Video Game / Scape and Run: Parasites

Have you ever wondered what The Thing (1982) would look like in Minecraft?

Scape and Run: Parasites is a Game Mod for version 1.12 that does exactly that, turning a game as cutesy as Minecraft into a Cosmic Horror Story. Inspired by Halo's Flood and Dead Space's Necromorphs, it is perhaps one of the most comprehensive horror mods available despite still being in development, with a heavy focus on Body Horror and Bloody Horror.

Upon first starting a world, all seems normal. There's only the occasional Buglin: a black grub similar to a Silverfish, which cannot attack and will flee from mobs and players. As time passes, they will grow into the much more dangerous Rupters, which will seek out mobs to assimilate into fleshy monsters. These assimilated mobs will continue to kill, infect, and merge into progressively more powerful Eldritch Abominations, up until the world itself slowly morphs into a rotten, hostile Eldritch Location.

The infestation cannot be cured, nor can it be stopped. The only hope is using Lures to stall the rate of corruption, and even these won't guarantee safety from the never-ending parasite swarms.

Run.

As a mod, Scape and Run introduces a number of unique systems based around Adaptation, Evolution, and Reinforcement. These are tied to the current Evolution Phase, which serves as a benchmark for progression and the rate of parasite growth in a given world. A Phase of 0 indicates very little infection; Phase 8 is a severe corruption of the world itself, allowing for the most powerful parasites to spawn naturally.

Tropes found in Scape and Run: Parasites:

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• Adaptive Ability:
  • One of the driving characteristics of the parasite invasion. More directly, tiers of parasites past Primitive can adapt to individual sources of damage (such as an Iron Axe, Diamond Sword, a specific Iron Golem, or arrows shot by a Dispenser), reducing their effectiveness with each additional hit they take. The only damage type which they cannot adapt to is fire; falling, suffocation, explosions, even magic damage can all be nullified given enough time. The only way to counter this is by cutting off their tentacles (if they have any), but that risks giving the parasite in question the Rage buff.
  • Colonies are an upcoming mechanic that allows a global version of this: whenever an adaptation-capable parasite dies within a Colony's range, the Colony will remember the damage type that killed it and subsequent parasites spawned will start with more resistance to that damage type.
  • The players themselves can gain this ability if they wear Living Armor or Sentient Armor created from parasite parts, with the former allowing the player to adapt to 4 damage types, and up to 7 for the latter.
• Airborne Mook: Yelloweyes (both Primitive and Adapted), Flying Carriers, Light/Heavy Bombers and Overseers are all capable of flight, and apart from the Flying Carriers have projectile attacks (or Parasite Mobs, in the Heavy Bomber's case) to fire at you or drop on you.
• And Then John Was A Parasite: If a player infected with Call of the Hive dies, they spawn an Assimilated Adventurer wearing all their previous armor (except the chestplate).
• Aquatic Mook:
  • Assimilated Squid are one of the parasites that can spawn in water and move quickly in it, but will suffocate on land.
  • Devourers are tentacled squidlike parasites that spawn in water, but are unrelated to Assimilated Squid. While they slowly suffocate on land, their ungodly speed and attack power in the water means that not even the normally mob-free ocean will be safe from the Parasites.
  • Additionally, most of the Parasites have the ability to "leap" forward in water, preventing players from swimming just offshore and utilizing their superior melee range to cut them down.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: The Parasites have a very odd method of reproduction:
  • Buglins spawn naturally, erupt from Assimilated Parasites' exploding corpses, or emerge regularly from Buglin Tunnels, which are created by Rupters in the earlier stages. They grow into Rupters after some time, and while they cannot attack, they spread COTH to entities they touch.
  • Rupters spawn naturally or grow from Buglins, and will release clouds of COTH to silently assimilate passive mobs over the course of a few minutes. In groups (and after Evolution Phase 1), they directly attack and convert mobs. They can place Buglin Tunnels after killing 5 mobs in earlier stages, and evolve into Manglers after their kill-count reaches 30. Assimilated Mobs can spread COTH to non-infected mobs to assimilate them.
