The Minecraft Creeper

Have you ever felt lonely in Minecraft? Did you wish someone was there for you, hiding just behind your back? Do you feel a severe lack of explosions in your general vicinity? That’s alright. Right outside your village’s walls is an interesting creature just waiting to solve all of these problems. It’s the green menace; the face of early Minecraft; the explosion with emotion: The creeper!

Back to the Minecraft Basics: What Is a Creeper?

If you haven’t played that much Minecraft before, you might wonder what this “MC creeper” thing is you sometimes hear about. Well, consider yourself lucky, because once you meet a creeper, you won’t forget about it so easily. Creepers are hostile mobs that are about as tall as the player and run at the same speed. These green creatures might look fascinating at first glance but they tend to have a rather nasty habit: Once a Minecraft creeper has seen you within a 16-block radius, it starts to follow you, like a cat, rabbit or some other animals. The difference lies in the creeper’s behavior once you are in a 3-block radius: It explodes.

This creeper explosion not only does a lot of damage, it can also damage buildings and mobs around the Minecraft creeper. As a small side up, the explosion also kills the creeper, although dying this way reduces its drops. A creeper’s drops change depending on what exactly killed it. If it’s a player or a tamed wolf, you get a whopping 5XP. If it’s skeleton or stray, it drops a music disc. If you’re in the mood for some groove, you can play these discs at a jukebox. Finally, a charged creeper causes other creepers to drop a creeper head. Minecraft creepers also drop up to five gunpowder, no matter what kills them. Additionally, all creepers are scared of cats for some reason. Weird, isn’t it?

Creeper Variants

Aside from the familiar green Minecraft creeper, there are a few variants that take its creepiness to new heights. If a lightning bolt hits within 4 blocks of a creeper, it becomes a charged creeper. Charged creepers are even more destructive than the normal Minecraft creeper, having double the damage of their regular counterparts. If you want to challenge yourself, use a trident with the channeling enchantment to summon lighting and create your own charged creepers whenever you want. Alternatively, a lighting rod can also be used, but that would be a bit too easy, wouldn’t it?

In 2015 and in 2019, Mojang revealed a new creeper variant as part of that year’s April Fool’s joke. In 2015, the ‘Love and Hugs’ Update turned the creeper’s frown upside down, giving them the name smiling creepers. These loveable fellas didn’t hurt anyone and burst into unpickable poppies when you came too close.

The 2019 Minecraft 3D update gave us the nerd creepers. Despite their higher education, they still run at you and explode, so don’t lose your cool when you meet them. The only difference to a regular Minecraft creeper, aside from their choice of fashion, are their drops. Nerd creepers drop the 3D item instead of gunpowder. Eating the item shows a picture of the staff at Mojang who work on Minecraft. Unfortunately, these creepers don’t exist in the regular game and have to be brought in using commands. But wouldn’t it be cool to have these mobs in Vanilla Minecraft? Let’s hope Mojang brings them back someday!

The Infamous Creeper Explosion

The creeper’s ability to destroy a large portion of what you built in such a short time has made it infamous even among veteran players. After hissing at you, which is pretty rude, the creeper flashes and expands before giving you its best TNT impression. And while that is rather convincing, it can be very frustrating to have all your work taken away so quickly. Not only that, the explosion also damages you depending on where you are and the difficulty level you are playing on.

Creepers can spawn everywhere on the overworld, if the light level is 0 and they have a solid block to spawn on. The only exceptions to this rule are mushroom fields and deep dark biomes. A Minecraft creeper spawner does not exist in the regular game, you have to make one either with commands or with mods. Although, a creeper spawner sounds like a bad idea, since all of the explosions will make building anything quite the challenge!

How to Fight Minecraft Creepers

To prevent explosion damage to your pride and character, you should employ a tactic that has been tried and tested throughout the centuries: Hit it with something, preferably a sharp metal stick. A sword is an excellent defense against any kind of creeper, as it not only damages them, it also interrupts the explosion. If you find yourself confronted by a creeper, try to keep your distance and fire at it with arrows. If you are in melee, try to keep out of the creeper’s line of sight. If the line of sight is interrupted, the creeper does not explode, giving you ample time to introduce it to your sword.

The Sensation that’s Creeping out the Nation

Aside from being well-known in the Minecraft community, the creeper is one of the most recognizable mobs in Minecraft, even beating dragons and villagers. It’s not clear why but the sad-faced exploding creature is often seen on merchandise and posters. Perhaps that is because the creeper is one of the oldest mobs in the game, beaten only by Steve himself and an unused human mob. With the lack of other entities in the game, the creeper quickly rose to fame and is still kind of a mascot of Minecraft. As new mobs and features have entered the game, the creeper is not the powerhouse of a mascot it used to be, but it will always be there when you enter a new Minecraft world. Without the creeper, Minecraft would not be where it is today. So next time your house gets obliterated by an angry green mob with a frown, don’t be mad. Be thankful that it’s there. And then take a sword and kill it.

After all, the legacy behind its name can’t be understated, so keep your eyes out for a creeper next time you start the game. And if you feel the need to meet the famous creeper up close (not recommended), a Minecraft server from G-Portal gives you a fantastic opportunity to say hello to the famed mascot (recommended).