Ancient Ruins

Ancient Ruins 🏛️

Whispers of a forgotten civilization lie buried beneath the Overworld — if you know where to look.

Ancient Ruins is a data-driven Fabric mod for Minecraft 26.2 that adds 12 handcrafted ruins to the Overworld, each with its own biome, story, loot, and achievement. No new blocks, no code bloat — just pure worldgen, built on the latest 1.21.5+/26.x data pack standards.

🗺️ The 12 Ruins

Every ruin generates naturally at the same rarity as its vanilla counterpart — surface watchtowers that hug the terrain, vaults buried in the deep, and ruins resting on the ocean floor.

• Watchtower of the Plains — a lonely sentinel of the grasslands, meadows and savannas
• Desert Watchtower — deep in the desert sands
• Snowy Watchtower — snowy plains, ice spikes and frozen slopes
• Jungle Shrine — beneath the jungle canopy and dark forests
• Badlands Mine — the red earth of the badlands
• Mossy Maze — forest floors tangled in vines and moss
• Abandoned Campsite — a forgotten well in the woods
• Frost Altar — frozen peaks, an offering to the cold
• Coastal Outpost — beaches, shores and shallow oceans
• Swamp Ruins — a witch's hut in disguise, its chests full of brewing supplies
• Underground Vault — the deep dark and caverns far below (y = −40)
• Sunken Ruins — beneath every ocean, a drowned memory

🏆 Advancements

A dedicated "Ancient Ruins" advancement tab — unlocked automatically when you join a world — tracks your journey: enter each of the 12 ruins to earn its own exploration achievement.

💰 Themed Loot

Each ruin has a hand-crafted loot table using the latest data component syntax — enchanted gear, armor trims, even brewed potions:

• The Underground Vault guards diamonds, echo shards and a mace — occasionally a Protection III diamond chestplate with a copper trim
• The Swamp Ruins (witch-hut variant) rewards brewers with nether wart, blaze powder and ghast tears — sometimes a ready-made swiftness potion
• The Sunken Ruins may yield a heart of the sea
• The Watchtowers hide spyglasses, maps and enchanted books
• No meat in any chest — the ancients were picky eaters

⚙️ Requirements

• Minecraft 26.2
• Fabric Loader 0.19.3+
• Fabric API 0.156.0+26.2

🔧 Technical Highlights

• 100% data-driven — structures, advancements and loot tables need zero Java code
• Uses the latest 26.x formats: advancement / loot_table / structure (singular directories), entity_properties location predicates, set_components/set_enchantments loot functions
• Spawn rates tuned to match the vanilla ruins they stand alongside
• Open source under the MIT License

🔗 Links

• GitHub Repository
• Releases & changelog in the Releases tab

AI Generation Disclosure

Parts of this project were created with the assistance of AI tools: Code & Logic: Developed with the assistance of Claude Code / ChatGPT. Description & Documentation: Refined and formatted with AI assistance.

All generated code and assets have been reviewed, tested, and modified to ensure stability and compatibility with Minecraft 26.2 (Fabric).