Spawn Egg



A Spawn Egg is an item that may be used to spawn mobs directly. It is available to regular players in Creative Mode and to server operators in both Creative and Survival Mode. It allows the player to spawn a variety of mobs on command, although some mobs are not available for certain reasons.

Use
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 not appear, just like mobs from monster spawners. The player may also place them in dispensers, which will spawn the mob directly in front of the dispenser itself. This would be useful for adventure maps and traps. In snapshot 12w15a with Creative Mode, the player can use "pick block" on a mob to obtain their respective egg, provided one already exists.

Ability to spawn
Notes:
 * All mobs with baby counterparts will spawn as adults.
 * 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 SMP commands or hacking. The hacked egg is colored gray (Spawn Null.png) and doesn't work.

Spawn eggs on survival multiplayer (SMP) servers


Spawn eggs can be obtained by ops using the SMP Command /give. When using this method, the damage value of the egg spawned pertains to the Entity ID of the entity it makes. However, unavailable spawn eggs cannot be spawned by placement nor by dispenser. (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. Can be obtained by typing:
 * /give PLAYERNAME 383 

The format for the /give command is:
 * /give PLAYERNAME 383  
 * Example: /give PLAYERNAME 383 1 120 would give a player a single Villager spawn egg.

but you can't place him on singleplayer.

History


Spawn eggs were added in the weekly snapshot 11w49a and later included in the 1.1 official release.

In 12w01a, the egg and its markings had their textures separated in order to allow them to have entirely different colors. This allowed their colors to be changed to better suit the mobs themselves.

As of snapshot 12w03a, eggs can be placed into a dispenser. Activating the dispenser will spawn the mob instead of dispensing the egg as an item. Also in this version, spawn eggs became stackable, which allows dispensers to hold more than nine of them at one time.

Ocelot spawn eggs were added in snapshot 12w04a, with the addition of the Ocelot itself.

Before 1.2, edited eggs for Snow Golems, Ender Dragons, and Giants (and other "unspawnable" mobs) produced mobs of their types.

Villagers spawned from eggs were always farmers before 12w18a; in 12w18a and later their profession is randomized.

Bugs

 * Using a spawn egg on top of a fence will cause the spawned mob to fall through it, as they are not placed on top of the collision area but the actual fence.
 * Spawn eggs ignore the requirement of sufficient space to spawn a mob. This is most notable with Ghast, where the player can use a spawn egg to spawn them in a 1 block space, trapping them within. However, the Ghast may suddenly rise up.
 * If the player creates a spawn egg of an unsupported entity, such as a non-mob entity, the egg's tooltip will show 'Spawn.entity.(entity name).name'.
 * If the player throws a stack of 2 or more spawn eggs out of their inventory, it will cause one of the egg's picture to distort, showing the bare egg with the spots off-set.
 * The player can hear the standard sound of all the mobs when spawned, even hostile ones on peaceful (as they exist briefly before despawning).
 * The spawn egg for pigs appears lighter as a dropped item.

Trivia

 * Mobs spawned via this item act the same as normally spawned ones. As such, hostile mobs will despawn if the player ventures too far.
 * Although hostile mobs spawned on peaceful difficulty will despawn almost instantly, it is possible for Iron Golems to attack the mob before it is gone. In some cases, they might manage to kill it.
 * In Creative mode, one spawning egg can be used to spawn mobs infinite times; however, in Survival mode, spawning eggs will be used up (e.g. one Spider spawning 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 mode, it can exist long enough to pick up a block.