Minecraft Disaster - Learn From My Mistakes

Before

After MCPE-21416

 There is a horrible bug in Minecraft that causes mobs and entities to despawn at random.

  1. Minecraft (Bedrock codebase)
  2. MCPE-21416

Mobs and Entities can despawn randomly

What is an entity? An entity is an object in Minecraft that moves or can be moved.  It includes a long list of inanimate objects like armor stands, paintings, and item frames that can be moved or dropped as an item. 'Mobs', are"mobile entities" that are AI-driven to resemble a living creature like a cat or a villager. 

I found out about this the hard way when my armor stands (and the displayed armor) disappeared.  I had previously lost pets and villagers, and blamed that on the fact that I was teleporting, but losing my displayed armor was devastating.

Reading through the JIRA these disappearances may be caused when:

  • Mobs cross chunk borders between saves.
  • You change your spawn location (i.e., your bed)
  • You play for a long time without saving.
  • You teleport or travel long distances.
  • You travel to the Nether.
I had done the last four things just before the armor stands and armor disappeared.

You aren't going to see a lot of Minecraft YouTube videos about "I lost my farm in Minecraft" but you will find a lot of players asking things like "I lost my cat, what happened?" on different forums.

Apparently Mojang doesn't know how to fix the problem.

Using name tags on an entity doesn't seem to keep it from disappearing, neither does leashing it. 

Staying near base and not traveling doesn't seem to help, either.

In my case, I won't stop using Nether Portals or teleporting, but I will stop displaying good armor on armor stands and I won't waste name tags on mobs that live in my base, near my spawning points. 

Hope this helps someone.


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