Spider Jockey Has a Posse- Silverfish

Silverfish are a strange, insidious little monster that appears in strongholds, and can cause immense destruction to you and nearby stone at the same time.

When first encountered, a Silverfish appears to be a stone, stone brick, or cobblestone block.  The block harvests slower than other stone blocks, however, and when mined, it produces a Silverfish- a small, buglike monster with what looks like a frill.  Silverfish are inherently very dangerous despite being fragile (having only eight hearts) and dealing only half a heart of damage with each attack.  This is because of two traits.

First off, a Silverfish’s attack is triggered by vertical movement.  Normally, they cannot do damage to you, but the moment you move up or down, the Silverfish will attack you.  This wouldn’t be too bad, except that being hit causes you to ‘bounce’ slightly- and this is vertical movement, which lets the Silverfish hit you again.  It is very easy for this to chain into a long string of damage that ends in your death, especially with more than one Silverfish attacking you.

This is where the other major hazard of fighting Silverfish comes in- if you strike a Silverfish, it immediately gets a chance to awaken any other Silverfish within a rather large radius, causing them to swarm to you.  Of course, this makes any vertical movement even more dangerous, as you are suddenly taking not one, but three or five or more attacks each time you move vertically.

Of course, this can also mean a lot of damage to the stronghold, as the awakening Silverfish destroy the blocks they were hiding in and swarm towards you, making matters all the more difficult.

As though that weren’t enough, the block that you just collected will still spawn silverfish if it gets re-placed and mined again.  While this isn’t so bad on its own, many players will use Silverfish blocks to grief, dropping them in someone else’s house to create an annoying pest when destroyed.  Or, even worse, players will create entire stairways out of Silverfish blocks- which can be either an annoying plague or a highly useful anti-griefing mechanism, depending on how it’s used.

Silverfish are also even more insidious than that- if left alone as you walk away, Silverfish will scurry into existing stone blocks- and turn them into Silverfish blocks as well.  This can result in a very destructive time in any stone environment.

Perhaps aggravatingly, there is a Silverfish spawner in each End Portal room, making these places very dangerous in a strange sort of passive, annoying manner.

Overall the best way to handle Silverfish is to not provoke them- after all, they don’t drop anything and are highly destructive to their environment.  Keep an eye out when you’re digging up stone blocks in a stronghold environment, to make sure you’re aware if the stone is taking longer than it ought to as you mine.  If a Silverfish does spawn, stay away from it and leave the area- it will eventually ‘get bored’ and wander off to find a block to re-infest, and then you can return to what you were doing (as long as you’re careful).