Spawning Tiers and Loot
Note: This section talks about normal Elite Mob spawning, not Custom Bosses. It also assumes you're using the default configuration settings. Many of these mechanics are configurable by server administrators.
When does an Elite Mob spawn?
When a normal mob spawns near a player, it has a chance to be converted into an Elite Mob. The player's combat level determines the level of the elite, and higher combat levels spawn higher level mobs. A player's combat level is calculated from their weapon and armor skill levels (see below), and is always at least 1 -- every skill starts at level 1 even with no XP earned.
The conversion chance is eliteMobsSpawnPercentage in MobCombatSettings.yml, default 0.05 or 5%. Natural conversion must also be enabled for the world and mob type, and allowed by region protection and Peace Banners.
Because the minimum combat level is 1, even brand new players who haven't leveled any skills will encounter low-level (levels 1–5 with one nearby player and no region override) Elite Mobs. As they level their skills, the elites that spawn around them scale up accordingly.
Hunter Enchantment: The Hunter enchantment on gear increases the chance that nearby mob spawns will be converted to Elite Mobs.
What determines the level of the Elite Mob?
In EliteMobs 10, mob spawn levels use the player's combat level from the skill system. Your combat level is (highest weapon skill level + second highest weapon skill level + armor skill level) / 3, rounded down.
The base level comes from the highest individual combat level among the nearby players, not their average — one high-level player pulls the whole area up.
Party Scaling
Mob levels increase by +2 per nearby player, including a lone player. This does not require party membership. The scan includes players in the same world with loaded EliteMobs inventory data, within the greater of the server view distance or five chunks, measured in blocks.
Level Variance
Mob levels have a random variance of -2 to +2 levels, so you may occasionally encounter mobs slightly above or below your combat level.
Level Cap and Region Overrides
The final level is clamped to naturalEliteMobsLevelCap from MobCombatSettings.yml, which defaults to 120. If WorldGuard is installed, a region's minimum and maximum elite level flags are applied before that cap.
Spawn Distance Scaling
Enable useDistanceBasedNaturalEliteLevels in MobCombatSettings.yml to use distance from world spawn. distanceBasedNaturalEliteLevelWorlds limits this to listed worlds; an empty list covers all valid worlds. For natural spawns, the level becomes max(1, floor(distance / blockDistanceBetweenLevelIncrements)), with a default increment of 100 blocks. Distance includes height. Combat-level scaling, nearby-player bonuses and random variance are skipped; region limits and the final level cap still apply. These elites use fixed-level combat. Spawner elites, event mobs and Custom Bosses do not use this setting.
What determines the level of an item?
Elite items normally use their stored item level. Without a stored level, EliteMobs derives a level from weapon damage/attack speed or armor attributes. There is no single material-to-level table that applies to every item type.
The live defensive calculation also uses a separate armor-material lookup (for example, unenchanted vanilla diamond armor contributes level 5 per piece). See Damage System for the actual weapon and armor formulas.
What kind of rewards can I get from Elite Mobs?
Natural elites and Custom Bosses can award Elite loot. Their loot flags, contribution rules, lockouts and farming protection determine which reward paths are available.
Mob Spawner Restriction
Mob spawners never drop special loot. Even if configured to spawn Elite Mobs (optional setting), spawner-created elites will not drop special items.
Damage Participation
For normal Elite random equipment and special-gear rolls, a direct damager must deal at least 10% of the Elite's maximum health to receive their personal roll. Dealing less than that does not qualify that player for this generated-loot path.
If a qualifying damager belongs to a party with at least one other nearby eligible member, the generated gear enters the party's Need / Greed vote instead of going directly to that damager. Nearby party members can participate without personally meeting the 10% damage threshold. Two unrelated damagers do not automatically form a shared vote; without a qualifying party, each eligible damager follows the normal personal delivery path.
Anti-Exploit System
The anti-exploit checks cover unreachable players, enclosed farming spaces, hoppers, Enderman height exploits and honey blocks. A separate mount check prevents elite mobs from entering vehicles when enabled.
