At dawn I was busy killing the remaining mobs outside the fence surrounding my village when I spied an Enderman shaking. My immediate thought was that I had looked at it unintentionally and ran to a tree to hide behind and started to make a roof two blocks high to hide under. In Minecraft 1.13 I used to like to lure Endermen to such a safe vantage point because I could kill them while they couldn't hit me.
This Enderman didn't act like I expected, however. It kept teleporting all over the place and wouldn't come to stand before me even when I looked directly at it. One of my iron golems spotted it and chased it around until it finally managed to hit the Enderman with a killing blow. I got an Enderman pearl out of the encounter, but I was disturbed that my previous strategy against this Enderman didn't work. Has the behavior of Endermen changed?
Pretty sure their behaviour has been broken for a long time. They were supposed to not be able to move when you are looking at them but it has only been fixed recently. The fact that it wasn't coming over to you is a bit weird though
Enderman are/were supposed to randomly teleport during the day, as seen from this bit of code from 1.6.4; they do still temporarily aggro if you look at them as there is a random chance of this code being run (up to 4% per tick), which resets it, but they will quickly lose it again:
Note that 1.8 changed their AI, which is when it was considered to be "broken"; this change may have been unintentional since Mojang updated them to use the "new" AI system that most mobs previously had, but not mobs with a special AI like Endermen and spiders (spiders were also broken for a while after 1.8, being unable to see through walls). Likewise, skeletons used to strafe but lost it when they were updated in 1.2, until 1.9 restored it, and creepers still haven't regained the ability to move during their countdown.
Also, as for not moving when you look at them, that is only supposed to happen when they are 4-16 blocks away (or a squared distance of 16-256), again, based on the "classic" AI from before 1.8 (less than this they will randomly teleport; further away they will teleport closer with a delay of 30 ticks or 1.5 seconds between teleports):
At dawn I was busy killing the remaining mobs outside the fence surrounding my village when I spied an Enderman shaking. My immediate thought was that I had looked at it unintentionally and ran to a tree to hide behind and started to make a roof two blocks high to hide under. In Minecraft 1.13 I used to like to lure Endermen to such a safe vantage point because I could kill them while they couldn't hit me.
This Enderman didn't act like I expected, however. It kept teleporting all over the place and wouldn't come to stand before me even when I looked directly at it. One of my iron golems spotted it and chased it around until it finally managed to hit the Enderman with a killing blow. I got an Enderman pearl out of the encounter, but I was disturbed that my previous strategy against this Enderman didn't work. Has the behavior of Endermen changed?
Pretty sure their behaviour has been broken for a long time. They were supposed to not be able to move when you are looking at them but it has only been fixed recently. The fact that it wasn't coming over to you is a bit weird though
Enderman are/were supposed to randomly teleport during the day, as seen from this bit of code from 1.6.4; they do still temporarily aggro if you look at them as there is a random chance of this code being run (up to 4% per tick), which resets it, but they will quickly lose it again:
Note that 1.8 changed their AI, which is when it was considered to be "broken"; this change may have been unintentional since Mojang updated them to use the "new" AI system that most mobs previously had, but not mobs with a special AI like Endermen and spiders (spiders were also broken for a while after 1.8, being unable to see through walls). Likewise, skeletons used to strafe but lost it when they were updated in 1.2, until 1.9 restored it, and creepers still haven't regained the ability to move during their countdown.
Also, as for not moving when you look at them, that is only supposed to happen when they are 4-16 blocks away (or a squared distance of 16-256), again, based on the "classic" AI from before 1.8 (less than this they will randomly teleport; further away they will teleport closer with a delay of 30 ticks or 1.5 seconds between teleports):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?