Flood Development

When a Flood infestation occurs at any given time, the infestation will continue to grow as time progresses. Oftentimes, a Flood infestation will not occur, and can only happen if a spore is spawned with an egg, or with the command /summon FloodSpore.

Feral Stage
This is the first stage of a Flood infestation. When a Flood spore lands somewhere on the ground, it instantly starts to grow Flood biomass. From this infestation, infection forms will start to spawn, and infect hosts. The hosts will become infected, and due to no central intelligence, will not move in a coordinated manner at all. Weaker creatures will become carrier forms, while creatures such as bats will become swarms. In time, once enough hosts have been infected, 5 combat forms will merge together, forming a Proto-Gravemind. Following this development, the Flood now moves in a more coordinated fashion, even attacking in waves. As more and more of the environment is infested by the Flood, the Proto-Gravemind will change into the middle stages of development. By this time, the Flood can now produce structures such as the stalk, den, nest, colony, root, and vent. By this time, the Proto-Gravemind is able to pulsate and occasionally swell its glands while remaining immobile, as opposed to its early development, where it had no movement or stimuli at all. As time progresses, the Flood infestation will have grown at least a mile in diameter, and the Proto-Gravemind enters its final stage of development. During this event, it increases greatly in size, develops several large tentacles it can use to propel itself, and even has a mouth-like structure. It can now move freely, digging tunnels and pits underground, and extending its tentacles for several hundred meters. It now has a 1% chance of spawning an abomination. If this happens, it will continue to spawn them. Abominations can allow the coordinated stage to take place immediately. Soon, the Proto-Gravemind will leave its stages of development, and evolve into its final form.

Coordinated Stage
The infection has covered enough area for a Gravemind to form. When this happens, it allows the Flood colony structures to start producing pure forms, without needing a host. Though the coordinated stage can be reached before the formation of a Gravemind via key-mind war forms, this stage is often associated with a Gravemind. The Gravemind is fully mobile, and can stretch its tentacles for miles. A village could be 2 miles away from the nearest Flood structure and still be attacked by the Gravemind's tentacles. However, as the infection continues to grow, the Gravemind can only control so many Flood forms, and it needs to create more command forms. It begins to spawn juggernauts and abominations, which help coordinate the Flood further. The Gravemind can exert its control over Flood forces in other dimensions as well, so long as one of these advanced forms is present.

Dimensional Stage
This occurs when the Flood start to infect other dimensions, including the Nether, End, and Aether. However, it often occurs when the Flood infestation in the Overworld has stretched over a very long distance. If and when the infection is 50 miles from the Gravemind, a powerful Flood form known as the Key Mind forms. This massive creature allows the Gravemind to further exert its control. Some advanced Flood forms, such as juggernauts and abominations, are often referred to as "key mind war forms", due to them being able to further exert the Gravemind's control.

Extradimensional Stage.
This occurs when every last biome AND dimension has been fully infested by the Flood. With this stage, the Flood has become exceedingly intelligent, and there is little to no hope of restoring the original ecosystem. The Flood, at this stage, is allowed usage of the Internet, in order for this stage to work. Once a public Minecraft server has been located, the Flood will then hack a spore into that server, with the intent of creating a new Gravemind there. The Flood will only enter this stage with the player's approval.

Effect on the World
What would have once been a large, diverse, healthy ecosystem with multiple biomes is now merged into a single Flood hive. Upon contact with flood biomass, any ground block will slowly turn into Flood Ground Blocks. This infection will slowly spread through the ground, and even infect wood and leaves. It will melt snow on contact, and even infect water, as opposed to a zerg infestation, where the spread of creep will cause water to turn to acid. Precipitation such as rain and snow will no longer be able to occur, and the sky will no longer turn to a shade of grey either. The sky itself may turn a shade of tan or yellow. None of the Flood forms can disappear on Peaceful mode, and it would make them rather powerful, in fact. The Nether would become almost unrecognizable. The walls and ceiling would be covered by Flood biomass, and Flood ground blocks would have spread. The only way to destroy the entire Flood infection is by using the command /fire Halo. This command will destroy all Flood forms, de-infect all water, destroy all trees, and turn Flood ground blocks into dirt. The sky will have turned back to its natural shade of blue. But the world would be completely lifeless. Had the player managed to survive the Flood infestation, he or she would not be able to thrive in Survival Mode. Weather will still not occur, as all biomes have been officially deleted. All underground ores and resources would have been utterly destroyed by the Flood, and therefore the world would be unsuitable for the player or any creature to live in.