Project Parasites brings an alien outbreak to Minecraft 1.21.1 on Fabric. A meteor leaves a core that corrupts nearby terrain, makes the air toxic, and spawns parasites. Left alone, the outbreak spreads and stronger creatures appear.
Inspired by Scape and Run: Parasites. All code, models, textures, animations, and sounds in this mod are my own work.
Difficulty
Choose Normal or Extreme when you first enter a world. The choice is permanent; on a server, the first player chooses for everyone.
Normal gives you more time to contain the outbreak. Extreme enables adaptive enemies, block breaking, and extra spawns from deaths.
| Setting | Normal | Extreme |
|---|---|---|
| Corruption speed | Half speed | Full speed |
| Maximum parasites | 20 | 30 |
| Adaptive AI | Off | On |
| Enemy block breaking | Off | On |
| Spawns from deaths | Off | On |
| Iron golem infection | Immune | Can be infected |
| Enemy health / damage | 70% / 75% | 100% / 100% |
| Infection recovery | 3× faster | Standard |
| Outbreak waves | 3–5 | 5–10 |
| Meteors and bosses | Rarer and slower | More frequent |
Corruption
Corruption progresses through four phases and keeps spreading while you are away from the area. In Phase 1, terrain starts changing and the air becomes toxic without hazmat gear. Phase 2 brings stronger parasites and outbreaks. By Phase 3, hive structures grow and bosses appear.
Creatures
| Tier | Creature | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crawler | Climbs walls and attacks in groups |
| 1 | Spitter | Shoots acid pools |
| 1 | Lurker | Hides and ambushes |
| 1 | Swooper | Dive-bombs from the air |
| 2 | Stalker | Flanks you and freezes when you look at it |
| 2 | Broodmother | Spawns smaller parasites |
| 2 | Infector | Infects vanilla mobs |
| 3 | Hivemind | Strengthens nearby parasites and coordinates slam attacks |
| 3 | Leviathan | A large, persistent boss that is immune to fire |
Vanilla mobs, including zombies, cows, and villagers, can become infected. Iron golems can be infected on Extreme.
On Extreme, parasites respond to your tactics: frequent bow use makes them zigzag and close in faster, underground fighting increases cave spawns, and fire use builds their resistance. They also coordinate in swarms with different roles. Normal disables these behaviors.
Equipment
Start with Warding Torches to create safe zones, Antidote Potions, and a Noise Dampener. As you progress, you can make a Parasite Scanner with a HUD overlay, a Flamethrower, Decoy Blocks, Immunity Serum, and Hazmat Armor with 80% infection resistance.
Later tools include the boss-drop Parasite Bane Sword, Hive Destroyer, Purification Beacon, and Corruption Purifier. The purifier can shut down meteor cores.
Infection and events
Parasite attacks and toxic air increase infection. Its stages cause nausea, then slowness, then hunger and weakness, and finally Wither damage and blindness. Use hazmat gear and antidotes to manage it.
The first meteor arrives after five minutes on Extreme or ten on Normal, with more arriving later. Blood moons turn the sky red and increase corruption and spawns. Outbreaks send waves of parasites through areas with high corruption.
Configuration
Edit config/projectparasites.json to adjust corruption speed, spawn rates, difficulty, and individual creatures. Server admins can use /parasites commands for testing and management.
Please share bugs and feedback after trying the mod. This has been my largest project so far, and I'd like to hear how your world holds up.
