Stamina Mod

Stamina Mod

Ever been chased by a bear for 2,500 blocks in a dead-straight line because the game's AI never gets tired? This mod fixes that — and then compensates for it, so wildlife isn't just nerfed into pushovers.

The Problem

Vanilla predators will pursue a target forever with zero cost. Prey will flee forever too. And everything — predator or prey — moves unrealistically fast in water. Meanwhile, you burn hunger the whole time you're sprinting. Animals had no equivalent limiter. Now they do.

Features

Core stamina system
- Every wild animal (wolf, bear, hyena, fox, raccoon, deer, elk, gazelle, goat, moose, pig, sheep, hare — adults and babies) gets a stamina pool, sized roughly by body weight. A moose can run longer than a hare.
- Sprinting, fleeing, and swimming drain stamina. Casual wandering and foraging don't.
- As stamina drops, movement speed is throttled — animals don't just stop, they visibly tire out.
- Once stamina bottoms out, a chasing predator gives up and breaks off the pursuit — unless it's actively defending itself from an attack, in which case it'll still fight back even while exhausted.
- Prey do the same in reverse: a critically gassed animal won't start a fresh panic-flee. An emergency "cornered" escape response still works regardless of stamina, since that's a reflex, not a choice.
- Stamina regenerates automatically once an animal stops exerting itself.

Balance compensation
- Predators hit harder. Any AI-controlled attacker with a stamina pool deals bonus melee damage, offsetting the fact that it can't just run you down forever anymore.
- Predator haste. Wolves, bears, hyenas, foxes, and raccoons are actually faster than vanilla while their stamina is above 80% — they only settle into normal speed once they've been working for it, then throttle down further as they tire.

Deer panic mode
- An injured deer gets a one-time adrenaline speed burst that overrides the normal fatigue throttle for a few seconds. It only triggers while hurt, and won't be available again until the deer fully heals — no infinite panic-sprinting.

Player stamina
- Players get a stamina pool too (about 4x a black bear's, by default), drained by sprinting and throttled the same way animals are.
- Recharges passively at rest, or fully restores if you sleep at least 3 in-game hours.
- Sprint locks out entirely below ~8% stamina — you can't will yourself into one more burst on an empty tank.

Configuration

Every number above is tunable. On first launch the mod generates ModConfig/StaminaMod.json with all the defaults exposed: drain/regen rates, speed thresholds, exhaustion and give-up-the-chase fractions, predator haste strength, panic burst strength/duration, player pool size, sleep recharge threshold, and more. Individual entity types can also be hand-tuned via JSON patches if you want one species to behave differently from the rest.

Commands

/staminamod (requires controlserver privilege) reports the stamina state of whatever you're looking at, or your own stamina if you aren't looking at anything with a pool.

- /staminamod set <value> — force a specific stamina value on your target
- /staminamod full — instantly refill
- /staminamod empty — instantly drain, for testing exhaustion/panic/give-up behavior

Compatibility

No vanilla files are overwritten. The mod attaches its behavior to existing wild animal entity types via non-destructive JSON patches, and uses targeted Harmony patches to hook into the AI, pathing, and combat systems at a handful of well-scoped points. Should coexist fine with other mods that don't directly rewrite the same vanilla AI task classes.

Credits

Concept and direction:

traugdor: Implementation — game code archaeology, design, C#, Harmony patches, JSON patches — by Claude Sonnet 5 (Anthropic), working autonomously end-to-end with zero human intervention.

 

Enjoy!