  • When an Assimilated Mob kills enough hostile mobs, it and three other Assimilated Mobs around it will turn into Moving Flesh. The four Moving Flesh will then merge together, forming a Primitive Parasite at 50% of its normal health.
  • If an Assimilated Human or Villager kills 5 Skeletons, it will transform into a Host, which can spread Residue by moving underground. A Host that kills 40 mobs will evolve into a Herd.
  • Feral Parasites are created when a Gnat burrows into a suitable living host, spawn naturally on Phase 5, spawned in place of Assimilated mobs on Phase 6 onwards, or transformed from an Assimilated mob that gets 60 kills. They are somewhat faster than their Assimilated counterparts, and possess significantly more attack damage and health, plus additional armor. These Gnats are Inborn-tier parasites produced by a Primitive Parasite known as the Vermin, or from an Inborn Parasite known as the Light Carrier.
    • Gnats can also "hijack" certain mobs that would otherwise be immune to assimilation. The Hijacked Iron Golem is a prime example of this, with the Hijacked Skeleton and Blaze currently in development.
  • A Primitive Parasite that kills 10 hostile mobs (or simply survives for long enough at higher phases) will evolve and become an Adapted Parasite.
  • Adapted Parasites can spew out Residue, which can spawn Beckons from Phase 3 onward.
  • Beckons are an odd and complicated case. They can appear via one of many ways: spawning via the Reinforcement System when a Parasite dies, being summoned by Stage IV Beckons, growing from the Infested Blocks that other Beckons turn normal blocks into, or from Residue which can be spawned by Light/Heavy Carriers, Hosts, Adapted Parasites, and dead Beckons. Beckons slowly grow from Stage I to Stage IV, with each stage capable of producing biomass that spawns other types of Parasites, the types of which get stronger per Stage (Stage IV only spawns other Beckons from Stage I-III). Stage IV Beckons convert a large area around themselves into a Parasite Biome, which spawns high-tier Parasite mobs regardless of Evolution Phase.
  • Pure Parasites do not evolve from other Parasites, but are spawned from Stage III Beckons, generate within Parasite Biomes, or spawn naturally during Phases 7-8.
  • Preeminent Parasites spawn in Parasite Biomes - each one is a boss in its own right.
  • In earlier versions of the mod, Ancient Parasites could spawn naturally in the world during Phase 8.
  • The Assimilated Ender Dragon can spawn naturally in the End starting from Phase 3.
  • The Collective Consciousness mechanic introduces an invisible, intangible entity known as the Scent. A Scent may spawn when a Parasite is killed, is guaranteed to appear when a player uses a Carcass to reduce Evolution Phase points, and may be created by a Heed, which itself can only be spawned by a Scent. A Scent will analyze what entities around it are killing Parasites and will teleport other Parasites to attack these entities, becoming stronger as more Parasites die around it. Once enough Parasites have been killed, a Scent will outright summon new Parasites via massive worm-like tendrils that emerge from the ground.
• Bloodier and Gorier: In addition to adding blood to many textures, Scape and Run has an entire tier of parasites - the Crude tier - that are composed of misshapen hunks and blobs of gooey red flesh.
• Body Horror:
  • Familiar mobs like Sheep, Cows, Pigs, and Wolves gain pulsing tumors and empty eye sockets. In addition, most of the Primitives look like they've been messily stitched together. The Assimilated Bear looks... horrifying.
  • If Assimilated mobs weren't bad enough, there are also Feral Parasites, spawned when a Gnat burrows into a suitable living host. These look even worse than the Assimilated mobs, now being made of bloody flesh and tentacles.
• Body of Bodies: Hosts are a tentacled parasitic horror that's partially made from the bodies of several skeletons. They're spawned by an Assimilated Human or Villager that kills 5 Skeletons. A Host that scores 40 kills on mobs becomes a Herd, which adds several more skeletons to itself.
• Bombardier Mook:
  • Light Bombers are Pure Parasites that drop exploding cysts from above. Prior to an update, they used to drop primed TNT blocks.
  • Heavy Bombers are flying Preeminent Parasites that drop cysts which explode and release other Parasites.
