Entity Vanilla Usage Components

Every mobile entity in the base game relies on a standard quartet of components to exist and navigate on land. Without them, an entity will either fall through the world, pass through solid walls, or fail to execute pathfinding goals.

When setting up a standard land-based mob, you almost always pair physics and collision with a movement speed attribute, a movement mechanic, a jump mechanic, and a navigation type. Even if an entity has AI behaviors telling it to stroll or chase a player, those behaviors do nothing unless the underlying movement and navigation components are present to translate AI intent into physical motion.

When inspecting vanilla behavior files, you will notice that almost every passive or hostile land animal shares the same foundational block of components inside the main components object. Putting these together gives you a stable starting point for any custom creature.

The example below sets up a durable, land-walking custom boar that avoids water, floats if pushed into a river, and wanders around randomly. Notice how the behavior components at the bottom depend entirely on the mechanical components above them.

{
  "format_version": "1.20.40",
  "minecraft:entity": {
    "description": {
      "identifier": "my_pack:custom_boar",
      "is_spawnable": true,
      "is_summonable": true,
      "is_experimental": false
    },
    "components": {
      "minecraft:type_family": {
        "family": [ "boar", "mob" ]
      },
      "minecraft:health": {
        "value": 20,
        "max": 20
      },
      "minecraft:collision_box": {
        "width": 0.9,
        "height": 0.9
      },
      "minecraft:movement": {
        "value": 0.25
      },
      "minecraft:movement.basic": {},
      "minecraft:jump.static": {},
      "minecraft:navigation.walk": {
        "can_path_over_water": true,
        "avoid_water": true
      },
      "minecraft:physics": {},
      "minecraft:pushable": {
        "is_pushable": true,
        "is_pushable_by_piston": true
      },
      "minecraft:breathable": {
        "total_supply": 15,
        "suffocate_time": 0
      },
      "minecraft:behavior.float": {
        "priority": 0
      },
      "minecraft:behavior.random_stroll": {
        "priority": 1,
        "speed_multiplier": 1.0
      }
    }
  }
}

Beyond movement, vanilla entities rely on attribute components to govern combat and environmental survival. The most important of these for cross-entity interaction is the type family component. Vanilla mobs use families like monster, undead, arthropod, player, and villager to decide who to attack and how enchantments like Smite or Bane of Arthropods calculate bonus damage. Always include mob in your entity's family list if you want standard vanilla behaviors to recognize it as a living creature.

For survival mechanics, health and breathability dictate how the entity takes damage over time. The breathable component not only handles drowning underwater, but can also be inverted for aquatic mobs like fish and squid so they suffocate when exposed to air instead.

When a player clicks on or defeats a vanilla entity, a specific subset of usage components handles the response. Loot is tied to the entity using the loot component, which points to a path inside your behavior pack's loot_tables folder. If you want the player to ride, tame, or feed the entity, you combine interaction components with component groups.

A very common vanilla pattern is using the interact component to listen for a specific held item, play a sound, transform the item (such as filling an empty bucket with milk), or trigger an event that adds a new component group to the mob.

{
  "format_version": "1.20.40",
  "minecraft:entity": {
    "description": {
      "identifier": "my_pack:custom_goat",
      "is_spawnable": true,
      "is_summonable": true
    },
    "components": {
      "minecraft:loot": {
        "table": "loot_tables/entities/custom_goat.json"
      },
      "minecraft:nameable": {
        "allow_name_tag_renaming": true,
        "always_show": false
      },
      "minecraft:leashable": {
        "soft_distance": 4.0,
        "hard_distance": 6.0,
        "max_distance": 10.0
      },
      "minecraft:interact": {
        "interactions": [
          {
            "on_interact": {
              "filters": {
                "all_of": [
                  { "test": "is_family", "subject": "other", "value": "player" },
                  { "test": "has_equipment", "domain": "hand", "subject": "other", "value": "minecraft:bucket" }
                ]
              }
            },
            "use_item": true,
            "transform_to_item": "minecraft:milk_bucket",
            "play_sounds": "milk",
            "interact_text": "action.interact.milk"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Vanilla entities rarely keep all of their components active at the same time. Instead, static components like physics, collision, and base health stay in the main components block, while state-dependent components—like baby scaling, tamed following, or hostile targeting—are placed inside component_groups.

When the entity spawns, the minecraft:entity_spawned event fires and selects which initial component group to apply. Following this vanilla architecture keeps your entities lightweight and allows you to swap out movement speeds, scales, or entire AI behaviors on the fly without duplicating the core physical setup.

Applies to Minecraft Bedrock 1.16.0 through 1.21+. All core vanilla usage components covered on this page are stable and do not require any experimental toggles.

Read out of the game itself, so the ids match the version you are building for.