Design Changelog

A high-level, dated summary of the major design changes in IridescentCraft, newest first. It is written for players: one headline per change and no implementation detail. The full development history (root causes, script-level notes) is in the project's private developer log.

For where systems stand today, see the Master Design Document and the Home page status table.

October 2026: Iron, coal, copper and quartz ore are half as common in new land (22 October)

• Newly generated Overworld land holds half the iron, coal, copper and quartz ore it did. Each of these ores now tries fewer veins in a chunk, tuned so that a new chunk holds half the ore (measured over several hundred chunks). A vein is as big as before and sits at the same heights and in the same biomes, so a vein you find is as rich as ever; there are fewer of them. A new chunk holds about 58 quartz ore blocks instead of about 115. The raw iron and raw copper blocks inside iron and copper veins, and the coal blocks inside coal veins, are halved with them.
• Large Ore Deposits' big iron, coal and copper lodes are half as frequent: about one lode in 2,000, 1,600 and 2,900 chunks instead of one in 1,000, 800 and 1,450. A lode is as big as before, and the flowers above it still mark it. The other lodes (gold, diamond, the modded metals) are unchanged.
• Only new land changes. Chunks that are already generated keep the ore they have. When part of the world is regenerated, the regenerated land gets the new amounts as well.
• Other ores are unchanged: gold, diamond, redstone, lapis, emerald, zinc, the Thermal and Mekanism ores, and everything in the Nether. With fewer iron and copper veins in the stone they turn up a little more often in new land (up to about a fifth more), because the veins that used to fill that stone are gone.

October 2026: Quartz is a Tier 1 material (22 October)

• Quartz is Tier 1. Quartz, its blocks (smooth, chiseled, pillar, bricks, stairs and slabs) and the quartz ores can be used and crafted from the start, and JEI shows them. Since April they were Tier 3, which also locked Create's rose quartz and with it the electron tube, so a Tier 1 player could not build a Deployer, a Mechanical Crafter, brass funnels and tunnels, smart chutes, or the other Create machines that take an electron tube. All of them can be built at Tier 1 now.
• Quartz ore generates in the Overworld again, in stone and in deepslate, at every height. A freshly generated chunk holds about 120 quartz ore blocks, more under mountains and fewer under the sea. Only chunks generated from now on have it: land that is already explored has none, so look for it in new land. The Nether still opens at Tier 3.
• Master masons sell quartz blocks and pillars again, 1 emerald each, and buy quartz from expert level as before. The calcite trade that replaced them on 19 October is gone. A mason keeps the trades it already offers, calcite included.
• Occultism's miners can bring up nether quartz ore from the first miner spirit, as in Occultism itself. Since April only the Afrit and Marid could.

October 2026: Mob drops and the last chests roll their extras once (19 October)

• Endermen, bats, squid, zombies, drowned and spawners roll Forbidden & Arcanus's extras once. When Forbidden & Arcanus added its own drop (ender pearl fragments, bat wings, tentacles, zombie arms, spawner scrap), it ran every other loot rule a second time, as it did in chests until earlier the same day. An enderman killed in the End now drops a Codex Token III about one kill in twenty, the rate its loot rule gives (it was one in ten), and endermen anywhere drop half the RFTools Dimensions lost knowledge and dimlets they did (lost knowledge about one kill in eight instead of one in four). Forbidden & Arcanus's own drops are unchanged, and bats, squid, zombies, drowned and spawners drop what they did. This applies from the next server restart.
• Abandoned mineshaft chests roll Forbidden & Arcanus's extras once too. They were the last chests that ran every loot rule a second time: a mineshaft chest now holds about half a Codex Token I instead of one, and half the artifacts, treasure fragments, backpacks and music sheets it did, matching the other structure chests. Forbidden & Arcanus's own items in them are unchanged. Valhelsia Structures' treasure jars got the same fix; their second roll added nothing, so a broken treasure jar gives what it did.

October 2026: Summons, chest loot and the tester sync (19 October)

• Dark Pact reaches every blow of an Iron's Spells summon. The Void Summoner's +15 % reached tamed animals and raised skeletons' arrows only; summoned zombies, vexes, polar bears and Iron's summoned blades struck without it. They now hit 15 % harder too, on top of the Summoner's spell power their blows already carried: about 27 % above a classless player's summon, where it was 10 %.
• Chests roll Forbidden & Arcanus's extras once. In End City and bastion treasure, jungle temples, desert pyramids, underwater ruins, pillager outposts, dungeons and the three village smiths, Forbidden & Arcanus's additions ran every other loot rule a second time. Those chests now hold about half the Codex tokens they did (End City treasure about 2.2 Codex Token III a chest instead of 4.5, bastion treasure 1.5 instead of 3.3, an Overworld structure chest about 0.5 Codex Token I instead of 1), half the Tetra scrolls in dungeons and darts in jungle temples, and village smith chests about 6 iron ingots instead of 10. Village artifacts stay at about one chest in ten. This applies to chests opened from the next server restart.
• Testers: the sync's unused second mod downloader is gone. Mods have always arrived through the sync's own downloader; the packwiz-installer path it also carried never ran on a tester's instance and is removed with its two jars. Once a launch has updated the sync, it deletes those leftover files from the instance.

October 2026: The MekaSuit is a space suit (19 October)

• A full MekaSuit counts as a space suit on every planet and orbit: you need no oxygen, and Ad Astra's heat and cold don't touch you, whether the suit is charged or not. Until now it gave no space protection at all, and a player in a full MekaSuit froze on the Moon and Mars.
• Each planet's own dangers still need the planet enchantments. The cold of Mars, Mercury's night and Glacio, Mercury's sun and Venus's acid are not stopped by any suit; Thermal Regulation, Stellar Shield and Pressure Shell protect you from them.
• Texts. The MekaSuit Mk2 is upgraded at a crafting table with Aethersteel, an Antimatter Pellet and Primordial Essence: the Codex and its lore no longer say it is forged at the Mythic Forge or needs Glacio materials. The Codex's enchanting page no longer says chests hold no enchanted books.

October 2026: Villagers trade for convenience (19 October)

• No villager sells an enchanted book any more. Librarians keep their other trades (paper, books, bookshelves, lanterns, glass, clocks, compasses, name tags). For enchants, use the enchanting table or the Relic Broker.
• No villager or wandering trader sells diamonds, or diamond and netherite gear. Diamonds are a Tier 3 material. Until now expert and master smiths sold enchanted diamond armor, tools and weapons for emeralds, MCA's adventurers sold diamonds, and wandering traders sold a diamond for 3 emeralds and, as rare trades, diamond gear with Mending and very high enchant levels. The smith levels that sold diamond gear sell a convenience item instead: horse armor from the armorer (iron at expert, gold at master), an anvil from a master toolsmith, a shield from a master weaponsmith. Smiths still buy your diamonds for emeralds. MCA's adventurers no longer sell an enchanted golden apple, which tier-1 chests do not hold either.
• Nothing a later tier holds back is for sale. Wandering traders sold a beacon for 25 emeralds and eyes of ender for 2, and master masons sold quartz blocks (beacons and quartz are Tier 3, eyes of ender Tier 4). Master masons sell calcite instead, 4 for an emerald.
• Clerics sell XP bottles earlier: 6 emeralds a bottle at journeyman and 4 at expert, 8 bottles a restock each. The master's bottle for 3 emeralds is unchanged.
• A villager keeps the trades it already offers. Only trades it gets from now on (a new villager, or one that levels up) follow these rules, so a librarian who already sells an enchanted book keeps selling it. This applies from the server restart after it lands.

October 2026: Boss loot and the Codex's class pages (19 October)

• The Ender Dragon's drops land once. One of Forbidden & Arcanus's dragon drops rolled every other drop rule a second time, so a kill gave two Dragon Hearts, two stacks of artifact pouches, double Rift shards and Iron's Spellbooks' dragon loot, and 1.1 Ultimate Reforging Tokens a kill instead of the designed 0.6. Each now drops once; Forbidden & Arcanus's own dragon drops are unchanged.
• The Ancient Remnant drops artifact pouches and Awakenings like the other tier-4 bosses: two pouches a kill and about a 9 % chance at an Awakening.
• The Baby Leviathan is off the Tier 3 boss rush. It only hatches from the Leviathan's egg, as a pet, so clearing 100 % of the rush meant hatching one and killing it. The rush now counts 44 bosses, and killing one pays no boss tokens.
• The Codex's class and race pages say what the game does. The Berserker's +15 % is with axes (bows and spell books hit weaker); the Artificer has no ore bonus; the Paladin has no shield or sword bonus and heals 25 % more from potions and spells; a Void Summoner's Dark Pact reaches tamed animals and raised skeletons' arrows, while other Iron's summons strike with the Summoner's spell power. The Demi-God has four extra hearts and Speed II outside the Nether (cooked meat is not boosted), the Kirin runs at 2.5 times the base speed, the Ryu's healing is halved only while Regeneration is on, and the Fallen Angel has Haste I and glows. The enchantment page lists Primal Force, and Crowd Control counts nearby hostiles.

