- Added in
- 1.48.0 (the outbreak), 1.49.0 (the infested bosses), 1.51.0 and 1.52.0 (the Hollow's own, turned)
- How long it takes
- Two days for an ordinary creature, three for the hard ones, on the world's own clock
- Turned
- Half as much health again as it had, healed to full
- Status effect
- Infested (hidden)
- Can't carry it
- You (you get a brood instead: see the Parasite), the parasite's own, the Flesh's infected (all but its four great ones), the Void's creatures, the Watcher, and the Stalls' Audience, Ushers and Crowd
Before 1.48.0 a parasite in a cow grew a quick brood and burst out of it. Now it doesn't. It takes the creature over, slowly, and then the creature is theirs: a ruined, writhing version of what it was, hunting everything that isn't one of them.
Anything can carry it
Any creature at all can carry it: the game's own animals, people and monsters, the golems, the Warden, the Wither and the dragon, and the Hollow's own things. The exceptions are in the case file above.
It gets into them in three ways:
- A parasite gets in. Any of the parasite's kinds that latches on to a creature starts it.
- A turned one hits it. What the turned hit, they put one into about a third of the time. They can put one into you too, now and then.
- It's already out there. Once the Bloom is dead, every couple of minutes there's a one-in-three chance that a creature somewhere 24 to 80 blocks from you has one in it, already some way along. After the Watcher's visit following Signing Off it's one in two. The Wither and the dragon can catch it this way too. The Hollow's own creepypastas never do: they only catch it off one of the parasite's own.
Watch it happen
| Stage | What you see |
|---|---|
| Incubating | Nothing, at first, but a twitch now and then. |
| Spreading | The veins come up violet under its skin, and the first blisters on its back. It stops now and then and shakes. |
| Taking hold | Growths spread over it, chitin forcing out through its back. Its head hangs over to one side and one leg goes wrong. Its own kind won't go near it. It stands and stares at you. |
| Nearly gone | It shakes all the time, and if you're close to it in the dark it goes for you. |
| The turn | Five seconds: it seizes up, arches, screams, and tears open. The tendrils come out of it. Everyone within 24 blocks reads: "The ... isn't itself any more. It's theirs." Being there earns It Isn't Itself. |
Cutting it out
A Surgical Kit used on a creature cuts the parasite out of it any time before it starts to turn ("You cut it out of the ..."). The further along it was, the more it hurts the creature. Once it's turning, it's too late.
Turned
A turned creature is a ruined, writhing version of what it was: tendrils out of its back, and its chest (or its back) split open into a mouth of five petals round a ring of teeth. Its own mind is gone. It hunts everything that isn't one of them, the way its body lets it. The turned screech when they see you, and every one of them near comes. Village iron golems go for them.
Killed, a turned creature bursts and the parasites in it come out. Burn it and nothing does.
How they fight, by body
| Body | Which | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Upright | Villagers, zombies, illagers, piglins, skeletons, Endermen | Lashes you with its tendrils and drags you in, lunges, grabs you and holds you while it bites, mauls. Endermen blink in behind you. |
| On all fours | Cows, horses, wolves, bears, goats | Stalks you (it only comes while you're not looking at it), charges, pounces, mauls. |
| Small | Chickens, rabbits, cats, foxes | Fast. It leaps for you, and burrows and comes up under you. |
| Many-legged | Spiders, silverfish | Leaps, spits bile, burrows. |
| Winged | Bats, parrots, bees, phantoms, ghasts, blazes | Circles over you and dives. The big ones spit. |
| In the water | Fish, squid, dolphins, guardians | Rams you and drags you under. A guardian's beam goes bad. |
| A creeper | Creepers | It's a carrier now: it walks up to you, swells and bursts, and what's in it comes out. |
| The big ones | Golems, the Warden, ravagers | Slam the ground, lash, pick you up and throw you, charge. The hard ones roar you back and empty a brood of parasites out of themselves. |
What it grows on them
Since 1.51.0, anything of the game's own that turns grows mutations as it goes over, whatever its body has room for: a ribcage split open on its back like jaws, whips of tendril, feelers, a second head out of its shoulder, mandibles, legs out of its sides, swollen sacs, plates of chitin, a club of it, a cannon of it. A cow, a spider, a villager, a golem, a creeper, a bat, a ghast, a slime, a Warden and the dragon each grow their own. The growths are alive: they breathe with it, twitch, lash about and strike when it strikes, and the tendril it hooks you with reaches all the way out to you. Two moves come with them:
- Flail (anything upright): its arm gone to tendrils, three lashes in an arc.
