Aquatic Craft - Overworld Edition

Description:

Upon semi-popular request, I've squished Aquatic Craft's Aquatic dimension into the Overworld. This mod contains the vast majority of the original mod's features, with numerous tweaks and very few things outright removed- in order to try and fit into the Overworld as best it can. You can read at length about the original mod and many of its features on its Curse Forge page.

In short, however, this mod adds 9 oceanic biomes to the Overworld, close to one hundred blocks, hundreds of items, over 120 mobs, over a dozen armor sets, tool sets, ranged weapons, and off-hand 'trinkets', and nineteen bosses (four of which are mini-bosses).

Please note that, much like the original Aquatic Craft, models and animations broke when updating from 1.15/1.16 to 1.17/1.18 onward. All models have long since been fixed, but the 1.20.1 version is still missing mob animations due to the time needed to go through all of the models, create new animations, and update each version of Aquatic Craft with them.
Also, due to post-Caves & Cliffs Minecraft world gen, Aquatic Craft's custom biomes generate a little strangely in the 1.20.1 version. This is due to some of Aquatic Craft's biomes essentially fighting with, and overlapping vanilla biomes. Most notably with the Abyssal Depths and Kelp Forest biomes. Everything functions correctly; it just doesn't look great sometimes!

July 24, 2026 edit:

For this 1.20.1 Overworld Edition exclusively, in order to counter the buggy biome generation, I've added a 'biome wand'- which can be used to convert certain Vanilla Minecraft biomes into Aquatic Craft ones. Any biome below y=0 can also be converted into the Abyssal Depths. This wand is given to players by default, but may also be crafted using one stick and one kelp.
Different ocean, jungle, stony, desert, and badland biomes may be converted! Think of which Vanilla biomes best suit those from Aquatic Craft.

Differences from the original mod:

• Most notably, the Aquatic dimension has been removed! The portal block is still craftable but is now purely cosmetic.
• The Aquatic Void dimension remains in the 1.16.5 version, but I intend to try and remove it in later versions and fit its content into the space below y=0 in the Overworld. (I've yet to try and see how well this will work, but I'm decently confident that it will, given my experience with unrelated biome tests in post-Caves & Cliffs Minecraft.)
• Due to the sea level in the Overworld, the modded biomes are much shallower in depth and don't have as much variety in height.
• Added custom 'bucket of aquatic mob' items for numerous mobs. Suitable custom mobs (just about every small mob) can be picked up with an empty bucket, bucket of water, or bucket of brine fluid, and placed back down again. Mobs placed this way will not despawn. (However, due to the nature of Hot Puffers changing size by spawning new mobs in their place, they will despawn.)
• Added visually-identical variants of soft stone, hardened stone, aquatic gravel, and algae gravel to help with some block generation issues. The alternate gravel intentionally generates in the Kelp Forest biome without gravity properties. This prevents masses of gravel falling into ravines and hundreds of kelp blocks from breaking, lagging the game.
• The depths of the soft, hardened, dark, and hadal stone layers have been adjusted to suit the height of the Overworld.
• The generation rates for custom ore have been adjusted to better suit the new height ranges that they generate in.
• Hardened prismarine ore and hardened redstone ore now generate in the Bright Reef and Unrelenting Expanse biomes respectively.
• Very sparse sea grass now generates in the Algid Brine biome.
• Large pumice rock structures now generate in the Sea Mount biome.
• Clutches of turtle eggs now generate in vanilla Beach biomes.
• Various small adjustments- such as changing mob spawn weights or the rate certain mobs automatically float or sink while in water.
• 'Blinding Depth' now only affects players within the four Aquatic Void dimension biomes. It no longer affects players simply for being close to the bottom of the world.
• 'Crushing Depths' no longer functions as an environmental hazard and players no longer require armor points in order to dive deeper without taking damage- as the Overworld's oceans are relatively shallow. The effect still exists, however, and is still inflicted by the activated Archaic Bludgeon weapon.

Looking Forward:

A version for 1.20.1 is currently in the works, but will take a little while longer due to needing to edit about 100 more mod elements, create all of the 'bucket of aquatic mob' items, and then test the mod to ensure things work properly. The version of MCreator I use to work on the 1.20.1 version of the mod (MCreator 2023.4) takes a long time to save every change I make and I am unable to use the program while it is saving, so progress is slow.

The first 1.20.1 version has been released. I plan on adding 'bucket of aquatic mob' items to it soon. But for those of you who want 'early access', go ahead and generate your worlds! I'd like to be able to fix biome generation to make it look prettier, but working with post-Caves & Cliffs world gen is very much so unlike how things used to be. I can keep tinkering with it, but that'll be at a later date.

If anyone knows biome generation settings for custom oceanic biomes in the Overworld that wouldn't result in glitchy-looking generation, please let me know!

Looking at the popularity of each version of Aquatic Craft- going off of download count- I'm not inclined to create a 1.18.2, 1.19.2, or 1.19.4 version for this mod. I also have three other projects I would like to spend time on, so after 1.20.1 is released, you shouldn't expect further updates any time soon, for the original Aquatic Craft or for this Overworld Edition.

Edit as of version 2.5.0 here: I intend to update the 1.16.5 Overworld Edition next, followed by the main 1.20.1 version. Then I'll work on 1.19.2, cutting support for 1.19.4 and possibly for 1.18.2 too. I'd also like to spend time working on my other mod projects, but I DO intend to try and release 1.16.5 OE and 1.20.1 ME before then! 1.20.1 OE is a bigger can of worms due to the way biome generation works so it'll be saved for last.

Additionally, 2.5.0 marks the end of planned content updates for Aquatic Craft. I do still have some ideas floating around, but after updating other versions to 2.5.0, Aquatic Craft will more or less permanently be on the back burner compared to other projects. Aside from bug fixes, or maybe smaller additions, I'll be "done" with Aquatic Craft from here on out. That being said, I don't want the mod to die off in increasingly outdated versions of Minecraft and I do intend to try and keep the mod updated over time. Just don't expect any more content updates! (Animations? Ughhh... Not looking forward to it. x_x)

2.5.1 edit: I've updated the main 1.20.1 edition and 1.16.5 Overworld Edition with the features of 2.5.0 and did some extra tweaks and bug fixing for 2.5.1. Please continue to let me know if there are any notable bugs. I appreciate it. I'll be taking a break to work on other projects now, so I'll be holding off on 1.18 and 1.19 for now.

2.5.1.4 edit: Needless to say, but just to confirm, due to my extended hiatus, Minecraft continually updating, and the lack of a desire for 1.18 and 1.19 versions of the Overworld Edition, they have been scrapped. Furthermore, updating to future versions isn't "planned", but is still something I would like for the main mod in the unforeseeable future. Other projects continue taking priority.

Please feel free to mention any questions/concerns. Also feel free to play it in multiplayer, record playthroughs, add it to modpacks (hopefully there won't be any conflicts), and all that jazz!
I do give permission to create and upload custom, public modpacks containing this mod online, however that works! If there are any issues, I'm not to be held responsible for them, but in the event any conflicts arise,  I’ll see what I can do about it.
If you do record a let's play/playthrough, please provide a link to this mod's page on Curse Forge.

Enjoy!~