Creeper

Creepers, released in version 0.4.0, are a green hostile mob that explodes. If you go into range of the creepers, which is 16 blocks away, to be precise, they will start to follow you and when they are close enough to you, they will start to hiss, flash white and inflate until they finally explode, leaving a crater in their wake. When they do flash white, you have about 1.5 seconds until they explode. However, you can escape this if you get away four blocks away from the Creeper. They will stop the countdown and continue chasing you. If killed, the creepers will drop 0-2 gunpowder. They do not drop gunpowder if they are not killed by the player or if the creeper explodes.



Attack
Creepers attack you by exploding on you. The damage that they deal depends upon your distance from it when it explodes, but they are still extremely lethal at close range.

Combat
A bow should be your first choice. However, if you are fast enough, it is possible to hit a creeper with a sword without it blowing up on you. Make sure you are a reasonable distance from anything important in case it blows up on you.

Trivia

 * Using an Iron sword, it only takes 3 hits to kill a creeper
 * However with a Diamond sword, only 2 hits.
 * Creepers are camoflauged and are very hard to see in large grassy biomes.
 * In Minecraft PC, if you get  Skeletons to kill a creeper, the creeper  drops a music disc. This feature is has not yet implemented in Pocket Edition.
 * Creepers do not burn up in daylight.