Sensory Abyss V3.4

The world takes a sense from you. Everything you learn after that is how to survive without it.

Official Links & Information

• Discord: https://discord.gg/nAKVcFCJR3

• Shader: the native lighting engine runs out-of-the-box as is

• Bug reports - https://bugs.sensoryabyss.workers.dev

A Note from the Developer

This mod is an evolving, living project. Visuals are continuously updated, bugs are actively hunted, and mechanics are fine-tuned as players explore the design space. I am wide open to criticism, suggestions, and brand-new ideas. If something feels off or unrewarding, let me know. If you want to see a specific feature, share it.

In the Discord, I share development roadmaps, run polls on upcoming features, and chat directly with players. If you design a feature you’d love to see in the mod, send me a DM! I regularly bring player concepts to community polls (kept anonymous by default to keep voting unbiased). If it passes, I’ll build it and give you full credit.

What This Mod Is

Sensory Abyss is a horror-flavored overhaul that inverts traditional survival progression. You don't start weak and grow into a hero—you start broken, permanently, in one specific physical way. The core gameplay loop revolves around building a specialized playstyle around that loss.

At character creation, you select an affliction. Whichever you choose, that sense is gone for good: Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, Taste, or—if you are seeking total punishment—All Five.

What replaces your missing sense is where the mod truly begins.

The Six Afflictions

1. The Blinded — Lost Sight

The world around you is reduced to The Pale, a luminous, bone-grey mist. There are no magical minimaps or sonar pings. To navigate, you must clear the milk: your footsteps forge temporary paths through the fog that slowly silt closed, loud noises send out a sudden clap of clarity, and holding G allows you to physically inhale and exhale to clear 4 to 22 blocks around you.

Your primary currency is Eyes. Striking an enemy marks them with Victim-Sight for 60 seconds. Tapping C (Gouge) rips their eyes out to be stored in your inventory or slotted into your Eye Wheel. Discover over 60 unique eye types—ranging from Warden eyes that track heat through walls, to Enderman eyes that locate strongholds, to Phantom eyes that pinpoint unslept players. Wear an eye long enough and it permanently roots into your skull. Boss eyes are claimed through dedicated Extraction Rituals, and all discoveries are tracked in your Vision Codex.

• Motecraft: Cast your sight outwards as physical motes of light—deployable lanterns, light-traps, steerable wandering eyes, locust swarms, or light-anchor teleports. The catch: every active mote drains your ambient brightness, leaving you dimmer.

• Shadowcraft: Send out physical manifestations of your self. Command walking copies, swap places with shadows through solid walls, deploy sentinels, or launch simultaneous strikes from every copy at once. Bright light burns your copies away.

2. The Deafened — Lost Hearing

You are not silent —you are deaf. Sound reaches you only by conduction, climbing up through whatever you are standing on: low, muffled, and directionless. Stone carries it, wool kills it, and water and open air are total blackouts. Underneath sits a ringing that rises in pitch as something unlit closes on you.

You carry two instruments—the Bone Drum (struck) and the Death Whistle (blown)—and the sheet you write is the spell. Real notation on a real staff: the melody's contour draws the geometry, and the mark on each note says what happens there. Playing it is the cast; its length is the casting time. How loud you play decides what matter answers you at all, and Vibration is your resource—a loud room closes your timing windows, so a bad place to play is a great place to perceive.

Six of the seven note marks are earned at Resonance Shrines, by playing them the shape they ask for. Songs fill a ten-slot Library per instrument; play one cleanly enough and you learn it By Heart, and the wheel fires it for you.

Dissonant: The discord. Built on wrong sound—deliberate near-misses, off-beats, distortion, inversion and the tritone. Even your mistakes are music.

Harmonic: The ensemble. Built on resonance and repetition—echoes, held notes, and sympathetic links that carry one charge into everything of its kind, and into your allies.

3. The Anosmiac — Lost Smell

You cannot smell toxins, miasmas, or spoiled air, so your body has transformed into a living forge for them.