Detected exploits add points to the mob's counter. Qualifying damage events can subtract one point; this is not passive decay over time. Exceeding the configured threshold permanently disables that mob's Elite and vanilla-loot flags. Reducing the counter afterward does not restore them.
Farming Protection
In EliteMobs 10, a farming protection system limits rewards from natural elite mobs. It is configured in AntiExploit.yml:
| Key | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
enableFarmingProtection | Master switch for everything below | true |
farmingProtectionKills | Rewarded natural elite kills allowed per window | 20 |
farmingProtectionMinutes | Length of the window, in minutes | 30 |
farmingProtectionLevelDifference | Level window used for reward capping and skill XP eligibility | 15 |
Kill cap. The skill-XP handler tracks eligible natural elite kills in a rolling window farmingProtectionMinutes long. Going past farmingProtectionKills locks the player out of capped natural-elite reward paths, including the triggering kill, for one full window starting from that moment. The player receives a warning when the lockout starts and a reset notice if online when the scheduled reset runs. Disabling the skill system stops new kills from entering this counter. There is no separate burst cap.
Reward level cap. The mob level used for skill XP and natural-elite loot is min(mobLevel, combatLevel + farmingProtectionLevelDifference). Killing something far above your combat level still works, it just does not reward beyond that ceiling.
Skill XP lower bound. Each weapon or Armor skill requires a reward level of at least thatSkillLevel - farmingProtectionLevelDifference to earn XP. This lower bound is skipped under scaled combat.
Custom Boss kills are exempt from the kill cap.
Older versions of this page documented a 30-kills-per-hour cap, a separate 10-kills-in-10-minutes burst cap, and a fixed 5-level window. None of those are current: the caps are now configurable and default to 20 kills / 30 minutes / 15 levels.
Loot Types
The loot system includes several types of items:
Procedurally Generated Items
Procedurally generated items are items that are generated semi-randomly based on the server's configuration settings. There is a nearly endless amount of possibilities for procedurally generated items.
Usually procedurally generated items are armor, weapons and tools of any material quality with varying enchantment quantities and levels.
Soulbind: Procedurally generated items bind to their recipient when the Soulbind system is enabled.
Quality Indicators: Procedurally generated items are color-coded by quality and may have special visual appearances at higher levels.
Custom Items
Custom items are items either preloaded in the plugin (such as MagmaGuy's toothpick and charms) or added by admins. These items are fully customized, and can give players potion effects when either worn or held in the main hand or offhand.
The loot system also includes several types of configured items: fixed items (tier-specific), weighed items (with drop probabilities), limited scalable items, and fully scalable items.
Unique Items
Unique items are special drops from Custom Bosses which are similar to custom items. They may sometimes also have unique powers, such as the flamethrower power for the Zombie King's axe.
Vanilla Loot
Additional vanilla loot is controlled by defaultLootMultiplier in ItemSettings.yml, which defaults to 0.0, so extra vanilla drops are disabled by default. The level used by that multiplier is capped by levelCapForDefaultLootMultiplier, default 100. Vanilla XP orbs use the separate defaultExperienceMultiplier, default 1.0. This adds level-based XP to the original vanilla amount; it is not a flat multiplier on that amount, and the item-loot level cap does not apply. These paths require the mob's vanilla-loot flag.
Normal random Elite equipment rolls are separate from vanilla drops and special-item-system rolls. Their base chance is flatDropRateV3, default 0.2; the level-based increment levelIncreaseDropRateV2 defaults to 0.0, so the default chance does not grow with mob level.
Skill-Based Gear Restriction
Loot drops are no longer downgraded by guild tier. With skillBasedGearRestriction enabled in AdventurersGuild.yml, players must meet the skill requirement to equip recognized EliteMobs gear. Weapons check the corresponding weapon skill, while armor checks Armor. Elite gear through level 20 is exempt. Above that, you can receive loot beyond your matching skill level, but must level that skill before equipping it.
How can I get better loot?
Higher effective reward levels generally produce higher-level random gear, subject to farming caps, loot-table configuration and random item-level variation. A higher-level kill does not guarantee a better item or a drop.