- Strike (anything on four legs): the head grown out of its shoulder lunges.
What comes up out of the ground for any of them (spikes, jaws, tendrils, roots) gives a moment's warning: the ground churns first. Move.
The infested bosses
The game's bosses and mini-bosses (the hard ones, three days to turn, along with anything that has 80 health or more) fight like what they were, gone wrong. They get their own bar: "Infested Iron Golem" and so on.
Infested Iron Golem
Tears the spines out of its own back and throws them at you in a fan. Impale: its arm driven into the ground and spikes of chitin up through it at you in a line. Harpoon: a barbed tendril out of its chest hooks you, reels you in and hits you.
Infested Warden
The boom is a line of rot straight through everything, the dark after it and spores down the length of it. Tremor: it stamps and the ground tears up in rings out from it (jump them). Erupt: the tendrils on its head go down into the ground and come up under you, three times, wherever you've got to.
Infested Ravager
Puts its head down and gores you up into the air. Spray: a cone of bile out of its split head. Devour: its maw clamps on you, shakes you and flings you.
Infested Elder Guardian
A cloud of spores: slow mining, poison, weakness, and it might put one in you. Leech: its tendrils into you, and it drinks and heals. Maelstrom: the water turns round it and everything's dragged in.
The others
A piglin brute: Frenzy, five blows, coming on. An evoker: Jaws (chitin jaws up out of the ground in a line) and Conjure (fliers out of its robes). A breeze: Gale, a blast of wind thick with spores. A creaking: Snare, roots up round your feet while you're not looking. A sniffer: Uproot, it digs and flings it all at you. A happy ghast: Spores, bile out of the sky.
Infested Wither
It can carry it (three days, like the rest of the hard ones). Turned, it throws brood skulls (a fan of bile), and tendrils out of its ribs drag you in.
Infested Ender Dragon
The dragon is theirs from the first time anyone goes to the End (and any you bring back with the crystals; one already flying in an old world is taken the moment you're there). No days of it, no turn: violet veins under its hide, blisters along its flanks, spurs up its spine, tendrils streaming back off it and its back split open between its wings. Its bar reads "Infested Ender Dragon" and it has half as much health again. It still fights as the dragon does, and over you it shudders and rains its brood down out of the sky (void parasites, round where you stand), lobs spore bombs and sweeps its tendrils through you as it comes past low. What its body hits it can put one into. Killed, it bursts.
After Signing Off the Watcher shuts the End (see chapter five), so the dragon can't be reached until the seal is broken in chapter six.
The Hollow's great ones, turned
Since 1.51.0 the parasite can take the Hollow's eight great ones, including the Flesh's four, which it never could before. When one turns, what it was is gone: a whole new body with its own bar, its own voice and a new way of fighting. Its old fight is over (its scripts, its music, its old bar): it hunts.
The Saint Unmade
It drags itself on tentacles, hunched, its chest a mouth the height of it, its head split open like a book, a scythe of chitin for one arm and whips for the other. Choir (every face it wore screams at once: it throws you back and puts out the light), Devour (the whips round you, into the mouth, chewed and spat out), Reap (the scythe), Field (tendrils up out of the ground under you and all round you), Halo (its broken halo's pods burst, bile raining down), Surge (it throws itself at you across the ground).
The Mended, Unstitched
What holds the nine together now is the parasite. Hook (its chain is a tendril: the barb in you, hauled in to the scythe), Burst (every seam splits at once), Claws, Wings (Mothman's wings thrown open: every eye on them on you, the dark, the gust), Pounce.