October 2026: Glass cannons, the Mythic Forge and planet cold (19 October)

• Glass cannons halve only their gear's health. The Ranger, Archmage, Void Summoner and Elemental get half the max health their armor, held items, curios, Vitality and HP affixes give, as the class pages say. Until now the game halved everything above a fixed base: a Demi-God Archmage with no gear had 19.8 health instead of 22.4, and Spice of Life, level-up, Health Boost and Ascension health were halved too, while a Faefolk or Fallen Angel kept all of its gear's health. Gear also lost 40 % of its health instead of half: an Archmage with a +4 chestplate has 17.6 health now, not 17.9.
• The Mythic Forge stays in the crafting grid. It is the station for the five Mythic Catalysts; until now every catalyst craft used it up, so each catalyst also cost a new Forge.
• Texts. The Engineering capstone quest no longer says a Mythic Catalyst V turns antimatter into gear: nothing applies a catalyst yet, and the MekaSuit Mk2 upgrade is where antimatter becomes gear. Thermal Regulation's text and the Codex say it covers the slow cold of Mars, Mercury's night and Glacio, not the freezing of the Moon and Mars without a full space suit (3 health a second, which only the suit stops). The Codex enchantment page describes Phalanx (6 % less damage a level while you block with a shield) and Last Stand (a killing hit leaves you at 1 health, once every 5 minutes) as they work. The design notes list the origins that start with less health: Arachnid and Phantom 14, Slimebodied 15, Witch of Ink 16, Feline 18.

October 2026: Tetra materials' magic bonuses sized to Iron's Spellbooks (19 October)

• Every magic bonus a Tetra material gives is +5 % a module, added up. A material's bonus applies to each module made of it. Until now most of them multiplied once per module and once per piece: an aethersteel set gave x3.8 spell power, an iridium set x39, a converted Ignitium set x9 fire power, and an onyx set with an onyx wand and book x30 spell power. Twenty-eight others (enderium, deorum, knightmetal, the diamond in 26 converted mod armour sets, and more) gave nothing at all, although their files listed bonuses.
• A full set of one material now stays within what Iron's Spellbooks' own armour gives. A metal with a school (enderium, deorum, the boss metals...) gives that school +70 % for a full crafted set; a converted Fiery, Froststeel, Ironwood, Resonarium or Horizonite set +80 % (an Iron's school set gives about +68 % on its school). A gem set gives +20 % for each of its bonuses. Spell power for every school stays only on gems and paper, where a set holds few modules; mana regen, cooldown reduction and the resists are gone from metals and skins. Aethersteel, terrasteel and the Ender Guardian material give flat max mana instead (+10 a module, +140 a set). Themed materials: fire, ice, holy, lightning and blood give +5 % of their school a module (a full set +80 %); shadow, ender and nature give no magic bonus. Every material's numbers are on the Tetra materials page.
• Vestment and runed armour give the same mage stats whatever cloth or skin they are made of. A piece gives vestment +50 mana and +5 % mana regen, runed +10 mana, +5 % spell power and +5 % cooldown reduction, and a set adds them up (vestment +200 mana and +20 % regen; runed +20 % spell power and cooldown). Until now they grew with the material and multiplied per piece: a leather runed set gave x2.4 spell power and cooldown, a leather vestment set +1,000 mana. A converted Iron's Spellbooks set (Pyromancer, Cryomancer) now gives x1.58 spell power instead of x1.98; the armour skins' own bonuses are unchanged.
• Arcane cloth no longer carries Iron's Spellbooks' hidden cooldown bonus. Iron's Spellbooks defines a material at the same name, and its +15 % cooldown a module was added to ours: a full arcane-cloth set had x5.35 cooldown reduction. It keeps +5 max mana a module.
• Knightmetal, knight, steel and cloggrum give +5 % of their own armour, added once, instead of multiplying per module: a converted Knightmetal set had 288 armour and has 140, a crafted one 186 and now 102. A sword of them no longer raises its holder's armour. Refined obsidian's knockback bonus is gone: its armour already reaches the knockback cap.
• Modular wands and spell books give the same bonus whatever they are made of. A wand gives +5 % spell power, +15 % mana regen, +15 % cooldown reduction and +22.5 max mana; a book's modules +20 max mana and +5 % cooldown (an Ars book +5 % mana regen), besides the Iron's Spellbooks book it was made from. Until now they grew with the material and multiplied: a boss gem's wand gave x1.86 spell power, a wand and book of one gem x3.7, a gem set with both x3.8; now x1.25, x1.47 and x1.68. A gem's own bonus (+5 % a module) still applies.
• A Tetra item's tooltip shows these bonuses as a number: "+0.2 Fire Spell Power" on a converted Fiery chestplate means +20 %. The Tetra workbench's Status bars show the percent. This all applies from the server restart after it lands.

October 2026: In-game texts say what the game does (18 October)

• Origins texts. The Revenant takes 20 % less damage in deep darkness (Resistance I), not 30 %. The Artificer's Resourceful is Speed I (+20 %) near a crafting table; the ore bonus and faster machines it promised were never built. The Ranger's +20 % ranged damage, the Berserker's Battle Trance (+5 % melee, +1 armor) and the Vanguard's Guardian's Presence (Weakness I on nearby mobs) read as they work, and the Paladin's text names its +25 % healing instead of a shield bonus it never had. The trinity mages' pools are +100 % Iron's mana; the Elemental's HP ties the Archmage's.
• Enchantments and aptitudes. Primal Force tops out at +12 % a level (saturation stops at 20); Crowd Control counts the hostiles beyond the first. Arcane Efficiency and Materials Science give back a quarter of the levels while the menu is open; Brutal Slash adds up to +5 % against armored mobs.
• Tetra armor and wands. The Runed schematics describe the Runed weave (they had the Vestment's text). Goggles add mana and spell power, the decorative trim adds armor, the wand cap has nothing for cast speed, and the wand's tier comes from honing. Some 25 small parts no longer promise effects they never had.
• The End. The Dragon Summoning Crystal is used by holding it and sneaking at the fountain, and the texts now say so. The "End City" milestone is reached 1000 blocks out. A full-moon warning that never appeared is gone.
• The Codex submit message names the lane you submitted to.
• Quests. The Finale no longer says the Dragon unlocks Ad Astra (its planets open at Tier 4). The rune quests say runes make upgrade orbs, which the Arcane Anvil applies. The Mekanism ore quests give the real order, 2x to 5x, each step a machine in front of the last. Frostmaw's tip no longer suggests fire resistance (its breath freezes). The two diamond quests have their own names and say they complete when Tier 3 is granted, and two "provisional" notes are gone.

October 2026: Unique weapons (18 October)

• Every Simply Swords unique drops from a boss. Five tier-4 swords that no boss dropped, and that could not be crafted or found, now drop at 15 % a kill: Magiscythe and Magispear from Virtue, Wickpiercer from Lucifer, Harbinger from the Ender Golem, the Watching Warglaive from the Void Worm.
• Frostmaw's Cyroheart Bow is a Tier 2 unique, like Frostmaw since it moved to Everbright. Its arrows deal +20 % instead of +10 %; the drop is unchanged.
• Three uniques that never existed are off the lists. Twilight (Mowzie's Naga), Enchanted Estoc (Enchanter Merlin) and Dreadtide are names the installed Simply Swords does not make into items, so those two bosses never dropped anything for them. The pack has 42 unique swords and 34 bows.
• The Ultimate Bosses have a tier in the Codex: the Storm (five Phantom Membranes) Tier 1, the Sorcerer (a Nether Star) Tier 3, both called inside the mod's towers on Overworld hills.

October 2026: Magic bonuses count once (17 October)

• Each magic bonus counts once on Iron's spells. Since the class system started working on 10 October, an Iron's spell got several bonuses twice. Mana Attunement (+5 % a tier) and the Magic aptitude skills Mana Spark, Mana Blaze and Mana Inferno sat on both spell power and magic damage, and a "magic damage sync" copied Arcane Supremacy (+50 %), Faefolk (+30 %), Elf (+5 %) and a Battlemage +15 % onto spell power, although Iron's spells already take magic damage. Mana Attunement and the three skills are now spell power, as their descriptions say, and the Origins bonuses are magic damage, as theirs say. The sync is gone. An Archmage's firebolt at tier 4 now does about 2.2 times what a classless caster's does (it was about 3.4 times). Magic damage does not reach Ars Nouveau spells; it never did.
• The Archmage's texts on the Origins screen say what the class does. Mana Attunement is +5 % spell power for each passive tier above the first (+15 % at Tier 4); there is no spell-kill mana and no standing-still bonus, and the melee malus is Frail Melee's -50 %. The mana pool is 2.5 times the baseline (Mana Reservoir's +150 %: 250 instead of 100).
• The mage classes' mana pools are their own powers' again. Since 10 October a script multiplied them by 1.5 on top of each class's pool power: the Archmage had 375 mana, the Battlemage and the Void Summoner 285. Now the Archmage has 250 (2.5x), the Battlemage and the Void Summoner 190 (1.9x), as their Origins texts say; the Elemental, the Blessed and the Corrupted keep 200 (2x). The Codex said 1.5x for all three; it says the real numbers now.
• The Battlemage's texts say what it does. +10 % melee (the description said 15 %) and +15 % on magic hits; Mana Shield is Resistance I at all times, Resistance II for a Faefolk (there is no 15 % chance to negate a hit, and gear does not raise it); melee kills restore 15 mana.
• The Void Summoner's Dark Pact reaches Iron's Spells summons. Its +15 % damage worked for tamed animals only; summoned zombies, skeletons, vexes and the rest now deal +15 % too, as the power always said. Soul Tether's text says what it does (every death within 16 blocks heals you 5 % of the creature's max health, up to 1 heart, and gives 1 XP), and so does Shadow Cloak's (+10 % melee damage in darkness, no penalty in light).

