Comparison
Araz vs Cave Dweller vs The Man From The Fog
Cave Dweller vs The Man From The Fog vs Araz: three Minecraft horror mods compared on mechanics, versions and loaders. Only Araz learns your habits.
In short Araz, Cave Dweller and The Man From The Fog are Minecraft stalker horror mods. Cave Dweller ambushes you underground in unlit caves, and The Man From The Fog stalks you at night and reacts to eye contact. Both react to you in the moment. Araz learns from what you do, unlocks abilities from those habits, and saves that memory in the world file, so it stays learned after you quit.
Araz, Cave Dweller and The Man From The Fog all put a tall figure in your world that hunts you. The difference is memory. Cave Dweller and The Man From The Fog react to what you are doing right now. Araz watches what you do across many sessions and keeps the result in the save file.
I wrote Araz, so read the Araz column here as first-hand and the other two columns as sourced. Everything below about Cave Dweller and The Man From The Fog comes from their own store pages and community wikis, checked in September 2026. Where a mechanic is unclear, I say so in the sentence instead of guessing.
Araz is at 1.0.0-beta.2 as of September 2026. Part I of the story is playable end to end. Part II is not out, and multiplayer works but has far fewer hours on it than single player.
Araz vs Cave Dweller vs The Man From The Fog at a glance
The table covers the six things these three mods usually get compared on: how the creature finds you, what escalates it, what carries over between sessions, whether there is a story, what hiding does, and which versions and loaders each mod runs on.
| Araz | Cave Dweller | The Man From The Fog | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it finds you | Night, or deep underground. One scripted daytime introduction in a new world, then it may appear in daylight from the third night onward. | Deep underground in unlit caves, below roughly Y=0 at light level 0. It spawns out of sight and stalks before it charges (Cave Dweller CurseForge page and the Minecraft Horror Wiki). | It appears at night and stalks from a distance, whistling before it starts a chase (The Man From The Fog page on Modrinth and the Minecraft Mobs Wiki). |
| What escalates it | Watching you. Each habit it observes unlocks an ability, and every meeting makes it about 4 percent faster, up to plus 60 percent. | Escaping to the surface. It normally refuses to follow you up, but doing that too often enrages it and it stops avoiding the surface (Minecraft Horror Wiki). | Looking at it, and ignoring it while it closes distance. Sources disagree on which of the two starts the chase, so treat the trigger as unsettled. |
| Does progress persist between sessions | Yes. Observation counters, familiarity, the night count and every unlocked ability are written to the world save and reload with it. | Not documented on its pages. Each encounter reads as a fresh one. | Not documented on its pages. Each encounter reads as a fresh one. |
| Is there a story | Yes. Part I runs first sighting, abandoned camp, five Corrupted Records, portal ruin, then The Last Line forged at the Altar of Araz. Part II is not released. | No quest line. It is a creature, not a campaign. | No quest line. |
| What hiding does | Crouch, stay still and stay in the dark for three seconds during a hunt and it loses sight of you. Stops working once it knows you well, and never works on a Blood Moon night. | It crouches to two blocks and crawls through 1-block gaps, so a small hole is not cover (Minecraft Horror Wiki). | Distance is the documented escape. Its vanish_distance config despawns it once you get far enough away, 30 blocks by default (Modrinth page). |
| Versions and loaders | Minecraft 26.3, 26.1.2, 1.21.10 and 1.20.1. Fabric only, no Forge or NeoForge. | Forge. The original listing by Gargin targets 1.19.3; the popular forks cover other versions and some reach NeoForge or Fabric. | Forge. Modrinth lists Minecraft 1.20.1, 1.19.4 and 1.19.2. |
How does Araz learn from what you do?
Araz starts with no abilities. Each one sits behind an observation counter, and the counter only moves when you do the thing where it can see you. It does not read a config to decide what it can do. It watches.
| What you did | What that unlocked |
|---|---|
| Opened and closed your door | Doors no longer stop it |
| Walked past your animals without harming them | It can take one of your animals, and the rest look back at you with the wrong eyes |
| Walked among villagers | It can stand among them. There is one villager too many. |
| Slept | A body can be left behind. It takes yours. |
All of that is saved with the world. Every meeting also makes it roughly 4 percent faster, capped at plus 60 percent, so running becomes a worse plan the longer a save runs. If that pace is wrong for you, ogrenmeHiziCarpani in config/araz.json scales the whole system: 200 halves the observations needed and the wait between them, 50 doubles both.
