Shulker transportation

This is an in-depth guide to shulker transporting in Freedonia.

Shulker transport basics

General tips

Bring healing splash potions: Even if you are careful, there is a good chance your shulker will take damage for various reasons. Bring splash healing pots (regeneration, health) to get the shulker back up to health
F3+B is your friend: By pressing F3+B, you can view hitboxes for various entities. This will be very useful for many tasks which will be explained below.
Don't wear thorns armor: Thorns can damage your shulker when it hits you, which can, in worst-case scenarios, kill it or teleport it.

Moving a shulker

There are 2 safe options:

Pushing via pistons: Good for moving shulkers a few blocks, shulkers can be pushed to other blocks as long as the place it is being pushed to has a block the shulker can attach to. It doesn't have to be the same side, so pistons can be used for changing the orientation of the shulker as well.
Using a boat:: This is will be the primary method of moving shulkers over long distances as it is very fast if there is a waterway. Keep in mind using boats with shulkers comes with precautions to follow written below.

Getting a shulker in a boat

To get a shulker in a boat, a boat's hitbox has to be touching the shulker's (same for many other entities).

The shulker will not get in a boat when you are in the boat.
Be careful to not suffocate the shulker by making sure that the shulker's hitbox will not be inside any block when it gets on.
- Keep in mind that the shulker (and its hitbox) move to the back when you get in with it.

Getting a shulker out of a boat

WARNING: Shulkers are a bit glitchy and DO NOT MOVE VERY INTUITIVALLY, and failing to read the following precautions can result in LOSING YOUR SHULKER

Losing your shulker means:

The shulker dying due to reasons such as suffocation, drowning, and mob damage
The shulker teleporting to places that are impossible for you to move it back out without griefing, or teleporting to a hard-to-reach location in general. See 'What to do when the shulker teleports to a hard-to-reach location' for last-resort options.

There are 2 safe, reproducible boat placements that will get a shulker out safely when broken.

For boats on land: The shulker will land in the first block that is not inside the boat's hitbox in front of the boat. The landing block must be on the same level as the block the boat is on. Orient your boat to be aligned with the x or z axis, check the shulker's landing place, then break the boat.

Getting a shulker out of a boat on land.
For boats on water: The shulker will land on top of the block next to water. Move your boat so that it is touching the edge of the solid block, then make it face said solid block. Again, check the shulker's landing place, then break the boat.

Tips:

Use an axe/pickaxe when breaking the boat, as swords can sweep attack and hit the shulker.
Use f3+b to see the boat's hitboxes to only hit the boat.

Getting a shulker out of a boat on water.

Check ALL SIDES of the shulkers landing place if any of the blocks the shulker will be next to is a 'transparent' block. If even one of them is, the shulker may teleport away.

Bad boat placements.

MC-91522: The client's shulker desyncs when it gets out of the boat, making it appear as if it is inside the ground, or in the wrong place. RELOG AFTER BREAKING THE BOAT.

Riding the boat with a shulker

While it is generally intuitive and pretty much the same as riding a normal boat, there are some important things to keep in mind:

Suffocation: While a shulker is in a boat, it has its own hitbox that is outside of the boat's. Due to this, the shulker can take suffocation damage if any part of its hitbox gets inside a solid block. Be sure to check hitboxes carefully to avoid this.
Sinking: Generally not a problem, but when a boat is ridden into falling water, it will go inside of the water blocks and sink. Avoid waterfalls, be careful on the world gen borders with water level change, as the shulker will drown in a sinking boat.
LOGGING OFF: READ THIS CAREFULLY. YOU MAY LOSE YOUR SHULKER. When a player logs off and on whilst riding a boat with a shulker, unlike with most mobs which will just reappear with the player, boat, and the mob as they logged off, the shulker will get out of the boat and RANDOMLY TELEPORT after the rider logs on. Log off AFTER getting out of the boat if you cannot make sure that everywhere the shulker can teleport is easy to reach via boat. If you want to log off with the shulker boat to make it disappear and keep it safe, MAKE SURE it WILL teleport to somewhere safe. IF the player forcibly logs off due to timeout reasons... bad things can happen. Ways to avoid this will be described later.

Moving the boat via fishing rods

An another way to move boats that can go over ledges is by hooking the boat to a fishing rod and reeling it in. First hook the boat(NOT the shulker, see image) to your fishing rod, then get higher and farther than where you want the boat to land, then pull the rod. All collisions that the boat makes with blocks effectively cancels the boat's velocity in that direction, so make sure no blocks are in the way unless you want the boat to stop there. A common mistake is putting the boat right up to the block it should climb up to, when the rod is pulled in velocity in the direction to the said block is canceled, and the boat will only go upwards.