October 2026: Data fixes (17 October)

• "Random Spell Scroll" rewards give a scroll. Five Practical Magic rewards named a loot table that did not exist and gave nothing; each gives one Iron's Spellbooks scroll now, bound to a random tier-1 spell the moment it lands in your inventory (as the Relic Broker's scrolls are).
• Iron Tools gives 3 iron ingots instead of an item that does not exist.
• The Boss Compass leads to the Thunker. Its row pointed at the Chthonic Cathedral, where no Thunker stands; it points at the Chthonic Dungeon now, whose halls and rooms hold Thunkers (they also roam every Nether biome).
• The Ad Astra planets count for the class passives' tier, like their orbits, the End and the Aether: landing on a planet raises the passive tier to 4 (Samurai Strength IV, Archmage +15 % spell power), as entering an orbit already did.

October 2026: The Twilight Forest portal lights again (17 October)

• The Twilight Forest portal can be lit again. Throw a Codex Token I (the Tier 1 Codex token) into a pool of water ringed by grass with flowers on it; a diamond, the mod's own key, works too. Since April the only key had been a leftover token that nothing gave, so no survival player could open the portal. Anyone can light it, but stepping through still needs Tier 2. This applies from the next server restart.
• Lucifer's Token is retired from the design. It was to be a second combat door to Tier 4 (bank your way up, then kill Lucifer); it was never built. The combat road to Tier 4 is the full Tier 3 boss rush, Lucifer included. The Codex and the quests Capstone: Lucifer, Boss-Rush III and Ascension III say so now.
• The Ad Astra planets do not wait for the Ender Dragon. They and their orbits are Tier 4 dimensions: the Tier 4 stage and a rocket take you there. The Codex said the dragon kill opens them; it never did, and it will not.
• Frostmaw's Tetra parts are Tier 2 parts. The book covers, pauldrons and wand parts made of the Frostmaw crystal kept their Tier 1 numbers when Frostmaw became a Tier 2 boss; they now match its armour parts (about a fifth stronger). This applies from the next server restart.

October 2026: Wiki corrections (16 October)

• Ultris's Ultra Wither cannot be summoned in this pack. The appendix listed it as a summonable boss. Ultris builds its bosses from vanilla mobs, and every Wither here is Progressive Bosses' own, so the Ominous Pearl never finds a Wither to transform; the stronger Wither is the Ultimate Wither. The other Ultris bosses exist but are on no boss list: no kill tokens, no boss-rush credit.
• Class passives, as they work. Samurai's Vorpal goes up to Strength IV (the page said V); the Void Summoner's Soul Tether gives +1 XP and heals 5% of the mob's max health (up to 1 heart) for each mob dying within 16 blocks (the page said +10% XP). Both tier-scaled passives use the highest tier of dimension you have entered.
• Boss rush rosters: 9 / 18 / 45. Three pages still gave 10 / 18 / 43 after Merlin and Circe became Tier 3 bosses.

October 2026: The Chthonic Cathedral's bosses are Tier 3

• The Chthonic Cathedral's bosses are Tier 3 bosses. Enchanter Merlin (was Tier 1), Sorceress Circe (was Tier 4) and Archmage Gundalf (was Tier 2) are all met at the Nether's Chthonic Cathedral: Occult Fabric on its Offering Pedestal calls Merlin and Circe together, and Gundalf appears when Circe falls. Merlin and Circe are on the Tier 3 boss rush now (Tier 1 → 2 needs 8 of 9 bosses, Tier 3 → 4 all 45). Their kill tokens, the Magic Estoc (Merlin), the Astral Bound (Circe) and Circe's Tetra material follow them to Tier 3.
• Occult Fabric in the Nether. The chance of Occult Fabric in a chest moved from the Overworld's Infested Laboratory to the Chthonic Dungeon, where the Gatmancers live (12 %).

October 2026: The Cardinal Sins arenas generate again

• The Cardinal Sins have arenas again. Since the end of May no Cardinal Sins arena generated anywhere: the mod builds its arenas only in the Overworld, and the pack had moved them to the Undergarden and the Nether, so the shrine chain could not start. Now the seven sins and Drakara have their arenas in the Abyss, and Lucifer's arena is in the Nether. The Boss Compass finds every one of them. They stay Tier 3 bosses, and Lucifer stays the Tier 3 capstone.
• The shrine chain. Every shrine takes the previous sin's Soul Orb and works once: Sloth → Gluttony → Lust → Greed → Envy → Wrath → Pride → Lucifer's Atrocity Shrine. Sloth's Malevolichite Shrine takes a Soulweaver Orb (8 Malevolichite around an Eye of Ender; the ore sits in the floating pillars of the Overworld's Forgotten Forest). Every other orb is an Eye of Ender and the Essence the previous sin drops, at a smithing table with no template.
• The Boss Compass points to the right Terramity places. Enchanter Merlin and Sorceress Circe are summoned together with Occult Fabric at the Offering Pedestal of the Nether's Chthonic Cathedral, Archmage Gundalf appears when Circe falls, and Gatmancers live in the Chthonic Dungeon. The compass pointed at the Fairy Fountain, the Mausoleum, the Trial Spire and the Infested Laboratory, where none of them is found.

October 2026: Aether follow-ups

• Neptune armour converts like zanite armour. At the Tetra workbench it becomes iron modular armour; it keeps its look, its armour bonus and its full-set bonus (water breathing and dolphin's grace). The old conversion multiplied spell power by about two per piece, so a full set multiplied it by eighteen. The Neptune Tetra material is gone.
• Converted Forbidden Arcanus armour can be repaired. Mortem pieces with cloth, tyr pieces with golden dragon scales, draco arcanus pieces with dragon scales (the repair items named before did not exist).
• The Sun Spirit drops legendary ink like the Eye of the Storm: 30% for one (it was 50% for one or two).
• The Sunfeather Charm is worth 500 relic essence, the Tier 4 value (was 250).
• Frostmaw has 1,500 health wherever it stands, like the other Tier 2 named bosses (designed 500 with the x3, off the dimension curve); per-kill scaling still applies.
• Quests. The Frostmaw hunt moved to the Exploration chapter, next to the Tier 2 dimension bosses; the Tier 2 boss-rush quest lists Frostmaw (any 4 of 6); reaching Tier 2 gives 4 Everbright pyrope gems and Frontiers I gives 6 Everdawn moonstone shards, in place of the zanite and ambrosium they gave when the Aether was Tier 2.

October 2026: The rest of the week (10 to 16 October)

The other October entries cover the week's big changes. This one gathers everything else a player meets.

Features that never worked now do. Much of the pack's own content had never run on the server. Since this week:

• Custom enchantments, Apotheosis affix effects, the Abyss rings and armour sets, the unique weapons' tier bonus (+10% at Tier 1 up to +40% at Tier 4), the plain-bow effects of Too Many Bows' themed bows, and the Deathskin bonus against undead all apply.
• All forty aptitude skills read your real aptitude levels.
• The bonfires, the Boss Compass, the Relic Broker's window, the class altar and the class starter kits work.
• The Codex works: submitting materials, counting the tokens you hold, the Tier 4 token-to-experience exchange, crediting boss kills above Tier 1, and the relic sink. A submission takes only what is in your main inventory (hotbar included), never armour you wear or the item in your off hand.
• Vorpal and Arcane Vorpal beheadings happen (on a crit of the pack's own crit roll) and kill through armour; MekaSuit Mk2 pieces get their bonus armour; the modular Ars spell book's covers and spine change something.
• Lovely Pieces' Enchant Eye, fishing line, quivers and Newbie Umbrella work, and so does the Compass of Return.
• Mutant Monsters drop ten times their experience.
• Some things survive death now: the Relic Broker's daily limit no longer resets, a full Tetra armour set keeps its bonus after respawning, and your progress toward the next level is kept on death and on leaving the End.

Bosses.