What Araz writes down about you
In the fiction, the creature's one job was to watch the things that walk and record how they walk, and nobody ever emptied the record. In the 1.0.0-beta.2 update I made that record readable. It surfaces in four places.
- Record signs. Some nights it plants a sign near your bed or your door carrying one line from its notes about you.
- The Observation Log. An item in the abandoned camp chest. Read it and it tells you how many nights it watched, how many times you met, how many times you opened your door or slept, and which abilities those numbers unlocked. It is reusable and always current.
- Death markers. Where it kills someone it leaves a skull and a sign reading ONE WHO WALKED / STOPPED HERE. On a server, your friends find it before you tell them.
- It notices absence. Stay away for three real days and your first night back opens with a single line and fresh footprints.
14 TIMES / YOU OPENED IT
How often does it show up?
This is the part beta.1 got wrong. Back then every path that could spawn the creature ran its own timer, so on a bad night they stacked and it turned up every minute or two. In beta.2 every one of those paths passes through a single gate.
- At least 4 minutes of silence after any appearance, set by
gorunmeBeklemesiSaniye(default240seconds). - Ambient encounters land roughly every 4 to 11 minutes, up from every 1.5 to 5 minutes in beta.1.
- Nothing can show it before the one-time introduction scene has played, a few minutes into a new world.
- After that it only comes at night or deep underground. From the third night a daytime appearance has a 15 percent chance, rising 10 points per night to a 60 percent ceiling, and for the first three of those nights it only watches.
Ambient mischief that does not spawn the creature, such as phantom sounds, torches going out and footprints, was left alone. Cave Dweller uses a spawn cooldown for the same reason. The Man From The Fog exposes its spawn rate as an often, normal or rare setting on its Modrinth page, which is a blunter version of the same control.
Does hiding work?
In Araz it does, conditionally. During a hunt, crouch, stay still and stay in the dark for three seconds and it loses you. The game confirms it in chat with the line "...it lost sight of you." That sits next to the two older options, running and staring it down.
Versions, loaders and requirements
Araz 1.0.0-beta.2 runs on Minecraft 26.3, 26.1.2, 1.21.10 and 1.20.1, Fabric only. There is no Forge or NeoForge build. Cave Dweller and The Man From The Fog are Forge mods, so in practice you are not running Araz next to them in the same profile.
| Mod | Required? |
|---|---|
| Fabric API | Required |
| GeckoLib | Required. GeckoLib 5.5.6 or newer on Minecraft 26.3. |
| Simple Voice Chat | Optional. Enables voice mimicry; without it the feature is simply gone. |
| Mod Menu and Cloth Config | Optional. Enables the in-game settings screen. |
Without Mod Menu, every option is still editable in config/araz.json. Nothing in Araz touches world generation. The abandoned camp and the portal ruin are built when you get close to their saved coordinates, so you can add the mod to a world you already play.
Which one should you install?
They are not really competing for the same evening. Pick by what you want the creature to be.
- Cave Dweller if you want caves to stop being safe. It is the oldest of the three and the narrowest in scope, and the danger lives underground.
- The Man From The Fog if you want the pressure to come from looking. Eye contact is the centre of its design, and the whistle is its chase telegraph.
- Araz if you want the creature to have a memory and a plot. It needs more hours before it is at full strength, and it pays off on a long save rather than a one-night session.
Araz lives at spicesfire.com/araz, on Modrinth and on CurseForge. Bug reports and sighting clips go to the Discord. It is still a beta, and reports are what decide the next build.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run Araz and Cave Dweller at the same time?
Not in one profile today. Araz is Fabric only, while Cave Dweller and The Man From The Fog are Forge mods, so they cannot load together. If you want all three you need separate installs.
Which Minecraft versions does Araz support?
As of September 2026, Araz 1.0.0-beta.2 has builds for Minecraft 26.3, 26.1.2, 1.21.10 and 1.20.1. All of them are Fabric, and all of them need Fabric API and GeckoLib.
Can I add Araz to a world I already play?
Yes. Nothing in the mod touches world generation. The abandoned camp and the portal ruin are built when you approach them, so an existing world is safe to add it to.
Can I turn off the jumpscares in Araz?
Turn on light mode (hafifMod) and it only watches and makes sounds, with no attacks, executions or possession, while the story still plays. Photosensitivity mode (isikHassasiyeti) separately removes flashes, glitch bars and pulsing overlays.
I am stuck in the Araz story, what do I do?
Type /araz help in chat. It reads your progress and tells you the next step, whether that is the camp, the records, the ruin, the Essence or the altar. /araz altar prints the altar layout.