Epoch

Epoch is a Fabric survival overhaul for Minecraft 1.20.1. Nights hit harder, the world reads your location and time, and equipment is built to be found, identified, socketed, and repaired. Progress from a flint shard and plant string through copper, steel, scarlet, and stellar tiers while the map, mobs, and loot all scale with where you stand.

Overview

In one playthrough you will:

• Start with primitive tools and faster hunger, not a full iron rush on day one.
• Watch mob level and danger rise in harsh biomes and deep underground.
• Craft along a milestone-gated weapon line (copper → … → stellar).
• Sleep through the night in a bed or sleeping bag, with real penalties if you stay exposed.
• Pick up loot tagged with quality, roll rarity, then identify, reforge, socket gems, repair, and complete armor sets.

Everything important is tunable in config/epoch.json. Operators can inspect live state with /epoch debug.

Early survival

Harvest rework

• Flint shard — 16-durability early tool. Strip logs and harvest plant string from grass without using the wrong vanilla tools.
• Knapping — Flint on stone crafts your first shard.
• Plant string — Dropped from grass; used in recipes (including the sleeping bag) and primitive repair. (WIP)

Hunger and the first nights

• Hunger drains faster than vanilla (configurable multiplier).
• Raw food applies a penalty when eaten.
• Animals flee farther from players, so hunting early game is less trivial.

Shelter and sleep

Between 13000–24000 tick time, Epoch scans your position:

• Sleeping bag — Crafted from wool and string; 5 uses, skips night toward 23500 with wake debuffs (portable, not a full bed replacement).
• Beds — Still work normally; sleeping clears exposure; a full night in a bed grants brief Regeneration.

Time, nights, and scaling

Epoch days

World time drives an epoch day counter (world time / 24000). As days pass:

• Hostile mobs gain HP and damage.
• Players can gain max health and damage scaling with progression.
• Zombie door breaking is gated before day 4.
• Ender Dragon and Wither use dedicated boss scaling tiers.

Mob visual scale can increase with difficulty (configurable).

Weapon progression

Custom tiers

Full tool and armor sets for:

Also: bone knife, vanilla iron/diamond/netherite with milestone gates, and gold sword/axe are buffed.

Crafting milestones

ProgressionSystem blocks recipes until you prove the previous tier (e.g. iron tools need copper crafted first; netherite needs steel; stellar needs end-game milestones). Wooden and stone sword/axe recipes are removed so progression follows Epoch’s line. (WIP)

World danger

Biome danger (1–100)

Every biome has a danger level and dispersion (variance per spawn). Datapacks in data/epoch/biome_danger/ override vanilla defaults; unknown modded biomes fall back to safe defaults.

• Underground bonus — Low sky light and block light add danger by depth (Y).
• Mob level — Stored once on spawn as epoch:mob_level; combines with epoch day scaling.
• Entry feedback — Crossing into harsh biomes shows a title/subtitle with danger bucket and color.

Per-world danger map

On first load, each world rolls a fixed danger map from the world seed (epoch:world_danger_map). The same seed gives the same regional threat profile.

Safe spawn

First join searches outward for a biome with generated danger < 15, teleports you there, sets spawn, and flags epoch:has_spawned.

Mob behavior tiers

From mob level, hostiles land in behavior tiers — Baseline → Aware → Aggressive → Lethal → Apex — with tier-specific mixins (skeleton bow/melee, creeper fuse/charged, spider poison, witch potions, enderman stare, zombie reinforcements, and more). Apex mobs show faint angry-villager particles.

Biome bosses

Rare spawns in biomes ≥ 50 danger at night or underground: 5× HP, 2.5× damage, gold [BOSS] name, boss bar, apex behaviors, weighted loot on death.

Visuals

• Nameplates — Lvl. N - <name> on hostiles (and passive farm animals at Lvl. 0); players and armor stands excluded.
• Health display — Colored current / max under the name within render range (toggle in config). (WIP)

With Patchouli installed, new players receive the Epoch Survival Guide once (epoch:has_received_guide). Pages mirror the mod wiki: harvest, hunger, shelter, biomes, loot, rarity, repair, gems, sets.

config/epoch.json groups tuning for shelter, weapons, biome danger, spawn safety, visuals, loot, rarity, gems, repair, sets, bosses, and debug commands.

Debug (OP 2+): /epoch debug help — shelter scan, mob/loot inspection, biome/world dumps, time presets, give sleeping bag, full phase reports.

Dependencies

Alpha notice

0.1.0-alpha — balance and visuals are still in flux. Report issues with steps to reproduce and your epoch.json if you changed defaults. Worlds from older namespaces (vanillarealm:* items) may need manual item replacement; new content uses the epoch: namespace.

MIT License · Forge/NeoForge ports not included in this release.