• Twenty-two named bosses the pack's boss rules had missed (Lucifer, Frostmaw, Gob, Virtue and Sorceress Circe among them) follow them now: the boss health bonus applies once instead of twice (about a third of their old health), and they can no longer be beheaded or executed.
• A boss keeps its health bonus when the server restarts or its chunk reloads; until now a boss waiting in its arena lost it.
• The Magehunter Vindicator of the Evoker Fort is a real boss: 500 health, no beheading. Its Boss Compass row leads to the Evoker Fort (it pointed at the Mountain Tower), and no structure gets two bonfires.
• The Amethyst Crab and MCA's Grim Reaper are minibosses: tokens on every kill, no beheading.
• The first phases of the Sins of Envy, Pride and Wrath are bosses (about 1,050 to 1,125 health at the Nether's starting difficulty instead of 1,750 to 1,875) and grow per kill like Lucifer's.
• A boss with a designed health or the boss bonus has the same health in every dimension: the dimension difficulty curve no longer multiplies it again. The Warden, for one, has 1,500 everywhere (it had 2,250 in the Overworld and 4,500 in the Nether at their starting difficulty). Minibosses without a designed health still grow with the curve.
• With two or more players online, every boss keeps fighting when no player is near it (until now only the Wither was meant to, and it was not).

Progression and dimensions.

• The boss rush can be completed: its lists named bosses that do not exist, so no tier could be reached that way. And a tier is now bought only with the tier below held, by tokens or by the boss rush.
• Tier gates survive a /reload, and the recipes they guard are locked by tier. The netherite ingot, the eye of ender, the Digital Miner, the Hephaestus Forge and the reforging and augmenting tables could be crafted by anyone; the rocket workbench and the Dragon Summoning Crystal (the only way to start the Ender Dragon fight) by no one. The End Crystal recipe is back.
• The Ad Astra planets and orbits, Iron's Spellbooks' pocket dimension and the Reality Marble are Tier 4 dimensions. Each planet and orbit has its own Tier 4 gate (a rocket handed to a Tier 3 player goes nowhere), their mobs follow the Tier 4 difficulty curve (they were on the Tier 1 curve), a death there costs 22% to 30% durability, and affixes and gems found there roll Epic to Ancient. The Pocket Dimension spell is refused before Tier 4. The Abyss's pocket dimension counts as Tier 2.
• The Otherside and the Abyss count as Tier 3 for the Samurai's and the Archmage's tier passives.
• Invader bosses can now appear in Everbright, Everdawn, the Undergarden, the Otherside, the Abyss and its Frost World, the Aether and the five planets. Most of these were on the spawn list with no bosses to send; the Frost World and the planets were not on it at all.

Loot.

• The Wither drops the Dormant Relic on your first kill (15% after that) and 2 Runic Tablets on every kill. The tablets go into the two relic crafts only: every runic weapon and fused-gem recipe is removed.
• No more diamonds before Tier 3 from the Aquaculture treasure chest (an emerald now), Aether whirlwinds, or Tetra geodes (an emerald, and a pristine emerald instead of a pristine diamond). The Dungeons Arise diamond strip applies in the Overworld only.
• The Lich, the Ur-Ghast, the Netherite Monstrosity, the Harbinger, the Wither and the Gaia Guardian drop their reforging token 60% of the time.
• The Abyss's rings drop from its bosses: Nightblade the Shadows and Phantom rings (15% each), The Roka the Embers ring (15%), the Ice Knight the Frost ring (15%), the Elder the Void Sight ring (10%).
• Terramity's Tier 3 gear (the Reverium sword and axe, the malediction and electron bracelets) and its "Tier 2" tomes left Overworld chests for its two Nether dungeons.
• The Rift Shard and Mythic Catalyst counters count each item once.

Smaller changes.

• Material Save and Craft Bonus roll on a real craft only (they handed out free materials and copies of items on every inventory change).
• The Wind Essence Wand gives +5% speed, as its tooltip says (it gave +50%).
• Ars Nouveau's own max mana and mana regeneration say "(no effect here)": Ars spells draw from the Iron's Spellbooks mana pool.
• Eighteen unused items are gone (the transmuted materials, three alloys, the rift gem and the old token fragments): nothing made or used them.
• The Level Up onboarding quest completes at any aptitude level 2.
• A cancelled hit triggers no on-hit effect, and the plain-bow effects and the Deathskin bonus apply to the hit itself, not to the splash damage it causes.
• The pack's diopside Tetra material is made from the diopside gem (it named an item that does not exist).
• Mowzie's Geomancer set counts as robes for armour weight; the Soul Butterfly's tooltip says one butterfly per use; the Codex's text is a warm sepia, with italic page titles.

October 2026: Virtue's altar is the Prismatic Pond

• The Prismatic Pond generates in the Aether. Terramity's crystal pond was moved to the Deep Aether forests of the Aether in May, but it was placed below the Aether's floor and never generated. It now sits on the surface of the Deep Aether islands, never over the void, and the Boss Compass finds it. Only newly generated land has it; the server had generated no Aether land yet.
• Virtue is summoned only at the pond. Throw an Unholy Lance (the Dead King's drop) into the pond's prism solution: Virtue rises about ten seconds later. In the Overworld, where Terramity summoned Virtue anywhere under open sky, the lance now calls nothing and falls back to you, with a message saying where the altar is. A lance that misses the pond in the Aether falls back to you the same way; in other dimensions it shatters after a second of flight, as before.

October 2026: Aether gear for Tier 4

• The Aether's Tetra materials are Tier 4 materials. The Aether is a Tier 4 dimension, where netherite is the floor and only Aethersteel sits above it. The Slider's, the Valkyrie Queen's and the Sun Spirit's boss materials (carved stone, victory medal, sun altar) now sit in the Tier 4 boss band, just under the Eye of the Storm's squall plate, and need a diamond hammer to forge. Zanite, gravitite, valkyrie, phoenix and skyjade are netherite-grade in Tetra and keep their own perks (skyjade stays brittle and still takes no enchantments).
• A stratus ingot makes one Tetra material. Two materials both claimed the ingot; the pack's own Stratus (the one with modular armour) keeps it.
• Neptune and obsidian armour at the Tetra workbench. Neptune's material now names its real item, the neptune mesh. Aether obsidian armour converts into netherite modular armour, which matches its own numbers.
• The Silver and Gold dungeon reward chests pay Tier 4 loot. The Silver chest holds a stratus ingot and the Gold chest two, every time; the plain iron and golden swords and the chainmail are gone from them. The Aether's own gear, Deep Aether's extras and the upgrade templates are unchanged.

October 2026: The Aether becomes Tier 4; Frostmaw moves to Everbright

• The Aether is a Tier 4 dimension. It opens at Tier 4 instead of Tier 2 (Deep Aether's biomes are part of it; Deep Aether has no dimension of its own). Its mobs follow the Tier 4 difficulty curve, 600% rising to 1000% over 200 hours as in The End (it was 200% to 350% over 100 hours), and its own creatures (blue and golden swets, whirlwinds and evil whirlwinds, the aechor plant, cockatrices, zephyrs, Deep Aether's baby zephyrs and venomites) now grow with the curve too. A death there costs 22% durability (was 15%). Affixes and gems found there roll Rare to Ancient (was Uncommon to Epic), and Apotheosis invader bosses appear 8% of the time (was 4%). Its chests follow The End's Tier 4 loot rules, and its arrival bonus and first-kill boss tokens are The End's (Tier 3 tokens).
• The tiers' dimensions. Tier 2 is now the Twilight Forest and Blue Skies' Everbright and Everdawn. Tier 4 is The End, the Aether and the Ad Astra planets and orbits.
• The Aether's dungeon bosses are Tier 4 bosses. The Slider (Bronze Dungeon) has 3,000 health, the Valkyrie Queen (Silver Dungeon) and the Sun Spirit (Gold Dungeon) 3,600 each (they had 1,200, 1,650 and 1,500), and they have left the Tier 2 boss rush. Their drops are at Tier 4 values: the Slider drops the Advanced Reforging Token (60%) instead of the basic one, epic ink instead of uncommon and a lightning upgrade orb instead of the lightning rune; the Sun Spirit drops legendary ink instead of rare and fire and holy upgrade orbs instead of the runes; all three drop 1-2 Rift Shards and a Void Fragment, and the Slider's Artifact Piece Pouch follows the Tier 4 rule (2 pouches and a small chance at an awakening artifact). Virtue (Terramity) has a designed health of 1,500 (4,500 in game) and is left out of the difficulty curve.
• Their unique weapons stay with them and are Tier 4 uniques now (a x1.40 tier bonus instead of x1.20): Thunderbrand and the Scatter Bow from the Slider, Caelestis, the Wind Bow and Radiance from the Valkyrie Queen, Sunfire and Aether's Call from the Sun Spirit. Caelestis and Sunfire now have 13 base damage, as Thunderbrand does, and their effects are stronger: Thunder Blitz and Righteous Standard deal 5 damage (was 3), Righteous Standard heals with a 1.6 scaling (was 1.3), and Astral Shift triggers 8% of the time (was 5%). The Sunfeather Charm stays on the Sun Spirit, now a Tier 4 relic.
• Three unique swords that dropped from nothing are Tier 2 drops: Mjolnir from the Minoshroom, Storm's Edge from the Bellringer and Slumbering Lichblade from the Mutant Enderman (15% each).
• Frostmaw lives in Everbright. It is a Tier 2 boss now, found in Everbright's frozen biomes (the frostbitten forest and its clearing, snow-covered pines, polar highland, slushlands), on the Tier 2 boss rush and with a Boss Compass arena there. It no longer generates in new Overworld chunks; chunks already generated keep theirs. The Frostmaw Heart is a Tier 2 relic (worth 250 essence to the relic sink, was 150) and Frostmaw Crystal joins the Tier 2 band of Tetra materials.
• Boss rush targets. Tier 1 → 2 needs 8 of 10 bosses (was 9 of 11) and Tier 2 → 3 needs 17 of 18 (was 18 of 20); Tier 3 → 4 is unchanged (all 43).
• Tier 2 chests hold tokens more often. Every chest in a Tier 2 dimension now has a 50% chance (was 45%) of 2-4 Tier 2 tokens.
• Quests follow. Frontiers I asks for the Twilight Forest, Everbright and Everdawn (no Aether); the Tier 2 boss-rush quest no longer lists the Slider; the Tier 1 rush and first-boss quests no longer list Frostmaw; the Frostmaw quest is a Tier 2 hunt in Everbright; Frontiers IV and the End Compass capstone now ask you to reach the Aether (they asked for a "Deep Aether" dimension that never existed).
• Two claims in the documentation corrected. The End is reached with Eyes of Ender, staged at Tier 4: the End Compass (to be crafted from the Aether's materials and to point to an End Bastion) is planned, not in the game. And there are no Deep Aether "Celestial Events". The Aether's real hazards are these: its mobs get Speed I (its flyers Strength I as well); thin air above Y 180 brings Weakness unless your armor has Aether Acclimation; sprinting above Y 200 sometimes brings vertigo (nausea); and when you fall below Y 0, an updraft gives you Slow Falling once.