Beyond managing debuffs, you utilize the Scar System (2–5 customizable slots). Surviving harmful status effects unlocks permanent Scars that convert those debuffs into resistances, immunities, or volatile "Bad Mixes," all managed within your Scar Ledger and Scar Codex.

• The Druid: Operates on Verdure (Nature's Health). Claim territory, channel spells directly into the earth using your soulbound Druidic Focus, and imbue wild seeds into specialized spell-seeds to alter the battlefield. Ultimate: The Land Answers.

• The Vial Alchemist: Extract debuffs you've personally survived at The Still to brew volatile, throwable, or drinkable vials. Store your concoctions in your Vial Belt (B) for instant access. Ultimate: Catastrophic Reaction.

4. The Numb — Lost Touch

You cannot feel pain, pressure, or temperature, so your body wears the world instead. Hold your absorb key over almost any block—vanilla or modded—and it plates onto you as visible armour. Nothing is gated: you can absorb obsidian on day one, and it will wreck you.

Everything comes from the block itself. Its real hardness and blast resistance become one density figure that sets your shell's strength, your unarmed damage, what you can mine, and what carrying it costs. Shell takes the hits and mends slowly out of combat; Stress is what your body can carry, and any ability used over capacity tears your own shell. Hold right-click with both hands empty to Brace, and a hit goes to the shell whole.

Eight kinds of matter—Verdant, Organic, Frost, Stone, Crystal, Infernal, Metal, Hollow—each carry their own strike and their own way of failing you. Progression is breadth: distinct blocks worn per type, and a block worn long enough is mastered for a token that permanently doubles a stat.

Monolith: The mason. Wear two blocks at once and bend the world out of them—raise a Boulder, Wall, Pillar or Cage from the block you wear, so a magma pillar burns and an ice wall is slick. What you raise stays raised, and you command it from across the room. Ultimate: Monolith.

Shardborn: The forge. Four weapons carried at once—Twin Shards, Fang Daggers, Greatmaul, Splinter Thrower—paired across two keys, no wheel to open. Draw your stance and the mouse belongs to the weapon: its ability lands your other weapon's attack at the point of impact. Ultimate: Shardstorm.

5. The Unfed — Lost Taste

Food provides no nourishment. You survive solely by devouring the creatures of the world. Devouring an entity builds Mastery for that species, which acts as both a spending currency and a progression track.

Spend Mastery to claim permanent passive stats (health, armor, damage, speed) or engage in a Gorge. Gorging wraps your body in the target creature, giving you its physical attributes, mining capabilities, and a dedicated attack moveset (V / Hold V). You can Degorge safely on command at any time.

• Evolution: Prove your dominance in Hunt Trials across the world (including dedicated Proving Grounds structures) to unlock up to 18 body-reshaping mutations. Scale your power through Glut, deploy husk decoys, or spawn a Twin to carry an alternate build. Ultimate: Apex Ascendant.

• The Vial Rite: Design custom undead minions at The Table by spending Mastery points, then seal them into self-replenishing ritual vials. Summon your armies anywhere using blood and chalk. Ultimate: The Dead March.

6. The Shattered — Lost Everything (getting reworked 3.5 forge/2.5 neo)

All five afflictions, at full intensity, all the time. Permanent blindness, deafness, numbness, anosmia, and hunger loss. You switch your active sense routing using dedicated keys (Z for Eye Rites, P for Instruments) to cycle which toolkit your action keys drive.

Shattered does not pick a standard subclass. Instead, its progression relies on fusing lost senses together through specialized Shattered-only augments and a global Resonance Attunement. At Level 20, Shattered caps with Convergence, weaving all five tracks into a single unified toolkit.

Note: In multiplayer, server admins can enable allow_classless_players in the config. This adds a Decline button at selection, allowing players to keep their five senses while remaining fully exposed to the world's horror director, seasons, lighting, and environmental hazards.

Universal Mechanics & Systems

Dual-Dial Difficulty Options

Difficulty is decoupled into two fully customizable settings:

1. Class-Pace Difficulty: Adjusts progression rate, resource costs, and class mechanics.

2. Mob Threat Level: Scales mob health, damage, detection range, and spawn counts independently across four tiers: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert.

