Mob Menagerie: Phantom

Do you like sleeping? Me too. There’s nothing better than curling up under a cozy blanket after a long day’s mining and/or crafting. My sleep hygiene is top-notch, even if I do say so myself, and that’s why I almost never encounter the phantom – our mob of the month.

Phantoms are curious creatures. They began appearing in the skies of the Overworld in the Update Aquatic in July 2018, though players got familiar with them at Minecon Earth 2017, where they were pitched as “the Monster of the Night Skies” and won the Mob Vote against the Barnacle, the Wildfire and the Great Hunger.

These weird, spooky beasts look like giant bats with glowing green eyes and ragged wings, and their favorite food is players who haven’t slept in the last few days. They spawn during the night in the skies above the heads of any player who hasn’t slept in at least an hour (or three in-game days) and circle their target before eventually diving down to attack.

Thinking you’ll run away? Think again. Phantoms can travel at over 20 blocks per second (!!) and spot players up to 64 blocks away. They’ve even been spotted flying through WATER to target a victim. The only way to escape is to hide underground until daylight (when they’ll burn up like zombies and skeletons) or to defeat them.

Defeating one will grant XP, of course, but also a chance of getting a phantom membrane – an icky substance harvested from the beast’s wings, which can be used to repair an elytra or craft a slow falling potion.

There is one other approach to dealing with phantoms. Tamed cats love to hunt phantoms, and the beasts know this, so they try to stay a good distance away from cats – even if the cat is inside a building. If you’re building a mob farm and want to AFK somewhere, then bringing a cat along is a good idea.

Image credit: Eduard Solà // CC BY-SA 3.0

Bats are an obvious real-world parallel to phantoms. The wingspan of the one of the world’s biggest bat species – the giant golden-crowned flying fox, native to the Philippines – is around 1.5 metres, which is on the same scale as the phantom. These endangered creatures eat figs, though, rather than sleepy humans.

Neither the giant golden-crowned flying fox, nor the phantom, however, can touch the largest flying creature ever to have lived. Quetzalcoatlus – a dinosaur that inhabited North America about 70 million years ago during the Cretaceous period – had a wingspan of around 10 to 11 metres. That’s about the same size as a school bus, or a tennis court.

I don’t know about you, but I’d be much happier dealing with a phantom swooping down on me in the middle of the night than a Quetzalcoatlus. Either way, though, it’s not going to happen because it just happens to be my bedtime. Goodnight Minecrafters, sweet dreams and see you in the morning!