Mobs Love Sunlight

The sun is no longer a safe haven.

Mobs Love Sunlight puts you in charge of deciding which hostile mobs should spawn during the day and which mobs should burn in the sun. The mod keeps vanilla spawning rules intact and simply removes the requirement that certain monsters must spawn in darkness.

This means daytime can become just as dangerous as nighttime without completely changing how Minecraft's spawning system works.

This mod was originally created to complement Mob Control. It was made to be a lightweight foundation for creating your own daytime survival experience.

Mob Control is not required, but it pairs exceptionally well with Mobs Love Sunlight by allowing gradual difficulty scaling, custom spawn timing, and different behavior rules for daytime and nighttime mobs.

Features

• Allow selected hostile mobs to spawn during the day.
• Prevent selected mobs from burning in sunlight.
• Fully configurable per entity type.
• Configurable dimensions.
• Configurable monster block light limit.
• Preserves vanilla biome restrictions, spawn weights, and special spawning rules.

How It Works

This mod does not create new spawn locations or change mob spawn rates.

Instead, it changes the rules that normally prevent hostile mobs from appearing during daylight.

As a result:

• Zombies still spawn where zombies normally spawn.
• Husks still require deserts.
• Slimes still require slime chunks or swamps.
• Structure-specific spawns remain structure-specific.
• Rare mobs remain rare.

A useful way to think about the mod is:

If a mob could naturally spawn at this location during the night, it can also spawn there during the day (if enabled in the configuration).

Because this mod preserves vanilla spawning mechanics and only removes daylight restrictions, it should generally work well with mods that modify mob attributes, AI, or spawn behavior, including Mob Control.

Configuration

The configuration file is located in:

config/mobs-love-sunlight.json

Example

{
  "noDaylightBurningEntityTypes": [
    "minecraft:zombie",
    "minecraft:skeleton"
  ],

  "daytimeSpawningEntityTypes": [
    "minecraft:zombie",
    "minecraft:skeleton",
    "minecraft:creeper",
    "minecraft:spider"
  ],

  "affectedDimensions": [
    "minecraft:overworld"
  ],

  "monsterSpawnBlockLightLimit": 0
}

Default Configuration

By default, no hostile mobs are allowed to spawn during the day.

The default configuration only disables sunlight burning for a few undead mobs. If you want daytime spawning, you must explicitly add the desired entity types to:

daytimeSpawningEntityTypes

Options

noDaylightBurningEntityTypes

A list of entity identifiers that should no longer burn in sunlight.

Example:

[
  "minecraft:zombie",
  "minecraft:skeleton"
]

affectedDimensions

A list of dimensions where the mod should apply.

Example:

[
  "minecraft:overworld",
  "aether:the_aether"
]

monsterSpawnBlockLightLimit

Controls the maximum block light level that hostile mobs may spawn in.

Vanilla value:

0

Allowed range:

0-15

daytimeSpawningEntityTypes

A list of hostile mobs that should be allowed to spawn during the day.

Example:

[
  "minecraft:zombie",
  "minecraft:creeper",
  "minecraft:spider"
]

Difficulty Warning

Enabling daytime spawning dramatically changes Minecraft's difficulty.

Even enabling a single mob type can make surviving the early game considerably harder.

The difference between enabling one mob type and enabling every vanilla hostile mob is mostly how quickly the hostile mob cap fills up, not whether daytime becomes dangerous.

For example:

• Zombies alone can quickly populate the surface because they have a high spawn weight.
• Skeletons make gathering early resources much riskier because they can attack from a distance.
• Creepers can destroy terrain and early shelters.
• Endermen remain relatively uncommon because they are naturally rare.

Because vanilla spawn weights and spawn locations are preserved, the exact difficulty depends heavily on which mobs you choose to enable.

If you enable every vanilla hostile mob, expect daytime to become a constant survival challenge rather than a safe exploration period.

Enable all vanilla hostile mob spawns

This list only includes mobs that naturally spawn in the overworld. Adding other entities to this list is harmless but has no effect.

"daytimeSpawningEntityTypes": [
  "minecraft:bogged",
  "minecraft:creeper",
  "minecraft:drowned",
  "minecraft:enderman",
  "minecraft:skeleton",
  "minecraft:spider",
  "minecraft:stray",
  "minecraft:witch",
  "minecraft:zombie",
  "minecraft:zombie_villager"
]

Disable sunlight burning for all vanilla undead mobs

noDaylightBurningEntityTypes only affects mobs that already burn in sunlight in vanilla Minecraft. Adding other entities to this list is harmless but has no effect.

Phantoms are excluded on purpose because they have different spawn and despawn rules that cause them to accumulate over time if they don't burn in the sun. Feel free to add them if you want.