Fishing rod hooked on the boat to the left, on the shulker to the right. Notice the visible hitbox of the hook on the right.

This will only cause the boat to go upwards, not onto the block. Space the boat and the ledge a bit for the boat to go up the ledge.

What to do when the shulker teleports to a hard-to-reach location

Mistakes do happen, and the shulker can end up being stuck in an another person's build, a 2x1 tunnel, etc. If getting the shulker back on track using boats is not an option, you can try punching your shulker.

When at less than half health, a shulker has a 25% chance of teleporting to a random location when damaged. You can try punching the shulker with your fist, preferably keeping track of the shulker's remaining health and using healing potions when needed. This is risky, as there is a high chance the shulker will teleport to an another bad location, or die.

Getting a shulker out of the Shulker Ranch and into your base

1. Pick and steal a shulker from the ranch

There are several types to choose from, each with their own benefits and downsides.

Glow shulkers: These have the glowing effect applied on them, making them easy to find when they teleport away. This is why glow shulkers are one of the easiest to transport, as it does not require a lot of searching. Also, it does not give you annoying 1 hour levitation, only the glowing effect. I personally recommend trying to transport this out, but:
- It has a WAY higher chance of being found and killed by other players
- It is very hard, almost impossible too keep one secret in your base, and people with /tp will try to kill it even if you put it somewhere that is /thru and /desc proof.
Clear shulker/Speed shulker: These don't glow, but also does not give you levitation or debuffs
Mining Fatigue Shulker/Slowness Shulker/Blinding Shulker: These give debuffs, but can be done.
Other shulkers that give levitation: Levitation is very annoying in mco as the low tps means longer effect duration, but these can be transported as well. If you want a specific shulker in your base, these are fine. A trick is to use /desc on top of water when having levitation, which will put you in water and disable effects of levitation.
Fiery Shulker/Poison Shulker: If you have the patience to heal one in a while, and can stand the constant damage sounds, these are possible, however not recommended.
Dragon Shulker/Wither Shulker: If you somehow manage to get one out of the ranch, then possible I guess. Emphasis on somehow.
Exploding Shulker: No.

2. Get it to the end portal then push it through with pistons

The current way to get it there is a bit of a long way around, maybe someone will make a better road.

The current only way to get to the central island

You can place temporary blocks on the portal, push the shulker on it, then push it down. the pistons required for this may have to be pushed by other pistons to get them to be in the correct position and orientation. Keep in mind that a boat with shulkers, or any other entities in it cannot go through.

3. Get the shulker out of spawn

Because of MC-168900, shulkers pushed through the exit portal has a chance of ending up in 0, 64, 0 in the overworld instead of the spawn lake. This happens more often when tps is low, which it usually is in MCO. There should be a obsidian box there, and a piston boat elevator(may make the boat phase into blocks, be careful in low tps) to move the shulker up to an ice road. Be careful of boating on ice roads, see section 'Dealing with MCO lag' for more

4. Get it to your base

Using the methods above, and the Boat Routes, and the Nexus(pull the boats into the pads with fishing rods, fishing rod lines can work through blocks and don't detach even after using movement commands!) get the shulker to your base.

Dealing with MCO lag

MCO can be a bit laggy at times, and in rare cases, mass disconnects(timeouts) happen (sarcasm)

Most of time the lag is just an annoyance, but when transporting shulkers this can be a MASSIVE threat.

1. BE CAREFUL OF TIMING OUT IN A BOAT WITH A SHULKER.

When this happens, there is a good chance the shulker will just DISAPPEAR. If you are riding a boat, and you notice the chunks not loading like normal, chat pausing, and mobs stopping, GET OUT OF THE BOAT IMMEDIETLY. This will make you have a higher chance of getting out of the boat before strange shulker disappearance stuff happens, which means higher chance of keeping your shulker.

2. BE CAREFUL OF BOATING DURING LAG.

While server 'pauses' aren't as dangerous as timeouts, they can still lag your boat back and make then disappear, making your shulker drop out of the boat and sometimes randomly teleport. Prevent this the same way timeouts are prevented, by looking out for symptoms of the server stopping and trying to get out of the boat.

3. BE CAREFUL ON ICE.

When boats are on ice, they move VERY fast. Sounds like a great thing to use for transporting shulkers, right? NO. The problem is that they move TOO fast. So fast that MCO lags out and makes the boat disappear, sometimes taking the shulker with it. When on ice, stop the boat every now and then, and make sure that the boat is not going too fast.