  • Bogles are flying Preeminent Parasites that shoot blasts which nuke wide areas for massive damage.
• Boss in Mook Clothing:
  • Imagine if every Enderman you encountered was hostile, detected you in a massive radius, inflicted Bleeding (damage over time), teleported other hostile mobs (including other Endermen) onto you, had a chance to spawn a weaker version of themselves on death, and made even more annoying sounds - that's the Assimilated Enderman (or "Simmerman," as dubbed by the community), minus the immunity to water and increased health/armor. They keep their immunity to projectiles too, which forces players to engage them in melee combat - which they excel in. All these traits make even a single Assimilated Enderman extremely dangerous, even for someone with fully-enchanted Diamond gear. Anyone who plays Scape and Run for a reasonable amount of time will develop a healthy respect for how quickly this mob will steamroll unprepared players.
  • Hosts can be spawned early on if an Assimilated Human/Villager kills 5 Skeletons (rather rare (as the Skeletons will fight back), but possible). While they cannot move while attacking, they make up for this with their large health pool, good melee and ranged damage, and tendency to burrow underground when not in combat while generating infectious Residue and spawning Rupters; they can even teleport while underground. Furthermore, a Host that manages to score 40 kills will transform into an even stronger Herd that now spawns Manglers.
  • While their mechanics are still a work-in-progess, each of the currently-unused Preeminent Parasites will be a boss in its own right, and spawn like rare normal enemies in Parasite Biomes, making these locations completely inaccessible without supporting mods to make players stronger. All of them can spawn flying "Succors" that move quickly, have decent amounts of health and will either cause Exhaustion (massive hunger drain), explode, or teleport its summoner to it. Besides that, they all have very powerful abilities — Bogles fly and nuke you with projectiles that explode a huge area for massive damage, Haunters spam a swarm of homing bullets on you, Colony Carriers give other Parasites Regeneration III, Heavy Bombers drop bombs that explode and spawn Primitive Parasites, and Wraiths fire projectiles that create incredibly-damaging lingering areas. None of these mobs are designed to be anything resembling a fair fight for players with Vanilla gear; the only reliable way to even escape one is to launch yourself away with Elytra faster than they can follow.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Adaption System works this way. Red particles mean a mob is taking damage as normal. Yellow particles and a green flash means a mob is in the process of adapting, gradually reducing their damage taken from a specific weapon type (e.g. Iron Axe, Diamond Sword), mob type (e.g. Zombie, Iron Golem), or damage type (e.g. Falling, Explosion, Magic). Once a mob flashes purple, it cannot adapt any further to that damage source, and may be completely immune.
• Collateral Damage: Notably averted for Parasites. Many of them possess ranged or area-of-effect attacks such as acid balls, ground-pounding, and explosions, none of which will harm fellow Parasite mobs.
• Cosmic Horror Story: The Source, an upcoming boss, is described as a gigantic eldritch entity built by parasites and buried deep underground. Right now, it's the reason Beckons appear on the surface, and its influence drives the Reinforcement System.
• Cycle of Hurting: Assimilated Adventurers can cause this in certain situations. While their poor speed makes them as easy to kill as a vanilla Zombie, they can spread COTH to players - dying to one will often spawn another. If a Parasite gets to your spawn point, even that Mercy Invincibility won't do you much good - and an Assimilated Adventurer that gets enough kills (such as you at your spawn point) will evolve into a much faster Thrall!
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Certain variants of Rupters, Primitive, and Adapted Parasites can inflict the Viral debuff, which increases damage taken by 50% per level (Viral Level IV causes all incoming damage to be tripled). This is made worse by the fact that the usually non-lethal Poison status effect commonly applied by Parasites will outright kill you when Viral is active. Prior to the 1.9.5 update, Viral reduced the player's maximum health, effectively causing them to take more damage.
• Darker and Edgier: In its base state, Minecraft is a fairly easy, child-friendly game. This mod makes it decidedly not so.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: A defeated parasite will often burst into piles of viscera (dealing no direct damage, fortunately), clouds of poison and COTH, and sometimes Buglins. All of these will spread the infection further.
