Spawn Egg



A spawn egg is an item that may be used to spawn mobs directly. It allows the player to spawn a variety of mobs on command, although some mobs are not available for certain reasons. There are 27 eggs available in total without mods or hacking.

Obtaining
Spawn eggs are not normally obtainable in Survival mode. In Creative mode, the player can use "pick block" on an existing mob to obtain their respective egg. Spawn eggs are also available in the Creative inventory.

Using commands


Spawn eggs can be obtained by ops using the command. When using this method, the damage value of the egg spawned pertains to the Entity ID of the entity it makes (see table below). However, any spawn eggs not listed in the table below cannot spawn entities. (It will just make a sound as though an arrow has been shot.) These eggs will be the default color, white with gray spots. When a player hovers over the image with their mouse the name of the egg is "Spawn". This egg has no specific properties and can not spawn any mob.

The format for the command is:

However, this can be simplified to:

Example: would give a player a single villager spawn egg.

Usage
A spawn egg is used by the use command (normally right-clicking) on a surface with the egg. The egg's mob will appear with its feet immediately adjacent to the surface. Unlike chicken eggs and Ender pearls, spawn eggs are not thrown; the player must be within normal range of the block. Hostile and neutral mobs (except wolves) spawned while on the Peaceful difficulty setting will spawn but instantly deleted from the world, just like mobs from monster spawners. The player may also place the eggs in dispensers, which will spawn the mob directly in front of the dispenser itself. This would be useful for adventure maps and traps.

Spawn eggs renamed by anvils will spawn animals with that name attached to them as an NBT tag. This name will also appear in death messages.

Ability to spawn
Notes:
 * All mobs with baby counterparts will spawn as adults unless the spawn egg is used on its corresponding mob (adult or baby) which will cause its baby counterpart to spawn instead.
 * Any entity not in the list above, such as paintings, entity blocks, or primed TNT, cannot be created with spawn eggs, even if set to the relevant entity ID value by commands. The egg is colored gray (Spawn Null.png).

Renaming
If you rename a spawn egg in an anvil then spawn that mob that entity will have the name you renamed the spawn egg. But since certain mobs cannot be spawned using a spawn egg, the following cannot be renamed on an anvil:


 * Utility mobs
 * Iron Golem
 * Snow Golem
 * Bosses
 * Ender Dragon
 * Wither

Spawn .name<


In Pocket Edition, if one goes into Creative Mode, gets a Spawn Egg and a Bow, charges the bow, and switches to the spawn egg just as they shoot the bow, the spawn egg will turn into a chicken spawner-like "Spawn .name<". The same method can be done with anything else using data values, like dyes, and the player will receive whatever that item's data value 0 is (in the case of dyes, Ink Sacs).

Trivia

 * Mobs spawned via this item act the same as normally spawned ones. As such, hostile mobs will de-spawn if the player ventures too far.
 * In Creative mode, one spawn egg can be used to spawn mobs infinite times; however, in Survival Mode, spawn eggs will be used up (e.g. one spider spawn egg will only spawn one spider; it will then be used up; a stack will spawn sixty-four).
 * When spawning an Enderman using a spawn egg on peaceful difficulty, it can exist long enough to pick up a block.
 * Possibly due to spawn limits, spawn eggs only stack to 16 on the Console Edition while stacks of 64 can be made on the PC version.
 * The Endermite's spawn egg possesses a reverse pattern of that of the Silverfish.
 * Using a spawn egg while in peaceful difficulty won't spawn a hostile mob.
 * After 1.8, when customizable mob spawners were added, if you right clicked a spawner with a blank spawn egg, the game crashes.