Controls: Radial Wheels & The Abyss Hub

• Ability Wheel (Hold C): Radial menu for class abilities. Select and release to cast, or bind individual keys for power-user control.

• Spell Wheel (Hold R): Radial menu for active magic spells.

• Vial Belt (B): Quick-access menu for brewed alchemy.

• Instrument Stance (V): Raises active instruments for Deafened players or opens creature attack wheels for Unfed players.

• Abyss Hub (K): Opens your central management panel—character sheet, subclass mastery, journal, codexes, grimoire, pets, and party systems.

Built-in Native Lighting Engine

Sensory Abyss features a fully custom, built-in rendering engine active out-of-the-box (will be updated more over time):

• Dynamic HDR relighting and atmospheric color grading.

• Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO), custom shadow mapping, and volumetric light shafts.

• Integrated scene post-processing.

• Toggle between renderers under Video Settings (Automatic, Sensory Abyss, External) or via the /salighting command. (An optional companion shader pack is available on CurseForge for Oculus/Embeddium users but will no longer be getting updates so it will be missing features but it is still available).

Dynamic Seasons

The world operates on a 60-day seasonal cycle (~80 real-world hours per in-game year):

• Visual shifts: Foliage turns dynamically species-by-species, water crusts into ice, and off-biome snowfall occurs.

• Agricultural impact: Crop growth accelerates in Spring and slows down in Winter.

• Greenhouse mechanics: Placing glass ~8 blocks above crops creates a microclimate that acts one season warmer.

Corruption & Five-Sense Tuning

Corruption is divided across five distinct per-sense bars (Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, Taste), visible on your HUD and cycled using N. Deepening individual sense corruption unlocks raw power at the cost of severe physical afflictions. Level 8, 15, and 19 progression milestones allow you to further deepen specific sense tracks.

Light, Fuel, & Scent Countermeasures

Nothing provides infinite light or protection:

• Light Sources: Candles gutter and extinguish, campfires require stoking, jack-o'-lanterns burn out, and End Rods fizzle outside The End.

• The Ritual Brazier: Anchors bases and projects a customizable warding radius (15 to 60 blocks) using up to 3 warding slots.

• Scent Masking: Scent masking is a temporary utility window used to break actively pursued trails. Craft T1 consumables like Herbal Sachets, Mud Daubs, Cinder Pouches, and Sporecap Pouches to mask your presence.

Senses-Based Magic

Discover over 80 unique spells across five distinct sense schools through grimoires and physical world rituals (altars, pedestals, chalk marks):

• Sight: Radiance, shadow manipulation, spectral decoys, mirror images, and eclipses.

• Sound: Sonic shockwaves, resonance markers, banshee wails, and harmonic shields.

• Touch: Glacial frost, ice manipulation, frozen armor, and mobility anchors.

• Smell: Volatile toxins, spore clouds, pheromone manipulation, and corrosive sprays.

• Taste: Hemomancy—blood siphons, coagulation shields, crimson avatars, and needle storms.

Spells feature scalable VFX that visually intensify as you charge them, and can be Overclocked for higher output at greater cost.

The Horror Director & Maladies of the Mind

An active AI director monitors your stress levels, local time, and recent encounters, cycling through distinct phases:

• Psychological Audio: Spatial footsteps, opening doors, whispered names, and dead-silent zones route privately to specific players.

• Maladies of the Mind: Sanity is a dynamic system. Reaching zero sanity causes your character to collapse, waking up in bed with a permanent mental Scar. Experience 15 distinct Maladies—such as Hallucinosis, Nyctophobic Dread, The Shakes, Fixation, The Fog, or The Hollow—each altering visual grading and world perception.

• Active Hunters: Entities like The Stand Stalker (a shifting mannequin-forest hunter) actively track players through sound and scent profiles rather than standard mob sight ranges.

• Sleep & Dream Cycles: Bed upgrades (dreamcatchers, stuffed animals, ward totems, fragrant herbs) alter sleep quality. Poor sleep causes negative status effects to bleed into the following morning.

