Fireball

A fireball is the exploding projectile a ghast shoots. It is drawn as the snowball icon, 2 blocks across and always facing the player.

Spawning

Only a ghast makes a fireball, and fires it at the player it targets. The fireball appears 4 blocks out from the ghast towards the player, half a block above the ghast's centre.

It flies in the direction from the ghast's centre to the middle of the player's body, with a random error of about 0.4 blocks on each axis.

Behaviour

Flight

A fireball flies in a straight line, and does not fall. It starts at rest and speeds up each tick towards 1.9 blocks per tick, or 0.4 in water.

It flies through water, lava and fire, and explodes on the first other block it meets, torches and tall grass included. It flies through dropped items, arrows, snowballs, eggs and fishing bobbers, and explodes on the first other entity.

Hitting

A hit sets off an explosion of size 1 that starts fires. The blast is centred where the fireball was at the start of that tick, up to 1.9 blocks short of what it hit.

The entity it hits takes no damage from the impact itself. A mob it hits is knocked back away from the ghast. A player is not knocked back.

A fireball can hit the ghast that fired it once 25 ticks have passed since it was fired, including after it has been sent back.

Sending it back

A fireball is 1 block across, and a player's crosshair picks it out up to 1 block beyond that.

Any attack by a player or mob sends a fireball off in the direction the attacker is looking, at 1 block per tick, speeding up again as before. A player can do this with a melee hit, an arrow, a snowball, an egg or a fishing bobber.

An arrow, snowball or egg fired by a dispenser has no shooter, and does not turn a fireball.

Lifetime

A fireball that hits nothing has no time limit. It flies until it reaches the edge of the loaded area, where it stops, and disappears when its chunk unloads.

Data values

A fireball has no entity network ID, and is not saved with the world.