  • Assimilated Horses take this even further; their explosion deals heavy instead of spawning Buglins, which can greatly harm or kill an unprepared player.
• Doomsday Clock: The Bloody Clock is an item that measures what Evolution Phase a world is in, getting closer to midnight the higher the phase is:
  Dirtied by the Infected Flesh, the Clock now ticks towards a terrible Midnight.
• Dramatic Thunder: Lightning strikes whenever a Primitive mob transforms into its Adapted variant. Most Scape and Run players will develop an almost-Pavlovian aversion to this sound.
• Eldritch Abomination: Parasites tend to look like this, Humanoid Abominations, or Animalistic Abominations.
• Eldritch Location: The Parasite biome. Affected blocks become dull and rotten-looking, with blood vessels, worms, and spines growing out of the ground. Additionally, Parasites can spawn here at any light level, and non-parasite mobs have their healing halved.
• Elite Mooks: Adapted parasites to their Primitive counterparts. Not that the Primitives are easy to fight in the first place...
• Eyeless Face: A staple of the parasite infection. Mobs either have dark black eye sockets or simply none at all (or nonfunctional eyes, in the case of Yelloweyes). The sole exception to this rule is the Primitive Manducater, which is slated to receive a new model in future updates.
• Flunky Boss:
  • The Dreadnaut can summon exploding pods from the sky that can contain Rupters or Grunts.
  • Beckons create Parasites to protect themselves; these spawned enemies have increased speed and attack damage.
  • The Stage IV Beckon cannot attack but instead summons Stage I, II, and III Beckons, which spawn their own mooks. It can also instantly evolve any parasite spawned from those Beckons to the next evolution tier.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: A church bell rings when a Beckon spawns and levels up.
• Fusion Dance: Primitives are formed when Assimilated mobs get enough kills, allowing them to transform into Moving Flesh piles and merge together, spawning a Primitive Parasite. They are weak in this state, however, and killing one prevents a potential Mini-Boss from spawning.
• Game Over: Outside of Hardcore Mode, it's extremely rare to be placed in a situation that completely ruins a world in vanilla Minecraft. If cornered by mobs, players can run away and regroup; if they spawn in a hazardous location, the Mercy Invincibility they receive will allow them to reach a safe zone. This mod adds many Parasites that are faster and stronger than players, and heal outside of combat. If a strong Parasite manages to reach the world spawn point, a player may be trapped in an endless cycle of being spawn-camped, forcing them to switch to Peaceful Mode or discard the world and start a new game if the world's difficulty is locked.
• Glass Cannon: Many of the early-game Parasites are fairly fragile compared to their Vanilla counterparts, but deal much more damage and are significantly faster. Subverted for the Assimilated Enderman and Assimilated Bear, which gain extra health on top of their already impressive damage and speed.
• Heli-Critter: Flying Carriers have a propeller-like appendage on top which they use to fly around.
• Hell Is That Noise: Quite a few:
  • While a new Beckon might not be visible from a distance, the Dramatic Thunder as it grows to Stage IV can be heard from anywhere in the world - especially if the skies are clear.
  • Buglins emit a slimy squelching noise, which while off-putting, helps early-game players hunt them down before they can grow into Rupters.
  • Rupters make a very distinct chittering sound. Jeb help you if you ever run into more than one before you have armor.
  • Hoarse groans and screeches are a dead giveaway to an Assimilated mob's presence.
  • Parasites in general have a variety of cracking, moaning, and alien-sounding howls.
  • Invisible Manducaters make a subtle sound cue while invisible that serves as a useful warning to a player outside of combat.
  • Each Evolution Phase has its own accompanying Scare Chord.
• Healing Factor: Parasites that aren't Inborns, Crude tier, or Beckons heal when not in combat.
• Hostile Terraforming: Beckons have the ability to gradually convert the world into infested blocks, and later a unique "Parasite" biome, which strengthens Parasites, spawns Adapted, Pure, and Preeminent Parasites like flies, and cuts most non-Parasites' healing in half.