October 2026: Bosses remember who beat them; sunlight burns the undead; the Codex ladder is strict

• Bosses get stronger for the players who have beaten them. The first time a boss trades a hit with a player, it takes the highest kill count of that boss among the players within 64 blocks: your 2nd fight is +15% health, +10% damage and +3% speed, rising to +150% / +80% / +15% from the 15th fight. Everyone within 64 blocks when it dies counts the kill, and /icraft bosskills shows your own counts. Everyone starts at zero. The Wither, the Ender Dragon, the Warden and the Elder Guardian are not scaled.
• Sunlight burns hostile undead faster (Sunlight Smite). By day, a hostile undead mob under open sky near a player in the Overworld burns about four times faster than before (a zombie lasts about 15 seconds instead of a minute). Bosses, your own summons and pets, and wild zombie and skeleton horses are spared; a roof keeps any mob safe.
• A Codex tier is bought only with the tier below. Tokens of a higher tier no longer buy their tier for a player who has not reached the one below it; /icraft codex balance says which tier comes first.

October 2026: The Wither keeps its designed health; the Ultimate Wither returns as a challenge

• The Wither has 1,800 health everywhere. The difficulty curve that makes ordinary monsters tougher dimension by dimension was meant to leave the Wither alone, but it named a Wither the game never spawns. From the next server restart the Wither has its designed 1,800 health wherever it is summoned; it had 2,550 at the Overworld's starting difficulty, and the curve would have taken it past 15,000 in The End.
• The Ultimate Wither is an optional Tier 4 challenge. Of Progressive Bosses' three stronger Withers only the strongest stays: Corrupted Soul Sand for it is crafted from soul sand or soul soil and 3 Nether Stars once you reach Tier 4, and the Wither built with it forms only in the Nether (anywhere else the build is refused and your blocks stay). It has 3,000 health and drops 5 Nether Stars, 2 Netherite Upgrade templates and 3,000 experience, with the Wither's usual spoils; the Capstones quest Challenge: The Ultimate Wither pays 3 Ignitium ingots and 25 levels. The armoured and summoner Withers stay out: their recipes are gone.
• Withers share their loot when several players fight. With two or more players near, a Wither drops a loot bag for each player instead of one set of drops, and its health grows with the number of players. Each bag holds a plain Wither's spoils, Nether Stars included (until now a bag would have held no star); fought by a group, the Ultimate Wither drops these bags too.
• Far-off Withers keep fighting on a busy server. With two or more players online the server pauses creatures far from every player; the Wither was meant to be exempt but was not. It now is.
• A Wither cannot be built near the spawn village. Monsters are kept out of a 96-block circle around the world spawn, and a Wither built inside it used to vanish together with its soul sand and skulls. Now the last skull is simply not placed: the blocks stay, the skull stays in your hand, and a message tells you to build further out. A Wither built outside the circle works as before.
• The quest Brutal Bosses: Claim a Dungeon is removed. It could never be completed: its targets were not creatures the game knows. Nothing depended on it, and Brutal Bosses' champions still guard their dungeons.

October 2026: The End can be generated

• The End generates. Until now no chunk of The End could be generated. In an offline test of the full pack, asking for one crashed the server; the test server carries the same data, so the first player through an End portal would have met the same. Nobody had tried yet. Two switched-off ore entries in the pack's own data were one and the same feature for the game, and the game refuses to generate a dimension in which a feature has to come before itself.
• What was tested. In an offline test of the full pack the central island, the arrival platform, three places on the outer islands and an End City (with every chunk around it) generate, and the server keeps running.
• The offline boot test now covers every dimension. Each time it is run it generates a new chunk in each of the 26 dimensions and checks each dimension's generation order for this kind of conflict, so the next mod that brings one can be caught before it reaches the server.
• Nothing else changes. What generates in The End is what was designed; Enderium ore stays switched off. The Overworld and the other dimensions are not affected.

October 2026: Kill quests count kills, and three bosses follow their rules

• Kill quests can be completed. Twenty-one quests that ask you to kill something could never be completed, and three more were locked behind them. Twenty of them now count the kills they state: the three Boss-Rush gauntlets, Giant Slayer, Bigger They Come, Veteran Hunter, the four hunter quests (zombies, skeletons, spiders, creepers), Frontiers II, the Mowzie's Mobs, Mutant Monsters and Terramity quests of Overworld Foundations, Foundations Laid and Capstone: Lucifer. Kills made before this change were never recorded, so they are not credited: the kills have to be done again.
• One quest is still broken: Brutal Bosses: Claim a Dungeon cannot be completed yet. It is on the known-issues list.
• Boss-Rush III counts the Wither. Its Wither line named an entity the game never lets you fight.
• The Wither is a boss for every pack rule. The Wither you fight is Progressive Bosses' own version, and the pack's boss rules did not reach it. It now has its boss health (2,550 at the Overworld's starting difficulty), drops its pack loot (2 Nether Stars, 3-6 Wither Bones, 2 Runic Tablets, 3 Rift Shards, a Void Fragment, often an Advanced Reforging Token), gives the Dormant Relic on your first kill, and counts for the Codex and the boss rush.
• The Ender Dragon has its designed 3,000 health. It used to appear with 500 health out of a maximum of 7,500.
• The Dragon's Eye is not lost when no player is in the dimension as the dragon dies: it drops where the dragon died.
• Minibosses follow the boss rules. Twenty-one minibosses and Ars Nouveau's Wilden Chimera are no longer beheaded by Vorpal. Seventeen of the minibosses and the Chimera no longer get the ordinary-mob health bonus on top of their own (Gundalf 3,500 to 1,500, the Chimera 10,500 to 4,500 at the Overworld's starting difficulty). They still grow with the difficulty of where you meet them.

October 2026: Armor follows its designed curve

• Armor now has the diminishing returns it was designed with in June. That curve never took effect: a mistake in the setting made the game fall back to the armor mod's default. From the next server restart armor blocks about 24% of a hit at 10 armor, 35% at 20, 51% at 50, 63% at 100 and 77% at 200, up to a cap of 95%.
• Ordinary mobs hurt more. Until now armor blocked most of a small hit (67% at 20 armor, 91% at 100) and much less of a big one. Now it blocks the same share of every hit, so a small hit gets through about twice as hard at 20 armor and four times as hard at 100.
• The biggest boss hits are blocked a little better than before, because the old default let large hits punch through armor. Mid-sized hits change little.
• Your gear is unchanged. Armor points from equipment, enchantments, classes and races are what they were; only how many points block how much has changed.

October 2026: The server launcher can carry a world refresh out

• The launcher can now reset the parts of the world a refresh plan marks, and nothing else. The plan is the map made earlier: beds, claims, the spawn area, used waystones and lived-in chunks are kept exactly as they are; the rest is taken out so Minecraft generates it again when somebody goes there. Nothing has been regenerated on the test server: the tool exists, but it has not been run.
• It only runs on the server operator's typed go-ahead, with the server stopped, after working the plan out again from the world as it is. If the world changed since the plan was looked at, nothing happens and the difference is shown.
• It takes a checked backup first and keeps everything it removes. A run that is undone before the server starts again gives the world back exactly as it was. It is refused outright if a player last logged out in an area that would be reset.
• World backups now carry the server's own files too (who may join, the server's own settings), so a lost server can be rebuilt from a backup alone.