The Gardener, Overgrown
Roots (they come up round your feet and hold you), Lash (its arm of root, the barb dragging you in), Bloom (the flower where its face was breathes out its spores), Harvest (the rusted shears, twice), Seeds (the pods on its hat burst, and spikes come up where they land).
The Reborn, Consumed
Clamp (the frill of jaws round its head closes on you and chews), Dance (round and round, both scythes out), Volley (petals of the frill thrown in a fan), Pollen (the dark, and weak), Hooklash (the tentacle arm, the hook in you, and in you come).
The Broodmother, Hollowed
It never moves from where it grew. Its roots are tentacles, its petals jaws of chitin, the woman on top split open down the middle. Snap (the petals snap shut on whatever's among them), Sweep (the tentacles sweep the ground all round it, twice), Birth (its brood drops out of the mouth down its front, the parasite's brood now), Geyser (bile raining down all round), Reach (her arms reach a long way for you and drag you in among the petals).
Specimen Zero, Unbound
Off the pool floor for good, up on six legs like a spider's, Reyes bent forward off the front of it, his arms folded like a mantis's into blades of bone, his head hanging upside down off a stretched neck. Scythe (the blades, one and then the other), Cables (into the floor and up under you and anyone with you), Leap, Absorb (his chest opens, the tongue reaches out, everything near is dragged in, and what it gets it eats: it heals), Vomit (the pool, sprayed), Skitter (round you, quick, and a bite from the side). Fire still burns it twice as hard.
The Warden, Unhoused
Its four heads up on long necks, a mouth down the whole front of the mound, six arms out of its sides, the warden on top hollowed into a chimney. Hydra (the heads strike one after another), Embrace (the arms close round everything against it and squeeze), Roll (it balls up and rolls straight at you till it hits something), Chimney (spores pour out and rain down round you in clouds), Grasp (its arms go into the floor and come up under you, holding on), Maw (the mouth opens the whole height of it, and it lunges).
The Congregation, Gutted
It's opened the bus up: ribs arching over it where the roof was, a heart the size of a car under them, its front a mouth of four flaps round a throat ringed with teeth, and it runs on all their legs like a centipede. Lamprey (it lunges, holds you in its mouth, chews and spits you out), Stampede (straight on over anything till something stops it), Ribs (they open out and slam down either side of it), Windows (the tentacles out of every window lash out and drag in whatever's beside it), Hymn (every mouth sings: slow, weak, the dark at the edges), Spill (its doors burst and parasites spill out). Get under it and you're trampled.
The rest of the Hollow's own, turned
In 1.52.0 every one of the Hollow's own that the parasite could get into got a form of its own: twenty-four more. (Things added after that, like the Listener, the Deaf King and the Tuned, have no turned form.) When one turns, what it was is gone (a whole new body, its own voice, four moves of its own), and its old ways are over (its hiding, its tricks, its scripts). It hunts. The big ones' names go on their bars.
The Neighbor, Inside Out
Split down the front and peeled open, and out of his neck the thing that wore him, long, raw and eyeless, his own head hanging slack off his back. Behind You (gone, and there, behind you), Needles (his fingers), Knock (a blow that throws everything near back), Hug (it holds you, and squeezes).
Stitchjaw, Unsewn
Every stitch burst, on eight limbs that were arms and legs, a jaw at each end. Tear, Thread (shot into you, and you're reeled in), Pounce, Split (it opens and spins).
The Shepherd, Flockless
What it found of its flock grown into its back, every mouth open; its crook a hook of bone. Bleat (every head at once: the dark, and slow), Crook (round you and hauled in), Tears (black ones, thrown), Flock (what's left of it drops off its back, parasites now).
The Mother, Unborn
Tall, her arms to the ground, her head hanging off a bent neck, something curled up in the sac of her belly. Cradle (she holds you), Lullaby (slow and weak), Swaddle (roots round your feet), Born (the sac bursts).
Broadcast, Dead Air
The set's cables gone into his spine, something pushing out through the cracked screen. Skipped Frame (he's next to you), Static (a burst all round), Signal (a beam off the screen: the dark), Cable (his arm of it lashed round you, reeling you in).