Sensory Simulation Layer

Underneath the class mechanics lies a physical simulation:

• Scent Trails: Decaying, six-tier smell trails (from trace to acrid) pool in chunks, mark heavily used armor, and attract predators. Wash off scent using cauldrons or break trails using smoke bombs.

• Acoustic Falloff: Five-tier sound profiles drive entity reactions. Diegetic breathing becomes audible when panicking. Mobs exhibit a Night Stare behavior—pausing and turning toward sounds before attacking.

• Item & Food Decay: Unprotected food rots in inventory and containers (spoilage pauses when servers are empty). Gear wears down through regular use, granting unique perks while increasing curse risks during enchanting.

Pets, Parties, & Progression

• Pets: Tame wolves or cats and assign them specialized pet classes with distinct augment trees, stat rolls, and behavioral AI (tracking by scent, holding Dread, or executing stealth kills). Dedicated commands override class AI.

• Party System: Built for seamless co-op and team PvP. Party members pass offensive spells through one another, while healing and support abilities prioritize allies automatically.

• 20-Level Progression Tree: Character growth includes stat choices (L2/7/12/17), subclass selection (L3), combat styles (L4), subclass passives (L5), augments (L6/10/14/18), corruption path deepens (L8/15/19), ability modifiers (L9), specialization paths (L11), ultimates (L13), mastery (L16), and late-game Transcendence rituals (L20).

Final Words

Pick a sense to lose. Learn to live without it.

Suggestions, bug reports, and feedback are always appreciated. Join the Discord to submit ideas, report issues, or follow active development updates!

Sensory Abyss V3.5

The world takes a sense from you. Everything you learn after that is how to survive without it.

Forge 1.20.1 is 3.5 and NeoForge 1.21.1 is 2.5. Both should have the same content.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/nAKVcFCJR3
• Bug reports: https://bugs.sensoryabyss.workers.dev
• Shaders: you don't need any. The mod's own lighting engine runs out of the box.

What This Mod Is

Sensory Abyss is a horror overhaul that turns survival progression upside down. You don't grow into a hero. You start broken, permanently, in one specific way: at character creation you lose your Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, Taste or Mind for good. The mod is about what you use in its place.

The Six Afflictions

The Blinded: Sight

The world is The Pale, a bone grey mist. Your footsteps clear paths through it that slowly close, loud noises clap it open, and holding G breathes it back around you. You live on Eyes. Mark an enemy, Gouge it, and slot its eyes into your Eye Wheel. There are 60+ kinds: Warden eyes see heat through walls, Enderman eyes find strongholds. Wear one long enough and it roots for good.

• Radient: cast your sight out as lanterns, light-traps, steerable eyes and swarms. Every mote you have out makes you dimmer.
• Shade: send out copies of yourself to walk, swap places with through walls, or strike from all at once. Bright light burns them away.

The Deafened: Sound

Sound reaches you only through what you stand on. Stone carries it, wool kills it, and in water or open air there is none. You carry the Bone Drum and the Death Whistle, and the music you write on a real staff is the spell: the melody draws the shape, and each note's mark says what happens there. How loud you play decides what answers.

• Dissonant: wrong notes on purpose. Even your mistakes are music.
• Harmonic: echoes and held notes that carry one charge into everything of its kind, and into your allies.

The Anosmiac: Smell

You can't smell toxins, so your body becomes a forge for them. A harmful effect you survive can leave a Scar that turns it into a resistance, an immunity or a volatile Bad Mix.

• Sporeweaver: claim ground and channel spells into the earth through your Druidic Focus. Ultimate: The Land Answers.
• Miasma Walker: brew debuffs you've survived into vials to throw or drink. Ultimate: Catastrophic Reaction.

The Numb: Touch

You can't feel pain, so you wear the world. Hold your absorb key over almost any block, vanilla or modded, and it plates onto you as armour. How hard the block is sets your shell, your strikes, what you can mine and what carrying it costs. Nothing is gated: you can wear obsidian on day one, but it will inconvenience you.