October 2026: The Abyss's bosses carry the Abyssal artifacts

• Twelve Abyss-themed Celestial Artifacts now drop from the three Abyss bosses. They were written for Abyss treasure chests, and The Abyss has none that roll loot. The Elder (20%) and The Roka (50%) drop one of Demon Curse, Twisted Scabbard, Catastrophe Scroll, Abyss Will Badge or Lock of Abyss. Nightblade always drops one of Abyss Core, Demon Heart, Twisted Heart, Twisted Scroll, Heart of Revenge, Chaotic Etching or Nihility Etching. Each of the three can also drop an enchanted book (10%, levels 20 to 30). The rates are provisional and may be tuned.
• Where to find them. The Elder roams Blue Mountain and The Roka Blue Jungle. Nightblade is summoned at a Night Altar: light its eight upper pillars with Soul Hearts (Soul Guards drop them only to a Looting weapon), then use an Eye of Abyss on the altar.
• Nothing was taken away. The artifacts keep their chest sources in the other dimensions.

October 2026: The test server has a whitelist

• Only listed players can join the test server. To be added, send the server operator your exact in-game name, capitals included. If you see "You are not white-listed on this server!", your name is not on the list yet or was entered with different capitals. Nothing changes for players who are already listed: characters, claims and quests are untouched.

October 2026: Loot check (empty chests filled, luck skills pay out properly)

• Chests that were always empty now hold loot. A handful of structures pointed some of their chests at loot that did not exist: the underground floors of the sandstone Battle Tower (48 chests), and a few chests in abandoned houses, pillager fortresses, the labyrinth, bandit towers and three village workshops. They now roll the loot their structure was meant to give. Chests you have already opened stay as they are.
• Themed treasure reaches the places it was written for. The chest at the top of a Structory tower, the Twilight Forest Lich Tower and the Undergarden catacombs now carry their themed artifact pool and enchanted book, and the Overworld villages added by Repurposed Structures follow the same village loot rules as every other village.
• The Dragon's Eye goes straight to whoever kills the Ender Dragon instead of dropping where the dragon dies (often over the void). If the final blow has no owner (a bed or an End Crystal), the nearest player in the End receives it.
• Treasure Sense, Motherlode and Fortune's Favor are true extra rolls. A Treasure Sense proc is a real second kill (Looting counts, player-only drops included); Motherlode and Fortune's Favor are real extra breaks with the tool in your hand (Fortune and Silk Touch count). Blocks that hold items, such as shulker boxes, never trigger them.
• The Infested Laboratory no longer hands out Tier 3 progression tokens, since it stands in the Overworld.
• Avocado trees give something again. Their leaves dropped nothing at all. They now drop saplings, the odd avocado and sticks, and shears or Silk Touch collect the leaves themselves.
• Two more drops that never happened. Bookshelves in the Citadel can hold its lore tomes, and a placed Exotic Roll Medley gives itself back when broken untouched (a bowl once it has been eaten from).
• Three mobs have their drops back. The Abyss's End Spider drops an Icora Nugget and its Slime Spider slime balls (both only when killed with a Looting weapon, like the Abyss's other spiders), and the boss of the Mercury arena drops raw iron, magma cream and blaze rods.

October 2026: Server owners can tune world generation from the launcher

• The server launcher's Customizer tab has a Worldgen settings page. Biome layout, terrain shape and ore generation (TerraBlender, Biomes O' Plenty, Tectonic, Mekanism, Large Ore Deposits, Thermal, Create and more) are listed setting by setting, each with the mod's own description and allowed range, instead of being spread over dozens of config files.
• A server's changes are its own and survive pack updates. They are kept apart from the pack's files and put back before every server start. Any setting can be returned to the pack's value with one click. Nothing changes for players or for other servers unless a server's owner changes something.
• New terrain only. These settings shape chunks as they are generated; land that already exists stays as it is until it is regenerated.
• Ordinary ore veins included. Iron, copper, ancient debris, zinc and the Thermal ores (tin, lead, silver, nickel) can be tuned there as well: veins per chunk and the height band of each.

October 2026: Mapping what a world refresh would keep

• The server launcher can now work out which parts of the world are "somebody's". Before any terrain is ever regenerated (for example to bring in new world generation), the launcher maps what must be kept: every player's bed chunk and the chunks around it, chunks claimed in Open Parties and Claims, the area around world spawn, waystones a player has activated or placed, and chunks players have spent real time in. The launcher window has a new Customizer tab for it: the rules are set on screen and the result is shown as totals, warnings and a map, with anything questionable flagged, such as a lived-in chunk that no rule protects.
• This step changes nothing. It only reads the world, and it can run while the server is up. Regenerating chunks is a separate, later step that will only run from an approved plan, after a fresh backup.

October 2026: The server backs its world up again

• World backups are back, twice a day. The dedicated server's backup mod (FastBack) never worked there and gave no sign of it (it needs a tool the server machine doesn't have), so the world had gone without backups since April. The server launcher now takes them itself: every 12 hours, during a restart it was already making, it zips the whole world, checks the zip by reading it back, and keeps the newest two. This adds no restarts, and no backup is taken while anyone could be mid-save.
• A second copy now lives off the server. The backups used to sit on the same disk as the world they protect. A separate computer now fetches the newest two every two hours and checks each copy against the launcher's checksum before keeping it, so losing the server's disk no longer means losing the backups too.
• FastBack is removed from the pack on both sides. It did nothing on the server and was never part of singleplayer saves unless you set it up yourself; your worlds are untouched.

October 2026: The Abyss now hits like a Tier 3 dimension

• Abyss mobs no longer scale like Overworld mobs. A wrong dimension name in the difficulty settings meant The Abyss silently fell back to the Tier 1 curve. It now runs the intended Tier 3 curve (mobs start at 300% and ramp to 450%, instead of 150% to 300%), and its Frost World side-dimension joins it. Only newly spawned mobs are affected.
• Deep Aether scales with the Aether. Deep Aether is not a separate dimension (its biomes generate inside the Aether), so its ordinary mobs follow the Aether's Tier 2 curve. The difficulty tables used to list it under Tier 4, which never took effect; the documentation now matches the game. Its bosses and materials remain Tier 4 content.
• The Boss Compass now points to the two Deep Aether bosses. For Eye of the Storm and Virtue it used to show a dimension name that does not exist instead of the direction arrow.

August 2026: One curated keybind layout for the whole pack

• Every important function now has its own working default key. With ~450 mods, dozens of actions shipped fighting over the same buttons (spell casting vs. armor abilities on V, backpack vs. toolbelt on B, class powers vs. curios vs. voice chat on G, quests vs. death history on U, jetpack vs. Terramity abilities on H, ...), and several gameplay abilities shipped with no key at all, including the secondary Origin power for Demi-God, Fallen Angel, Kirin, and Ryu, and the jetpack engine toggle. The pack default is now one deconflicted layout, verified to have zero unintended key conflicts. See the new Controls page for the full layout.
• The layout is delivered by the new Default Options mod (client-side). Fresh installs get it automatically. For existing players, the Controls → Key Binds → Reset Keys button now resets to the pack layout instead of the raw mod defaults, and leaves your graphics and sound settings untouched. Your own rebinds are never overwritten unless you ask.
• Your local settings now stay yours. A leftover from early development meant the dev-instance sync could overwrite options.txt (keybinds + graphics) on launch; following the client-sync protocol, it no longer touches player settings.
• The in-game Codex's keybind references show your live bindings, so the book always matches your actual keys.

June 2026: Three new specialist mage classes, the Trinity casters

• Elemental, Blessed, and Corrupted join the class roster as magic specialists, the counterpart to the Archmage's generalist. The Archmage is decent at every school of magic; each Trinity mage is exceptional at three related schools and brings little to the rest (depth over breadth):
  • Elemental (Stormcaller): fire, ice, lightning. The glass-cannon artillery mage, with the highest burst and the lowest survivability.
  • Blessed (Hierophant): holy, nature, evocation. The sustain and support crusader: hardier, with the best healing, and strong against undead and the Corrupted.
  • Corrupted (Hollow): blood, ender, eldritch. The attrition drain-mage: it sustains itself through lifesteal and resists the elements, but is vulnerable to holy.
• The three form a rock-paper-scissors triangle through their resistances (Blessed beats Corrupted beats Elemental beats Blessed). Each beats the Archmage within its three schools and falls behind across the other six. Each starts with a themed spell kit. (This is the first phase: their signature active abilities and the offensive side of the triangle arrive in a follow-up.)