"noDaylightBurningEntityTypes": [
  "minecraft:zombie",
  "minecraft:zombie_villager",
  "minecraft:skeleton",
  "minecraft:stray",
  "minecraft:bogged",
  "minecraft:wither_skeleton"
]

Recommended Mob Control Configuration

This mod was originally designed alongside Mob Control, which can be used to gradually introduce daytime spawns over the first few Minecraft days.

Rather than immediately allowing full daytime spawning, the example configuration below slowly increases spawn frequency:

This creates a smoother difficulty curve while still allowing every configured mob to eventually spawn during the day.

Installing the configuration

1. Install Mob Control.
2. Run Minecraft once to generate the default configuration.
3. Open:

config/mobcontrol.toml

1. Copy the following rules into the configuration file.

################################################################################
# Day 1
################################################################################

[[mob]]
name=["minecraft:bogged", "minecraft:creeper", "minecraft:enderman", "minecraft:husk", "minecraft:skeleton", "minecraft:spider", "minecraft:stray", "minecraft:witch", "minecraft:zombie", "minecraft:zombie_villager"]

[[mob.rule]]
name="day1Spawns"
type="natural"
dimension=["minecraft:overworld"]
day=0
time-of-day="<12000"
run=1
cool-down=[80,200]
spawn.count=1

################################################################################
# Day 2-3
################################################################################

[[mob.rule]]
name="day2And3Spawns"
type="natural"
dimension=["minecraft:overworld"]
day=[1,2]
time-of-day="<12000"
run=100
cool-down=[40,150]

################################################################################
# Day 4+
################################################################################

[[mob.rule]]
name="day4PlusSpawns"
type="natural"
dimension=["minecraft:overworld"]
day=">2"
time-of-day="<12000"
run=100

################################################################################
# Keep vanilla nighttime spawning
################################################################################

[[mob.rule]]
name="vanillaNight"
type="natural"
dimension=["minecraft:overworld"]
time-of-day=">12000"
run=100

################################################################################
# Keep non-natural spawning (spawn eggs, spawners, commands, etc.)
################################################################################

[[mob.rule]]
type="all"

Example: Creating an Apocalypse

This mod was originally written to work alongside Mob Control, rather than replace it.

While Mob Control can create daytime spawning on its own using type="control" rules, doing so replaces vanilla natural spawning for the affected mobs. Every spawn rule—including biome restrictions, structures, spawn weights, and special cases—must then be recreated manually.

Mobs Love Sunlight takes a different approach.

It leaves vanilla natural spawning intact and simply removes the daylight restriction. This allows Mob Control's type="natural" rules to modify existing vanilla spawns instead of replacing them.

In practice this means you can:

• enable daytime spawning while keeping vanilla spawn tables;
• adjust spawn probabilities throughout the game;
• disable or throttle daytime spawns on specific days;
• change mob behavior or attributes using Mob Control;
• combine the mod with biome and structure mods without rebuilding spawn rules.

This makes it much easier to create progression-based survival experiences while staying close to vanilla spawning behavior.

Important Notes

Mobs can still burn

A mob configured for daytime spawning will still burn in sunlight unless it is also included in:

noDaylightBurningEntityTypes

Mobs may not spawn where you expect

This mod only removes daylight restrictions.

It does not change:

• Biomes
• Spawn weights
• Structures
• Special spawn conditions
• Spawn probabilities

If a mob rarely spawns at night, it will also rarely spawn during the day.

Modded dimensions

By default only the Overworld is affected.

Many modded dimensions use custom spawning systems and may behave differently.

Compatibility Information

This mod modifies vanilla spawning using mixins.

The following systems are modified:

• DimensionType.MonsterSettings
• HostileEntity#getPathfindingFavor
• MobEntity#isAffectedByDaylight

Because of this, conflicts may occur with mods that:

• modify monster light requirements;
• alter hostile mob spawn checks;
• replace mob pathfinding favor calculations;
• completely rewrite mob spawning;
• replace daylight burning behavior.

Examples of potentially incompatible mods include:

• daylight spawning mods;
• custom difficulty mods;
• spawn overhaul mods;
• mods that rewrite vanilla mob AI or spawning.

Compatibility with datapacks that only modify spawn tables is generally good.

For Modpack Authors

This mod intentionally preserves vanilla spawn rules and probabilities.

It is designed to work well alongside:

• biome mods;
• structure mods;
• mob attribute mods;
• mob behavior mods;
• AI overhaul mods;
• datapacks that change spawn lists.

If another mod also modifies the same mixin targets listed above, load order and compatibility may vary.