Spawning

Spawning

All creatures spawn naturally, like vanilla animals. Land animals appear when chunks are generated and over time while you play, ocean creatures and ambient creatures (butterflies, fireflies) appear while you play and can despawn again when you are far away.

Spawn biomes

Group sizes are the default values. Biomes in italics get fewer spawns than the main biomes.

Creature	Biomes	Group
Deer	all forests · plains, sunflower plains, meadow, cherry grove, taiga	2-4
Wild Boar	all forests · taiga, old growth taigas, plains	1-3
Bear	all forests · taiga, old growth taigas, snowy taiga	1
Owl	all forests · taiga, old growth taigas, cherry grove	1-2
Raccoon	all forests · taiga, old growth taigas, swamp	1-3
Beaver	river, swamp, taiga, old growth spruce taiga	1-3
Duck	river, swamp, mangrove swamp, beaches · plains, sunflower plains, meadow	4-9
Eagle	windswept hills, windswept gravelly hills, windswept forest, meadow, stony peaks, taiga	1
Butterfly	plains, sunflower plains, meadow, flower forest	1-4
Firefly	swamp, mangrove swamp, plains, meadow, flower forest, forest, birch forest, dark forest (at night)	4-10
Gorilla	jungle, bamboo jungle, sparse jungle	1-2
Panther	jungle, bamboo jungle, sparse jungle · savanna, savanna plateau	1
Snake	desert, savanna, swamp, mangrove swamp, jungle	1-2
Scorpion	desert, badlands, eroded badlands, wooded badlands · savanna, savanna plateau	1-2
Meerkat	desert, savanna, savanna plateau	3-6
Flamingo	mangrove swamp, beach, savanna	3-7
Crocodile	swamp, mangrove swamp, river · beaches, desert	1-2
Otter	river, swamp, mangrove swamp	1-3
Crab	beaches · oceans	2-5
Shark	all oceans · river, swamp, mangrove swamp	1-4
Orca	all oceans	1-2
Jellyfish	all oceans	2-5
Mussel	all oceans	1-6

"All forests" means every biome in the vanilla forest tag: forest, flower forest, birch forest, old growth birch forest, dark forest, grove and (from 1.21.4) pale garden. Modded biomes that add themselves to that tag are included too.

Every version, every loader

The spawn table is the same on all 18 builds. All biomes in it exist from 1.20.1 to 26.3, so no creature is missing on older versions. Before every release, natural spawning is checked on every loader and version: each creature must have valid spawn spots in its biomes, at rates comparable to vanilla cows and squid.

Biomes O' Plenty

When Biomes O' Plenty is installed, its biomes are sorted into groups (forest, plains, wetland, jungle, savanna, desert, beach, mountain, flower land, aquatic and tropical water), and the creatures above spawn in the matching groups as well. These groups are biome tags under wildcreatures:biomesoplenty/..., so a data pack can add or remove biomes from them.

Season System

With Season System installed, butterflies appear on all land in the overworld during spring and summer and not at all in autumn and winter. Without it, they stay in the flower biomes listed above all year.

Changing spawns

Every creature can be turned off, and every weight and group size can be changed in the Configuration. The option spawns.globalSpawnWeightMultiplier (default 3.0) scales all spawn weights at once: raise it if creatures feel too rare, lower it if they feel too common. Spawn changes need a restart to take effect.

Checking spawns in game

Operators can run /wildcreatures spawntest <creature|water_creature|ambient> [attempts]. It picks random spots within 64 blocks around you and shows for every creature how often it is in the biome's spawn list and how often the spot would be valid. See Commands.

NeoForge 26.3

The NeoForge 26.3 beta has a bug: it ignores the spawns that mods add to biomes. Wild Creatures works around it, so all creatures spawn while you play. Until NeoForge fixes the bug, they do not appear yet at the moment a chunk is generated, only shortly afterwards. Fabric and Forge 26.3 are not affected.