Sky Whales adds rare whales that drift high above the oceans. They keep to themselves, but get too close and they'll hit back with a sonic blast, so hunting one is a real fight.
When a whale dies it leaves a floating skeleton you can harvest. The bones and meat are physics blocks that tie into the Create: Aeronautics and Sable airship mods, giving you a new way to gather lift for your own builds.
How to Install Sky Whales (Mod)
Sky Whales by dacite is verified for Neoforge across Minecraft versions 1.21.1 (latest release: 0.1.8, file size: 654 KB). Follow the steps below to install it safely from ModCraft.tv:
- Click the Download button above and select your Minecraft version (1.21.1) and platform (Neoforge).
- Make sure you have the compatible loader or environment installed for Neoforge.
- Move the downloaded Sky Whales file into your Minecraft
.minecraft/modsfolder and launch the game.
All Versions
+ Add Version- Whale corpses now reliably decay when they are old (20 min) and no player is nearby. Previously a corpse could linger indefinitely once its chunk unloaded.
- Sky whales no longer drift down into the ocean and drown — their wandering now avoids water and they stay aloft (with drowning immunity as a safety net).
Internal: corpse lifecycle is tracked by a durable tag with no world-generation side effects.
- Spawning**
- Whales now spawn near players over the ocean (a Phantom-style near-player spawner) rather than the old biome-based natural spawn. They drift in around you and despawn by distance as you move on — no more empty oceans or a once-an-hour hunt.
- New config** —
config/skywhales-common.toml, works the same in single-player and on a dedicated server: - Rate & count:
spawnIntervalTicks,spawnChance,maxNearbyWhales(+ radius). - Where:
restrictToOceanBiome, aspawnOverVoidtoggle for void / lifted-island worlds, and the height/distance they appear around the player. - Despawn:
immediateDespawnDistance, aforcePersistentoption, and a master switch.
- Internal**
- Replaced the custom mob category with vanilla CREATURE (drops an enum-extension). No client update required.
- Removed the old high-altitude spawn band (Y 200-310) that stopped natural ocean spawns on lifted-terrain worlds. The spawn rule is now tied to the ocean surface and self-sufficient (no external datapack required).
- Naturally-spawned whales are lifted into open air, so they appear airborne over the sea rather than half-submerged.
- Whales linger longer before despawning (despawn distance 64 -> 120).
- Whales no longer suffocate themselves.** In combat the whale steers its body straight at targets with no terrain avoidance, so it could clip cliffs/ravines and take IN_WALL damage until it died. Whales now ignore suffocation damage.
- Corpses now reliably despawn** ~20 minutes after death, including when their chunk has unloaded. Previously abandoned corpses could linger indefinitely.
- Fewer whales over the ocean.** Per-chunk spawn cap lowered from 2 to 1, and whales now despawn when no player is nearby instead of persisting forever, so they no longer accumulate into dozens. (Name-tag a whale to keep it.)
- Sky whales no longer beach themselves on trees/terrain and suffocate — drift is now terrain-aware, with a self-rescue climb if one ever gets stuck.
- Whale corpses now decay automatically once old (~20 min) and no players are nearby, so they no longer pile up.
- Low-health whales now reliably flee instead of occasionally getting stuck.
- The sonic boom can no longer be cheesed by ducking in and out of range during the wind-up (aborted charges now respect the cooldown).
- Whales no longer take hits or re-aggro during their death animation.
- Rebuilt against Sable 2.0.3 (current pack version); assorted AI/stability fixes.
Also nerfed the amount of whale meat drops