The early development of Minecraft involved quite a few pieces of content that haven’t made it into the game. These include locations, items, materials, and mobs. Some of these can still be found inside some editions of the game, certain ones even being included in commands of the game. We will go over one such mob, giant, in the following overview.
Giant
Minecraft Giants are unused mobs that are incredibly tall, standing 12 blocks tall. The impressive size of the mob is most it seems to have to go for in terms of unique traits. A lot of the proper appearance and behaviors will be based on the zombie. Zombie at 6 times their usual size, that is, as the entire model gets upgraded in size.
A giant does have some quirks, though. One is that the giant doesn’t count as undead, despite using the zombie model. This may mean that the mob was planned to be unique in behavior and texture but was probably cut early in development. The giant is immune to damage from the sun because of the lack of the undead tag, making it able to walk around with no problem.
A giant is also subject to standard effects of any status effect, item or mob behavior that a non-undead mob would provoke. Any corresponding abilities, such as the Smite enchantment, will not work.
Additionally, the giants will require a specific range of light levels to spawn. They have to be spawned in an area of 11 light levels or above while also having a light level of 8 or below at the same time. This is nigh impossible to happen in vanilla experience, requiring extra effort.
This massive mob doesn’t have any AI though. They are going to stick around, facing south. The giant can still chase the player, respond to damage, and only turn around its head. That’s about it when it comes to things they can do.
Minecraft Behavior
Giants will drown if submerged in water. They act the same way as most other mobs. Dying quickly after suffocating for a while. It will be hard to do so due to their size, but the giant will die if their head sinks under the water.
Giants are immune to knockback completely. Their massive bulk allows them to stay unaffected. Many extra effects are available to the entire mob depending on the command lines we use. These are elaborate and can be played around after spawning a giant.
Spawn eggs are also present, although they’ll require either world corruption or external mods to make the giant available. However, it is only present in Legacy Console Edition, which does mean that not every edition will work.
Minecraft Drop
The only drops available from a giant in Minecraft are 5 experience orbs that they drop. With the intense number of required effort that this mob would have taken to eliminate, this is quite low, but as it wasn’t finished, it was probably not the only one intended.