The Lamb, Shorn
Long and thin on limbs like a spider's, its jaw split open. Latch (on you, gnawing), Cry, Scurry, Tongue (it reaches you and drags you in).
The Hymnal, Unbound
A ribcage full of singing mouths, its pages grown out of its back. Hymn, Chorale (every mouth at once: a blast), Psalm (a beam of it), Pages (thrown like blades).
The Underneath, Unearthed
Out of the ground for good, on six arms, a hand for a head with a mouth in its palm. Claw, Drag, Hands (up out of the ground under you), Down (into the ground, and up under you).
Antlerkin, Velvet-Torn
On four legs, the deer's skull split open on a bulb of eyes, its antlers a crown of bone. Gore (and tossed), Rack (swung round), Charge, Call (slow, the dark).
The Bunnyman, Unstuffed
Flesh where the stuffing was, a skull in the split plush head with incisors as long as fingers, the axe grown into his hand. Incisors, Chops, Hop, Hatchets (thrown).
The Hookman, Unchained
A starved giant, a round mouth of hooked teeth, tendrils with a hook on every one. Sweep (low: slow), Drive (the hooks driven in), Hooks (thrown, and you're hauled in), Whirl.
The Hogshead, Rendered
Bloated, two more pigs' heads out of his shoulders, the cleaver grown out of his arm. Cleaver, Fists (both, down), Squeal (all three: weak and slow), Charge.
The Porcelain Man, Shattered
His glaze broken away in plates, a real eye behind his painted face, the music box in his chest a mouth, shards of him hanging round his shoulders. Burst (shards every way), There (when you look back), Shards (thrown), Music Box (slow, the dark).
The Harvestman, Gone to Seed
Roots trailing out of its sleeves, its sack of a head bursting with pods, a scythe and a sickle. Reap, Thresh, Seeds (spikes up where they land), Chaff (clouds of it).
Mothman, Pupated
Wings of skin covered in red eyes, a cocoon on its back. Snatch (up into the air, and dropped), Dive, Dust (off its wings: the dark, slow), Gaze (every eye on you: weak, the dark).
The Jersey Devil, Hatched
Something half out of its chest, crawling out. Hooves, Tail (poison), Breath (fire and bile), Glide.
Dogman, Unleashed
On all fours, its jaw split three ways, its ribs a mouth, a second pair of arms. Ribs (the mouth in them closes on you), Maul, Pounce, Howl (you can't move, and the dark).
The Flatwoods Monster, Hooded
Its hood opened into a flower of flesh round the cracked red lamp of its face. Claws, Lift, Mist, Beam.
The Rootling, Bloomed
Its head burst into a flower of teeth, running on its roots. Leap, Thorns, Scream, Down and Up.
The Great Flower, Overrun
Its petals crusted with eyes, the parasite's tendrils up out of its throat. Petals (slammed down), Throat (everything near dragged in), Tendrils (up out of the ground), Spores.
The Flytrap, Ravenous
Taller, a second trap lower down, its leaves toothed. Snap, Swallow, Leaves (lashed round), Spit (what it's digesting).
The Mourner, Unveiled
The death-mask hanging off a column of flesh with a mouth down it, its sleeves tentacles. Toll, Sleeves (reaching: weak), Grief (slow and weak), Shroud (clouds).
The Interred, Unwound
Its shroud coming off in strips that move on their own, its jaw down to its chest. Bite (hungry), Linen (whirled), Rot (poison, hunger), Bound (roots round your feet).
The Pod, Hatched
Split open like a mouth, up on six tendrils. Latch, Burst, Spit, Rooted.
Names as they appear in the game. Each form has its own model, animations, death, sounds and HD texture.
Testing it
With cheats on: /statichollow ending infest (the nearest creature has one in it), infest25, infest50, infest75 and infest95 (that far along), infestturn (it turns now), infestall (everything within 24 blocks turns), infestinfo and infestcure. For one of the Hollow's own, spawn it from its egg first, then infest and infestturn.