Legendary Herobrine

Herobrine is real in this one, and he's a boss. You summon him with a ritual you have to keep alive, then fight him through three phases. You win by learning his moves, not by showing up in better armor.

Version 2.0 is a full rewrite for NeoForge 1.21.1. Almost nothing from 1.x survived. The old Forge 1.20.1 versions are still in the versions tab if you need them, but they won't get updates.

It starts with a sighting

At night or underground you might catch a figure with white eyes standing far off, watching you. Stare at him or walk toward him and he's gone. The first time it happens he leaves a Tattered Journal where he stood. It explains how to summon him, so you can play without ever reading this page. (You can also craft the journal from a book, a redstone torch and a gold nugget.)

The altar

A 3x3 square of gold blocks. Put netherrack on the middle one and a redstone torch on each corner, then set the netherrack on fire.

gold layer      one block up
 G G G            T . T
 G G G            . N .      N = netherrack, lit
 G G G            T . T      T = redstone torch

Then feed the fire a Nether Star, Dragon's Breath and a Totem of Undying. Right-click the altar with them or just throw them in.

The ritual

The third offering starts the Rite of Summoning. A storm rolls in, runes spread across the ground and four soul braziers rise around the altar.

You can't just wait it out. The rite only moves forward while the braziers burn: all four lit is full speed, two is half speed, and with none it stalls. The storm keeps putting them out, so expect to run between them relighting them (right-click). If all four stay dark for fifteen seconds the rite fails and you get your offerings back.

It has three stages. First come waves of mobs while a soul crystal grows over the flame. A third of the way in, lightning starts marking the ground under players and strikes a second later. At two thirds a rift opens in the sky and his herald comes through, a thrall that's tougher than the rest. When the rite finishes, the altar is consumed and Herobrine comes down through the rift.

The fight

He has three phases, starting at full health, two thirds and one third.

The Stalker fights with sword combos, Blink Strike, Dash Slash, Sword Wave, a thrown pickaxe, soulfire volleys, a frost rift and a guard.

The Builder adds Whirlwind, Telekinesis, obsidian prisons, lightning marks, a ring of fire, and thralls that pillar up to get to you.

Unbound adds the Rising Combo, the Gaze Beam, mirror images, a meteor dive and a void pull. Everything else gets faster too.

Every attack has a tell, and learning them is the whole point. Some of them:

• His sword combo is two quick cuts, then the blade goes up for a heavy strike that breaks shields. Back off. He pauses after it, and that's your opening.
• Before a Dash Slash he crouches like a sprinter and a line of light shows where he's about to go. Step off the line. Later on he turns around and comes back through it.
• A closing circle on the ground means lightning. A line of snow means ice spikes. A square outline means an obsidian cage. The ring of fire rolls outward and you can jump it.
• The Gaze Beam turns slower than you can run around him, and blocks stop it.
• You can hit soulfire bolts back at him. They do three times the damage to him that they would have done to you.
• In the mirror images, only the real one's eyes glow.

Good play staggers him. Parry his sword, hit the real one out of his mirror images, get out from under the meteor dive, or hit him hard enough to break the void pull. He drops to one knee and takes 50% more damage until he gets back up.

He only takes damage from things that attack him. Lava, cactus, suffocation, fall damage and explosions don't touch him, and no single hit does more than 40 damage. TNT traps and one-shot weapons won't work. If he can't reach you, he teleports to you or mines his way in.

Dying doesn't end the fight either. If everyone dies or runs, he waits where the fight ended and slowly heals. If he killed you (or you'd hurt him) and you respawn within 160 blocks, which is about as far as his boss bar shows, you get five seconds. Then he's standing in front of you again.

He has two status effects of his own. Soulburn is soulfire that keeps burning, and water won't put it out (milk will). Herobrine's Gaze marks whoever his beam or void blast catches, and everything he does to a marked player hurts 25% more.

He never makes a sound with his voice. No grunts, no roars, no breathing. His attacks have their own animations and sounds, but he himself is silent, and honestly I think that's creepier.

Each time he's defeated in a world, the next Herobrine is ascended: 15% more health and a bit more damage per level, up to level 10. In multiplayer he gets 50% more health and 10% more damage for every extra player. All of that can be changed in the config.

What he drops

Every player who hurt him gets their own set of relics.

The Enhanced Sword builds a combo when you land full-strength hits in rhythm, and the third hit is a finisher. Hold right-click to guard, and if you time it right it's a parry. Sneak and right-click a mob to Blink Strike behind it.

Herobrine's Pickaxe can be thrown with sneak and right-click. It mines out the 3x3 face it hits and flies back to you.

The Builder's Crown gives you night vision and a ward that slows down mobs hunting you and knocks their arrows aside.

He also drops a Nether Star (so you get yours back), some netherite ingots, enchanted golden apples, a 50% chance at a Totem of Undying and a 25% chance at an elytra. And the Soul Crystal that grew over the altar, which is purely a trophy.

Your world is safe, mostly

Everything he conjures goes away on its own: the obsidian, the ice, the cobblestone his thralls build with. The only permanent change he can make is mining through terrain to reach you. That can be turned off in the config, and it follows the mobGriefing gamerule.

Config

Everything about the boss, the ritual, sightings, thralls and relics is in config/legendaryherobrine-common.toml (or the Config button in the mod list), and every option has a comment. These are the ones people usually change:

Option	Default	What it does
herobrine.maxHealth	600	Base health for a solo fight
herobrine.breaksBlocks	true	Whether he can mine through terrain
herobrine.maxDamagePerHit	40	The hit cap. 0 removes it
herobrine.huntsAfterDeath	true	Whether he comes after players who respawn
ritual.durationSeconds	45	How long the rite takes with every brazier lit
haunting.enabled	true	Sightings before he's summoned
enhancedZombie.spawnsNaturally	false	Thralls as a rare night spawn

The blocks he can break are a block tag, #legendaryherobrine:herobrine_breakable, so a datapack can change them.

Commands

Operator only. Handy for testing or setting up your own encounters.

Command
/herobrine summon [ascension]	Bring him down where you're standing
/herobrine altar	Build a lit altar in front of you
/herobrine ritual skip / cancel	Finish or stop the ritual nearby
/herobrine phase <1-3>	Put the nearest Herobrine into a phase
/herobrine ability <name>	Make him use one ability right now
/herobrine stagger	Stagger him
/herobrine sighting [player]	Trigger a sighting
/herobrine status / reset	Show or clear what the world remembers

Requirements

Minecraft 1.21.1 and NeoForge. No other mods needed. It has to be installed on both the client and the server.