June 2026: Glass-cannon armor maluses now scale instead of wiping robe builds

• T1 damage softener trimmed from -30% to -15%. The early Overworld is meant to be punishing for the low-HP mage origin stacks (glass cannons earn their late-game ceiling by being fragile early). The +30% damage bump now carries that intent, so the softener is cut to a thin margin against one-shots instead of a comfort cushion.
• Incoming damage raised +30% at every tier. A new damage-only setting in the difficulty mod makes mobs hit 30% harder across all four tiers (and at every point on the time curve); their health, armor, and speed are unchanged. This raises the threat in advance, to match the class and race power that the progression fix below restored.
• Class/race progressions apply now. A command-syntax mismatch had silently disabled most attribute-based class and race bonuses since they were written (Witch of Ink defense ladder, Berserker Trance, Orc Bloodlust, Wanderer bonuses, Slimebodied DR, the whole Artificial Construct ladder, and the caster mana-regen/cooldown sync). Each now runs on a working mechanism. Damage-side effects were never affected.
• Workbench labels completed. The 407 missing translation entries are filled. Honing schematics now show themed names (Flow, Potency, Bulwark, ...) with tier numerals instead of raw IDs, and wand parts and material categories have proper labels.
• Carrot/potato harvest yield fixed. Right-click (hoe) harvesting took the crop's own replant cost out of a reduced drop pool, netting zero. The drops are retuned so every harvest method nets the designed yield.
• 166 dead workbench material choices now work. Newer materials (boss metals, Aether alloys, wools, fibres, hides) could be selected in reforged armor, wand and spellbook schematics but silently did nothing. They now have real stats (scaled from material grade) and repair recipes. The numbers are a conservative first pass; expect tuning.
• Armor sets now count every piece. A modifier-identity collision in the modular-armor pipeline meant every equipped reforged piece silently replaced the previous one's armor contribution, so a full set gave roughly one piece's worth (tooltips, which render per item, always looked right). Each slot now counts separately, and equipped armor matches your tooltip sum before percentages.
• Class/race armor penalties converted from flat to percentage. The Archmage's armor malus was a flat -4 armor / -2 toughness, written when a typical kit carried ~20 vanilla armor (about -20%). Against today's Tetra robe builds (4-8 armor total), the same flat number erased the entire armor value; that was the "my robes read 0.5 armor" report. The Archmage is now -20% armor & toughness, the Ranger -15% armor, and the Elf race's frailty -10% toughness. Each applies to your final armor, so the penalty scales with what you wear and can never zero a build. The Codex class pages are updated to match.
• Glass-cannon equipment-HP halving now halves. A feedback loop in the penalty calculation meant Ranger, Archmage and Void Summoner equipment HP was reduced by only about a third instead of the designed half, and the penalty could stay after the gear was removed. Both are fixed, and Void Summoners are now measured against their correct base HP.
• New diagnostic: /icraft armormods. Any player can list every live modifier on their armor and toughness (including the ones items and powers apply invisibly), which helps report armor problems precisely.

June 2026: Loot-leak audit, dead-pack revival, and sync hardening

• Stray loot fixed at the source. Three separate mechanisms were leaking high-tier items onto things that shouldn't carry them. Passive animals no longer drop boss-fragment cores, hostile-mob projectile and beam entities are no longer equipped with gear or scaled, and script-equipped mob gear no longer drops on death. The over-broad death-loot rule was replaced with a handler limited to monsters.
• Two dead datapacks revived. The stone-tag fixer and the infinite-ham blocker were silently rejected because of a packaging error (a missing or misplaced pack manifest). Both load and do their jobs again.
• Affix and gem repairs. Several Apotheosis status-effect affixes had a malformed value shape and never loaded. Two custom gems (Guardian, Intelligent) were fully disabled by a duplicate-slot conflict. The magic-weapon affix pool came out empty because a shadowing override dropped the relevant weapon types. All of these are repaired.
• Broken tag and ID cleanup. A sweep of armor, entity and biome tags and a handful of loot and recipe scripts fixed dozens of references to renamed, mistyped, or uninstalled-mod items, so they no longer cause errors at load.
• Script error fixes. The boss-bonfire tick error, several Create/Industrial-Foregoing recipe failures, and a non-existent loot id were corrected.
• PacketFixer removed, then restored the same day. It looked redundant alongside Connectivity, but its string-length patch turned out to be needed: without it, large server payloads broke client logins against a vanilla 32k string cap. It is back in the pack, and the harmless overlap warnings with Connectivity return with it.
• Ash blacklist. Common passive mobs are now excluded from a Supplementaries ash interaction through a tag override (the config flag for it did nothing).
• Stranded-item janitor. A periodic cleanup removes stray marker items left behind by the boss-wave randomizer.
• Sync failures are visible. After a failed update the launcher no longer starts a stale pack without saying so: an in-game warning appears if the pack didn't sync, and a new-machine setup guide documents the correct install layout.
• Scorching (formerly Ignition) affix reworked. It was accidentally giving the target fire resistance. It now marks struck enemies with a timed fire vulnerability that amplifies all fire damage they take, scaling with affix rarity.
• MekaSuit Mk2 rebuilt. The Mk2 is now an in-place upgrade of the real MekaSuit: installed modules, stored energy, enchantments, and affixes all survive the craft, and the upgraded suit has bonus base armor on top of full module support. (The old version was a non-functional placeholder that destroyed installed modules. If you crafted one, ask an admin for a replacement.)
• Mekanism rebalance (engineering stack, ERA 4). Fusion now generates 1.5x and fission 1.25x energy per fuel, so big reactors pay off against the pack's 2.5x machine power costs. Radiation is disabled (it could semi-permanently ruin a base). An overdamaged fission reactor now shuts itself down until it cools instead of melting down, which is still dangerous but always recoverable. Fusion, antimatter/SPS, the Digital Miner, and ultimate-tier facilities are now Tier 4; intermediate materials stay open. The 5x ore chain is untouched, as the reward for reaching Tier 3 and building the infrastructure.
• Antimatter is now worth making. The top Mythic Forge catalysts (IV and V) each require an Antimatter Pellet, the MekaSuit Mk2 upgrade consumes one per piece, and pellets can be exchanged for Codex progression tokens, which makes the SPS the endgame power sink it was always meant to be.
• Biofuel rework. All crops now crush into roughly a quarter of the biofuel they used to, so meaningful ethylene power needs automated farming. (Bio-generator burn values and the ethylene chain itself are unchanged.)
• Worldgen rebalance (lands with the world reset). The world gets flatter and friendlier: noticeably more plains, lush deserts and volcanic biomes retired (scrubland and wastes remain), mountains about a quarter lower and smoother overall, and Cherry River Valley trimmed very slightly (still common). Towers of the Wild appear more often, Apotheosis tome towers slightly less often. On the tome-tower loot: the long-standing "chests under-fill" issue was traced to a book-stripping bug that had already been removed, and the arcane-essence and scroll additions have been live since they shipped, so a fresh world shows it all working.
• Tier-gating regression fixed (fresh-world impact). A legacy gating script re-enabled in early June brought back whole-mod locks (Thermal, Ars Nouveau, Occultism, Forbidden & Arcanus) on top of the current per-item design. Veterans never noticed (they were already high-tier), but fresh-world players hit it immediately: starter spellbooks and Thermal seeds could not be picked up at Tier 1. The legacy script set is retired again, and gating follows the curated per-item lists. (Server operators: the stale-file cleanup is required for this to take effect.)
• Pigs no longer drop boss loot. The long-running mystery of boss weapons, reforging tokens, waystone cores, and runes appearing on ordinary pigs is traced and fixed. The entity registry silently substitutes a pig for any misspelled or wrong-mod boss id in the loot system, and eight such ids had accumulated. All are corrected or removed, and a boot-time validator now reports any future unresolvable id loudly instead of letting it leak. (The Gaia Guardian's drops were never affected: its unusual internal name is correct.)
• XP collection fixed (was gamebreaking). Since the Linear Experience mod shipped, XP and levels were accruing on the server, but the client bar never updated (the mod's interception bypassed the only field the game watches to re-send XP to your screen). Picking up orbs now visibly fills the bar and levels again.
• The spawn village is now a safe haven. Hostiles can no longer spawn within the spawn village, and any that wander in are silently removed (with no drops and no XP, so the zone can't be farmed). In practice, raids cannot run inside the protected radius.
• Waystone Cores re-specced. They are now a consistent uncommon (20%) drop across all twelve bosses, instead of either guaranteed or a coin flip.
• Meat drops doubled. All base meat from the standard animals (pig, cow, mooshroom, chicken, sheep, rabbit, cod, salmon, hoglin) now drops at twice the base rate, raw and cooked, with Looting stacking on top. Food and cooking are central to the pack, and the economy now reflects that.
• Last pig-loot straggler fixed. One more misspelled mob id (an ant "queen", which is a caste, not an entity) was feeding Nature Runes to pigs. The drop moved to the real ant at a much lower rate.
• Stone is mineable again (critical fix). A mod was overwriting the "breakable by pickaxe" block list and wiping plain stone out of it, which left stone practically unbreakable. The previous datapack patch for this had stopped applying without any sign. The fix now sits at a layer that always wins regardless of mod load order, so it can't silently break again.
• Cherry River Valley gets its rivers back. The valley biome's climate claim was unintentionally swallowing the band where the game carves rivers, so the "river valley" generated without rivers. The claim now splits around the river band (rivers flow through valleys again, and through mountain valleys too), and the valley's range extends slightly toward the coast, so more of them border lakes and seas. This applies to newly generated terrain and lands fully with the world reset.
• Spellbook stat tooltips cleaned up. Modular spell books showed their magic stats twice: once correctly as percentages and once as redundant raw decimals (e.g. +0.05). The decimal lines are gone, and stats now show only as percentages.
• Spellbook page materials fixed. Applying Deathskin (and other animal-hide materials) to a spell book's pages did nothing, because the pages slot was missing those material options. All four hide materials now apply correctly.
• Three magic enchants now work. Spell Echo, Mana Siphon, and Resonance could be obtained but did nothing. Resonance now extends your beneficial potion durations (+50% per level) while you hold the book; Mana Siphon returns a slice of your spell damage as mana (capped so it can't be farmed); Spell Echo gives each cast a chance to cost no mana, on a short cooldown. Their tooltips now describe the real effect.
• Spellbooks removed from village chests. Copper and novice spellbooks appeared in roughly one of eight village chests (several per village), which trivialized a mage start that the class starter kits already provide. Village chests still carry ink and source gems at unchanged rates; spellbooks now come from your class kit, exploration loot, and progression.
• Priest tower in every village (and always at spawn). The Iron's Spells priest tower (inscription table, priest villager) used to be roughly a coin flip per village. Its weight is now raised across all village styles (~85%+ of villages, still at most one each), and the starting village is guaranteed one: if the spawn village didn't roll a tower naturally, one is placed at the village edge on first load. Existing worlds get one on their next boot.
• Lovely Pieces curation pass. The accessory mod is now fully loot-driven: all crafting recipes are removed, and every item is tier-scoped into exploration loot (T1 dungeon chests, T2 progression-dimension chests, T3 nether-tier dimensions plus ancient cities and bastions, Gambler set pieces hunted across T3). The six legendary accessories are exclusive 10% drops on tier-matched bosses, with two hosts each: the Blasphemous Contract comes from the Lich or the Sun Spirit, the Dragon Heart from the Hydra or the Eye of the Storm, and so on. Our fork also cuts the FPS-scaled damage eye (non-deterministic and hardware-biased), the heartrate HUD, and the floating damage-number particles. All drop rates are provisional.
• Iridescent Lovely Pieces (new custom mod, fork intake). A charm-focused accessory mod joins the pack as a managed fork: ~60 new curios (15 boots, rings, amulets, quivers, gadgets, a dark "legendary" tier with real tradeoffs) plus the Gambler set with its chip-gambling crit system. Upstream's game-breaking bug (a damage attribute that silently multiplied all unarmed and melee player damage to zero) is fixed in our build, the legendary auto-grant is off, and the floating damage-number particles it ships can be switched off in the config. Items are currently craftable; tier-gating and slot-row curation are the next pass. Because curios are now affixable, these accessories join the affix lane automatically.
• Curios become affixable and socketable (curio affix lane). Two new mods land together. Apothic Curios bridges Apotheosis onto curios: every curio slot (rings, necklaces, charms, belts, backs, bracelets, spellstones, spellbooks, and more) can now roll affixes and gem sockets. Caster Curios Bonus adds 12 build-around caster accessories (cooldown-from-spell-power, mana overflow casting, lifesteal sharing, a temporary free-casting overdrive, and more), found in structure loot such as ancient cities and bastions. A 14-affix curio pool ships with it (offense on rings/bracelets/hands, defense on necklaces/bodies/backs/heads, utility on charms/belts/feet, caster stats on spellbooks), and all 14 custom gems gained a curio bonus matching their school or martial identity. Curios found in chests can roll pre-affixed from Tier 1, so players meet the system early. All numbers are provisional until a feel pass.
• Mage curios join the village pool. Six caster-oriented curios (mana, cooldown, and cast-time rings, a concentration amulet, a mana-regen amulet, and a spell-discount ring) now roll in village chests alongside the martial set. The total village curio supply is unchanged: the pool is redistributed, and mage items are now about a third of artifact rolls.
• Engineering questline. A new 14-quest Heracles line walks through the whole engineering lane: Create ore-doubling at Tier 1, Thermal infrastructure at Tier 2, the Mekanism 5x chain at Tier 3, and fusion and your first antimatter at Tier 4. It comes with Codex token rewards and a matching "Engineering Lane" Codex chapter. Also fixed: the MekaSuit Mk2 recipes referenced a nonexistent ingot id and were silently uncraftable.