• Impostor-Exposing Test: In the first stages of the mod, Rupters tend to assimilate mobs silently - infected and non-infected mobs look and behave identically. The only way to tell is to make physical contact with the mob in question; if it transmits Call of the Hive, it's Assimilated and will transform and attack when injured. This method is mostly limited to the early game, as a player must wait a few minutes for the effect to wear off before they can test another mob; by Phase 3 or so, players have far more pressing issues to worry about than whether their cows have been infected (nine times out of ten, the answer is "yes").
• Incredibly Durable Enemies: Only the Buglins, Rupters, and a few of the smaller Assimilated mobs have similar or lower health than most vanilla creatures. Everything else can take huge amounts of punishment before going down, and their Adaptive Ability only makes them even more durable. On top of this, stronger Parasites have "Damage Cap" aspects which prevents them from dying until they have taken a set number of hits - if you deal too much damage at once, the Parasite will gain the Rage buff, which increases both its movement speed and attack damage. All of these mechanics make Scape and Run an unfairly difficult mod that requires great amounts of skill and knowledge to master.
• Invisibility: Manducaters. When attacking an enemy, they will often turn nearly-invisible before approaching, greatly reducing their movement speed but granting them greatly increased attack damage. While invisible, they emit a subtle sound cue to warn players of the imminent danger - assuming it isn't being masked by combat noises. This ability can be completely nullified by making hitboxes visible within Debug mode (F3+B) (or by installing a mini-map or health bar mod), although this arguably ruins the challenge of fighting them.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • All Parasites possess a 300% damage vulnerability to fire and lava, and cannot adapt to it. Additionally, a burning Parasite will adapt to other damage sources significantly slower - as such, setting stronger ones on fire before engaging is highly recommended. However, even flames might not work if they're spawned in a Parasite Biome when there are 4 or more Parasite Nodes in the world, where they receive the Fire Resistance buff upon spawning. Not that you're likely to reach that point with Vanilla-strength gear.
  • Carriers and Flying Carriers will not release any enemies if they die when on fire.
  • The Nether starts with an Evolution Phase of -1, meaning that no parasites can naturally spawn (although parasites that enter the dimension through a Nether Portal can advance it to Phase 0 by killing and infecting mobs).
• Lightning Bruiser: This mod was designed to pose a significant challenge to players with extremely powerful gear from other mods. As such, several Primitive, Adapted, and Pure Parasites sport huge amounts of health, possess insane attacking power, and can easily chase down players who can't fly. Unless you prepare specifically for every aspect of the invasion, attempting this mod with only Vanilla gear is an exercise in futility.
  • Even the Assimilated Parasites deal more damage and are faster than their standard variants (with the exception of the Assimilated Adventurer, which is about as dangerous as a Vanilla Zombie; it deals more damage, but this is often irrelevant due to its abysmal movement speed).
• Living Weapon: The weapons crafted from Parasite drops are all explicitly mentioned to be alive, with the flame of life shining through it.
• Meaningful Name: Some of the Parasites' names give insight to their abilities or role:
  • Rupters spread the Call of the Hive to other mobs and assimilate them, making them the first wave of corrupters.
  • Summoners create Parasites using Biomass and revive dead Parasites from their remains, summoning additional mooks for the player to deal with.
  • Bolsters apply Regeneration to nearby Parasites, bolstering the existing enemies' health pool.
  • Sentries guard the stronger Beckons and Dispatchers, firing deadly projectiles that shred armor and poison players.
  • Seizers, created by Dispatchers and Pure Parasites, grab nearby entities, which deals no damage but prevents their target from moving, leaving them vulnerable to attacks that a player would normally be able to avoid.
  • Dispatchers teleport Parasites around within a certain radius, sending them to attack nearby mobs and players.
  • Carriers host Parasites within themselves. They approach players and mobs and explode, dealing damage and releasing the mobs inside.
• Mook Maker: Beckons are immobile support structures that not only spawn continuous amounts of parasites to fight nearby players, but also allow them to grow to Primitives and beyond. Taken even further by Stage 4 Beckons which spawn lower tier Beckons, making them Mook Maker Makers.