• Monolith: raise Boulders, Walls, Pillars and Cages from the block you wear. A magma pillar burns. Ultimate: Monolith.
• Shardborn: carry four weapons at once, each one's ability landing the other's attack. Ultimate: Shardstorm.

The Unfed: Taste

Food gives you nothing. You live by devouring creatures or eating their hearts, and each kind you eat builds Mastery. Spend it on permanent stats, or Gorge to put on a creature's body, with its strength, its digging and its attacks.

• Apex Hunter: win Hunt Trials to unlock up to 18 mutations. Ultimate: Apex Ascendant.
• Necromancer: design undead minions at The Table and summon them with blood and chalk. Ultimate: The Dead March.

The Shattered: Mind (rebuilt in 3.5)

What you lost is your mind. Every day it picks two afflictions and makes them true of you, and low sanity makes them worse. Ten gods are watching. The Shattered has no subclass. You build it through where you stand with each god.

• Belief and denial: each god has a number from −100 to +100. Do its work and it rises. Kill its herald or burn its materia and it falls. Both ends change you: believe in the Tide and you swim faster on less air, deny it far enough and you sink.
• Halls: pray in a god's hall to bind it and take its effigy. Once bound, the god gives you work and sends its herald, as a gift or as an attack.
• Ten abilities of the mind: Migraine, Intrusive Thought, Phantom Pain, Outburst, Déjà Vu, Compulsion, Suspicion, Amnesia, Hysteria and Projection. Drag gods onto them, and how far you believe or deny each god decides what it adds.
• Apotheosis (ultimate): for one minute, the god you love most and the god you hate most lend you their heralds' moves.
• Ascension: at ±100, a believer is led into the herald's domain for a trial and a blessing, and a denier is dragged in to kill a bigger herald.

The Ten Gods (new in 3.5)

Each god has a hall somewhere in the world, including in modded biomes, and a herald that roams its places. Every class gets something from a herald: eyes, a rare glyph, an essence, a material or a trail. Every class except the Shattered can also worship at a Shrine, taking a boon on its hits and paying a cost.

The World

• Horror Director: paces the dread around your stress and the hour, with footsteps, doors and whispered names that only you hear. Hunters track you by sound and scent, not sight.
• Sanity: hit zero and you wake in bed with a permanent Scar. There are 40 Maladies, including phobias, and each one changes how the world looks.
• Scent and noise: trails draw predators and wash off in a cauldron. Everything you do makes noise that mobs react to.
• Light runs out: candles gutter, campfires need stoking, and below Y=0 only strong light holds back the dark. A Ritual Brazier wards your base.
• Seasons: a 60-day year turns the leaves, freezes the water, and speeds up or slows down your crops.
• Bodies and food: bodies stay where they fall and rot. Drops are normal but you can butcher them at a table for more (drops for food will be removed eventually for full butcher mechanic), and store your food or it spoils.
• New in 3.5: seven armour and tool sets, two new ores, new crops, and quest lines for your class and the world.

Magic and Progression

• 80+ spells in five sense schools, learned from grimoires and rituals. Charge them up, or Overclock them for more output at a higher cost.
• Corruption comes in five bars, one per sense. Push one deeper for raw power.
• 20 levels of choices, from stats and subclass to ultimates and a Transcendence ritual at 20.
• Pets and parties: give a tamed wolf or cat a class, and share spells with your party.

Settings

• Two difficulty dials: Class Pace sets how fast you progress, and Mob Threat sets how dangerous mobs are, from Easy to Expert.
• Hub and wheels: hold C for abilities and R for spells. K opens the Abyss Hub. Every key can be rebound.
• Lighting: HDR, SSAO, shadows from every light and light shafts, running alongside Embeddium and Sodium. Switch it with /salighting.
• Servers: allow_classless_players lets players keep all five senses while the world still comes for them.

From the Developer

This is a living project, and I'm open to criticism and new ideas. Join the Discord for roadmaps and polls. If you design a feature and DM it to me, it can go to an anonymous community vote, and if it passes I'll build it and credit you.

Pick a sense to lose. Learn to live without it.