doesn’t take over your world – “leave it as a plain zombie” is an ordinary entry in the same weighted draw as every genus, and the default is tuned so a plain zombie stays plausible while the mod is still clearly doing something. Turn the dial up for a mostly-vanilla world, or down to 0 and let a genus claim every eligible spawn.

Get it

ZombieMod ReForged needs Minecraft 1.21.11, NeoForge 21.11.42+ and Java 21, and it’s free and open source under the MIT licence.

There’s a full write-up on the ZombieMod ReForged project page, including the complete genus reference, the roster, hordes and bosses, and every setting and command. Download it from CurseForge, and the source is on GitHub.

Drop it in your mods folder and see what turns up in the dark – and if you build a genus worth sharing, or hit a bug, the repo is the place to shout.