Hands-on with the New Happy Ghast (25w15a) – Mechanics & Modding Thoughts

😍 Hands-On with the NEW Happy Ghast (25w15a) — Mechanics & Modding Hooks

Snapshot 25w15a just dropped Mojang’s most wholesome sky-mob yet, and the NBT tags are begging for creative tweaks.  
Below is what I’ve found so far plus a few questions for fellow Forge devs.

1. Quick Mechanics Recap
   1. Dried Ghast Block — Nether Fossil loot OR craft: 1 Bone Block + 8 Ghast Tears.
   2. Hydration Cycle — Water-log in the Overworld; three cracked stages, ~20 min total.
   3. Ghastling ➜ Happy Ghast — Feed snowballs to reduce growth time (≈ 15 s per snowball).
   4. Harness — 3 Leather + 1 Gold; right-click adult Happy Ghast to ride (Strider-style controls).
2.  Modding Ideas & Questions
   1. Variant Textures — Has anyone overridden `GlowLightLevel` to tint the mob like Bioluminescent Striders?  
   2. Ride Controls — Thinking of injecting pitch-based vertical speed (space = up, shift = down) for smoother flight. Any gotchas with `LivingEntity::travel`?  
   3. Harness Recipe Tweaks — Balanced idea: replace gold with a Ghastly Pearl drop from Nether Fossils (JSON loot table edit). Opinions?  
   4. Breeding? — There’s a dormant `IsLoveMode` boolean. Anyone confirm if it does anything yet?
3. Uses in Survival
   1. Fuel-less Overworld flight (beats Elytra durability).  
   2. Mobile skylight (light level 12).  
   3. Fireball particles without block damage for map makers.
4. Share Your Findings
   1. If you’ve already poked the Happy Ghast with mixins or datapacks, post your code snippets or tweaks below!  

I’ll keep this thread updated as we reverse-engineer more of the code.

Note: Tested on vanilla snapshot 25w15a with Forge bleeding-edge mappings (commit 83fa1d6)