• Mooks Ate My Equipment: Certain Parasites can break blocks — instead of dropping them, they will store the items in their personal inventories. When they die or their inventory becomes full, they will drop a Gluttonous Cyst, which will delete each block or item one-by-one every five seconds, generating Evolution Points in the process.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Another common trait. The Assimilated Bear takes the cake for having a jaw that splits down its entire body.
• Nintendo Hard: Primitive, Adapted, and Pure parasites are extremely formidable foes, even for players with fully enchanted Diamond armor. A fair number of them can deal 20 or more damage in a single hit, assuming they don't have an attack that ignores invincibility frames to begin with - not to mention their massive health pools, adaption to damage, and frequent block-breaking. Then there are Preeminent Parasites, which take a step further by summoning Succors on top of having overpowered abilities. As for the currently-unused Ancient parasites... good luck.
  • Without supporting mods to make players more powerful, the only reliable way to survive with Scape and Run installed is to keep the Parasites' evolution at bay; if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. After the Evolution Phase advances, Parasites are unable to gain any more progress toward advancing it again for one full Minecraft day, giving players time to kill them for Lure components. If the players can obtain enough Lures to revert the Parasites' evolution to the previous phase before the Cooldown ends, the Parasites can be held off indefinitely. This must be done early, however; it's usually too late once Adapted Parasites start spawning naturally, as they are too powerful to fight en-masse, even with top-tier Vanilla gear.
    • As of the 1.9.13 update, this strategy is no longer viable, as five Lure blocks must now be arranged into a "Carcass" to reduce Evolution points.
  • Vanilla Minecraft is a rather easy game, generally only killing you if you choose to put yourself in a dangerous position. In Scape and Run, risky decisions are forced on you all the time; if you fight Parasites, you can easily die, but if you choose not to, they will evolve without resistance until they can literally tunnel into your base or straight-up teleport inside. Once they reach your spawn point, they can kill you over and over until you're forced to despawn them via Peaceful Mode or abandon the world entirely.
• Losing Your Head: Assimilated Humans, Villagers, Sheep, Cows, Pigs, Wolves, Horses, and Endermen will sometimes spawn a Walking Head on death, which (with the exception of the Endermen Head, which acts like its progenitor) behaves similarly to a Rupter, albeit with rather poor stats - it may even attempt to flee. However, if players let it escape, it can reform back into its Assimilated version by merging with an Incomplete Form.
• One-Steve Limit: Subverted. There is a Parasite named the Warden, which shares its name with a vanilla Minecraft mob. However, Scape and Run is for Minecraft version 1.12, an update that predates and thus does not contain the vanilla Warden.
• Organ Drops: Unsurprising for a mod that's filled with Body Horror and viscera, several parasites drop their organs or body parts when killed. These can be used to craft Living Weapons and Lures.
• Parasitic Horror: The Parasites are both a parasite on lifeforms and the world itself. Most vanilla mobs can get Call of the Hive from almost anything Parasite-related, which assimilates them within minutes, allowing them to turn into assimilated mobs or the weaker incomplete forms depending on their state of assimilation. Beckons are parasites of the world itself, infesting nearby blocks and spreading the infestation, and the highest-level ones can transform the world itself into sickly parasitic biomes.
• Removed Achilles' Heel:
  • Assimilated Endermen are immune to damage from water, unlike their Vanilla counterpart. They also have a crawling variant, which removes the Enderman's inability to enter areas with two-block-high ceilings.
  • Parasites are all normally weak to fire, taking 4x damage from it. However, if there are 4+ Parasite Biome nodes in a world, all Parasites spawned within a Parasite Biome get the Fire Resistance buff, nullifying this weakness until the effect runs out.
• Run or Die: It's hinted right there in the mod's name. Mid-to-late-game Parasites are extremely difficult to take down with only Vanilla gear, can break through blocks to reach players, and deal massive amounts of damage. In later stages, a Vanilla player's best option is to avoid combat with them altogether - if Parasites colonize your base, you'll usually have to grab your valuables, escape, and run to a new location - rinse and repeat.
• Scare Chord: Evolution Phases have one for whenever they go up, along with a single-word announcement in chat. Listen to them here.
  • Phase One is a light, tinkling bell, indicative of slight unease.
