Minecraft Forums

Skeletons as they stand are Fast, Highly accurate, fast attacking, and only have a weakness to shields. Alongside the new mob spawning inside dark areas like caves, a large number of skeletons and creepers spawn, Even more than zombies or spiders. With this large amount of skeletons only increasing on hard mode, and local difficulty giving them enchanted bows after a player settles down, every single cave becomes an Indiana jones styled dart trap, that can even break shields, and near always catch players running away. Iron armor doesn't cut it anymore, and diamonds are harder to come by with the old strip mining method becoming obsolete.

My suggestion to fix this issue players have been complaining about since 1.9 is:
Increase spawns for spiders in caves, opposed to skeletons, as I believe them to be more thematic to caves, as there are no graves or crypts for the skeletons to come from. Secondly, decrease the skeleton's health if you want them to keep their role as an extremely accurate archer, a skeleton is brittle, it has no skin or muscle, it shouldn't be just as tough as a zombie. and finally three, to keep jockeys from also being nerfed with this change, have jockey skeletons use potion arrows, since they are slowed down by the mob they are riding.

Skeletons are an iconic minecraft mob, they are THE archer of the game, they shouldn't be nerfed into the ground, just tweaked to be a bit more fair to players, as they are more of a nuisance than a challenge currently.

I kind of agree. My strategy to deal with skeletons is dodge their first shot and then score three critical hits on sword/two on axe before they load their bow again. They're at 18 HP so a bit less than a zombie's 22 but still kind of tough (creepers are also 18, spiders are 16).

I haven't noticed any change in mob proportion by region or difficulty.

Quote from allyourbasesaregone»

I haven't noticed any change in mob proportion by region or difficulty.

As far as I know this has never been a thing either; all the "common" mobs; creepers, skeletons, spiders, slimes, and zombies; all have the same spawn chances* and the mob cap is independent of difficulty, nor does spawn rate depend on anything other than valid spawning places, and then changes to light level requirements in 1.18 had no direct impact in most areas (this also only applies to block light so they scan still spawn on the surface at night).

*It may not be apparent but they really do all have the same chances, as seen here (most biomes are similar, aside from special biome-specific variants, like strays vs skeletons in snowy biomes, or slimes near sea level in swamps); all the mentioned mobs have a weight of 100 (zombies and zombie villagers count as one, as they also used to since they were variants of one mob):

https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Plains#Plains

The reason why they seem different is because zombies have a larger sight range and "call for help" feature, spiders and slimes require 3x3 blocks of space (only the block below the center needs to be spawnable but the entire 3x3 area above must be free of collision; in older version smaller slimes need less space), and slimes only spawn in slime chunks, with an additional individual failure rate. Here are some examples of the mobs I killed within a given play session (in my own modded versions, not 1.18 but as the WIki indicates the chances have not changed since at least 1.6, and likely much earlier, and I only added some new mobs with generally lower rates*; one thing that has since changes d is they nerfed the "followRange" of zombie sin 1.8 so it is smaller and dependent on regional difficulty, which is why I encounter so many. Skeletons are generally second, followed by creepers, which are lower since some of them explode and their AI seems to make them less likely to follow you around corners (note also that skeleton AI was different prior to 1.9), while spiders and slimes are much lower for the aforementioned reasons):

this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntitySpiderTMCW.class, 20, 4, 4));
this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntityZombieTMCW.class, 20, 4, 4));
this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntitySkeletonTMCW.class, 20, 4, 4));
this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntityCreeperTMCW.class, 20, 4, 4));
this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntityEndermanTMCW.class, 2, 1, 4));
this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntityWitchTMCW.class, 1, 1, 1));
this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntityCaveSpiderTMCW.class, 2, 1, 2));
this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntitySilverfishTMCW.class, 2, 1, 2));
this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntityGiantZombieTMCW.class, 1, 1, 1));
this.spawnableMonsterList.add(new MobSpawnEntry(EntityEndermite.class, 1, 1, 1));

MobSpawnEntry slimeSpawn = this.getSlimeSpawn();
if (slimeSpawn != null) this.spawnableMonsterList.add(slimeSpawn);

protected MobSpawnEntry getSlimeSpawn()
{
    return new MobSpawnEntry(EntitySlimeTMCW.class, 20, 4, 4);
}

Creepers will stay behind corners if they lose sight of you or think you're unreachable (same in their mind). As a way to surprise you if you go check out of curiosity.