May 2026: Modular gear, unified magic, and the bespoke difficulty engine

• Iridescent Tetra Expansion: the modular-armor (Iridescent Reforging) and modular-spell-book (Iridescent Modular Spells) systems were bundled into a single custom mod, with full honing progression for armor, wands, and spell books.
• Modded metals as Tetra materials: dozens of modded ores and special materials (Twilight Forest, Blue Skies, Undergarden, Forbidden & Arcanus, Abyss, Botania cloths, and more) were wired into the Tetra crafting system, with a consistent hammer-tier ladder.
• Unified mana pool: Ars Nouveau and Iron's Spells & Spellbooks now share one mana pool, with gem buffs and elemental Apotheosis gems feeding school-specific spell power.
• Crit system unified: all critical-hit sources were converted to a single additive number, with Vorpal reworked and a dedicated magic-weapon enchant set.
• Bespoke difficulty engine: a custom time-and-dimension-based scaling mod (iridescent_difficulty) replaced ScalingMobs, Improved Mobs, and Azukaar's Fair Difficulty.
• Magic progression: Dan's Magic and Simple Staves wands were integrated as a Tier 1 to 4 mage progression and folded into the modular wand system, and drop-wand tiers were added.
• Origin progression rework: capstone abilities and in-game status commands for progression origins (Witch of Ink, Artificial Construct).
• Armor weight system + Battlemage rework: explicit light/medium/heavy armor tagging, with a toughness trade-off for light armor.
• Loot rebalances: per-structure themed loot pools for the major structures, a village food and seed rebalance, a Celestial Artifacts re-audit, and several over-aggressive mod-loot strips.
• Iridescent Aptitudes: the JustLeveling fork expanded with a five-tier skill-node pass across all eight aptitudes.

April 2026: Custom mods, the Codex, and the loot overhaul

• Iridescent Reforging shipped: a Tetra-style modular-armor extension with per-archetype modules, set bonuses, skins, and a workbench-driven conversion path.
• Iridescent Modular Spells completed: modular spell books spanning Iron's Spells and Ars Nouveau, integrated with the Tetra workbench.
• Iridescent Codex shipped as a proper Forge content mod: the in-game guidebook documenting the progression and systems.
• Inert-on-break: a custom durability coremod, so gear goes inert at near-zero durability instead of being destroyed.
• Class Artifacts (Epic RPG) integrated as a drops-only, tier-gated system.
• Loot system overhaul: tiered artifact rates, village chest sanitization, battle-tower loot, and finalized per-tier drop rates.
• Mod roster changes: the FTB suite was removed in favor of FastBack (backups), Open Parties and Claims (chunk claiming), and LiteMiner + Amber (veinmining); Champions Unofficial was removed for Majrusz's Progressive Difficulty; Tetra was rolled back to a stable version.
• Origins expansion: additional custom races and origins, a JustLeveling redesign, and the Heracles quest system.
• Combat tuning: early-game damage retuned so full-iron players aren't one-shot; Ars Nouveau glyphs added to tiered loot.
• Worldgen: river and water generation restored and tuned; custom cherry biomes brought online.

March 2026: Foundations (progression, dimensions, and systems)

• Token economy: the four-lane Codex progression system (Engineering · Magic · Exploration · Combat) that gates tiers, dimensions, and recipes.
• Dimension/location-based boss tiering: bosses and their drops mapped onto the tier ladder by where they're found.
• Three-prompt character creation: Origin → Race → Class selection on first join, with rebalanced vanilla origins plus custom races and classes.
• Ore re-homing: endgame ores (Aethersteel and others) re-gated behind tier unlocks, appearing as plain stone until the player reaches the right tier.
• Dimension integration & balance: Blue Skies, The Undergarden, The Aether, and The Abyss received balance passes and their own dimension mechanics; the End was reworked into an "explore first, fight the dragon last" gate.
• Tetra modded materials: the first datapack pass adding modded metals to Tetra, with a diamond hammer tier.
• Tech & farming balance: a Mekanism balance overhaul (generator nerfs, higher RF costs, recipe gating), a food-system overhaul, and Farmer's Delight cooking conversions.
• Combat systems: the full Apotheosis affix set, working skill-tree effects, and per-dimension elite-mob affix scaling.
• Distribution: the dedicated-server distribution and the client installer were built out.
• Ad Astra integration begun as post-Tier-4 space content (ongoing).

Origins

The pack began from a master design document covering progression, classes, dimensions, loot, and combat. Implementation started in March 2026; the systems above were built out from that foundation.

Related pages

• Master Design Document: current design intent
• Master Design Appendix: numerical reference (tiers, materials, boss drops)
• Known Issues: current bugs and recent fixes