  • Phase Two is an uncomfortable brassy sound with lots of reverb.
  • Phase Three is a full, thudding chord progression that lowers near the end.
  • Phase Four is a hollow whistle, like wind through a cavern.
  • Phase Five is a series of grinding chimes.
  • Phase Six is a distant, washed-out Drone of Dread, like the roar of an animal.
  • Phase Seven is similar to Six, but seems to be building to a climax - before it cuts off completely.
  • Phase Eight is a harsh, droning flute note. Appropriate, since it pretty much heralds The End of the World as We Know It.
• Scary Teeth: One of the more uncanny traits of the assimilated mobs are articulated jaws with teeth, particularly for mobs whose standard forms don't have one.
• Sickening "Crunch!": Assimilated mobs have their regular hit sound effects replaced with visceral crunches.
• Support Party Member: On its own, a Primitive Bolster is rather underwhelming, sporting melee damage, range and speed comparable to that of a Vanilla Zombie (plus a short-ranged jump attack); especially since other Primitives tend to hit for at least twice as much damage, have extended melee range, and are dangerously fast. Their real threat is their capability to grant nearby Parasites the Regeneration buff. Averted with Adapted Bolsters, which while still fairly slow, now have huge claw tendrils that dish out massive amounts of damage with a ridiculous melee range, easily able to one-hit-kill a player in full Diamond armor; you'll need Protection enchantments to survive even one attack.
• Tantrum Throwing: The Crux is in a constant state of anger with the Rage buff permanently active on it, and attacks by picking up blocks then throwing them at the player to deal massive damage.
• Tentacled Terror: Almost every parasite sports tentacles of some kind. In the case of Parasites that can adapt to damage, dealing enough damage to a tentacle will cut it off, stripping the Parasite in question of any damage resistances they may have acquired. However, this gives the Parasite the Rage buff, making them significantly faster and stronger.
• There Is No Cure: Downplayed. Players infected with Call of the Hive will have it expire after a few minutes; most sources of COTH won't even re-apply the effect to players already afflicted with it. However, mobs that get infected cannot have the effect cured from them, with their COTH effect serving as an infection "timer" that counts down until they are fully assimilated and start spreading the effect.
• The Virus: Call of the Hive (often abbreviated to COTH) is a potion effect that serves as the Parasitic infection in the game's early stages. If a mob has the effect, it will slowly and silently become an assimilated version of itself over the course of several minutes; the only way to stop or reverse the transformation is to remove it via commands. Later stages give non-Parasite mobs a chance to spawn with COTH already applied. While players will not be assimilated while alive, an infected player that dies spawns an Assimilated Adventurer wearing their armor. The infection is ridiculously easy to contract as well, and is spread by:
  • Taking damage from any Parasite.
  • Walking over Residue left by Beckons, Hosts, Herds, and Adapted Parasites.
  • Touching piles of viscera left behind by defeated Parasites or walking into the poison cloud they may explode into upon death.
  • Standing on a block infested by a Beckon.
  • Making physical contact with a Buglin or disguised Assimilated mob.
  • Touching a player with COTH level 2 or higher.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Unlike many other mods of its size (and difficulty!), Scape and Run doesn't include any in-game guide for progression. Important mechanics like how to build a base that's parasite-proof have to be figured out over the course of many, many ruined worlds. If you don't feel like regularly losing all your progress and starting from scratch, you'll need weapons that would be complete overkill when dealing with Vanilla enemies.
• Turns Red:
  • In addition to increasing a parasite's attack damage and speed, the Rage effect halves the cooldown on parasite abilities such as Reeker charges and Manducater invisibility.
  • Longarms take it even further. As they lose health, their attack power increases by up to 50% or 100% for Primitive and Adapted versions respectively.
• Was Once a Man: Assimilated Humans and Assimilated Villagers used to be Zombies and Villagers respectively. Assimilated Adventurers used to be a player's previous life.
• Weak to Fire: Parasites take 4x damage from fire and cannot adapt to fire damage, unlike other sorts of damage. A Parasite on fire also adapts to damage significantly slower. Players wearing Living Armor or Sentient Armor will also take extra fire damage.

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