Are mobs immune to Lava fire in Minecraft?

Question

I have a tower with a trench around it. Suspended in the walls by signs I have pockets of lava. The intent was to have mobs fall in the trench, try to get me in my basement and eventually touch the lava and catch on fire. This they do, but they do not die.

I am running a mod-less server v1.5 Beta (So clearly this is an SMP game :))

I had two creepers, two zombies and a skeleton in the trench. They would catch on fire when trying to run into the wall with a lava block on it, but never die. They just sit there on fire until they move away from the block.

Is this supposed to be happening? Is this an SMP only bug? Looking for some guidance :)

Asked by James

Answer

So, this was noticed way back before release (0.8.0 or so if I recall correctly). I have attempted to reproduce this situation in the latest release as it stands now (1.2.3) and have not been able to get it to happen.

I am not sure if this is because of the fixes that were put in to where you could not longer catch on fire by being on just the right side of a block of lava, or if because the new AI stops them from constantly trying to push their way through solid blocks.

After several attempts with zombies and skeletons I was only ever able to get one skeleton to catch on fire and if I had to lay money I would say what happened was one of its arrows that hit the lava and caught fire, actually bounced back and hit the skeleton, catching it on fire that way.

Since it appears to no longer be able to catch NPCs on fire with out them actually going into the lava, I am going to chalk this up as a bug that has since been fixed, either directly or by coincidence.

Answered by James

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