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Master Design Document
A progression-focused, expert-lite Minecraft 1.20.1 (Forge) modpack. Power-fantasy gameplay across four tiers, with a four-lane progression-token economy (Engineering / Magic / Exploration / Combat) tracked by the Iridescent Codex, dual-path tech/magic progression, no-drop death with a durability cost, and an endgame loop that rewards deep specialization.
| Purpose | The canonical record of what the pack's systems are and why. Implementation-agnostic: no recipe lists, no drop rates. |
| Audience | Design contributors, advanced testers, mod authors building integrations. |
| Companion docs |
Master-Design-Appendix: all numbers, tables, and registries. Design-Changelog: a dated record of design changes. |
| Editing rule | When intent changes, update this doc and log the rationale in the changelog. Numerical changes go in the appendix. |
The implementation status of every system lives in the Home page status table. Per-mod balance audit verdicts and private postmortems live in the contributor-only IridescentCraft-internal repo.
Terms that recur throughout this document.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Tier (T1 to T4) | Player progression band. T1 = Overworld only; T2 = first dimensional; T3 = late-game mod content + Nether; T4 = endgame, End, Ad Astra. |
| AStages | The progression mod that holds per-player tier flags. Items, dimensions, recipes, and ores all gate-check against the player's current stage. |
| Tetra | Modular-item workbench framework. The pack uses it for modular weapons and tools (the Tetra + art_of_forging + adtetra stack), Iridescent Modular Spells, and Iridescent Reforging (modular armor, an armor extension that fills Tetra's gap). The latter two ship together in the bundled iridescent_tetra_expansion jar. |
| Apotheosis | Affix + reforging + gem socketing system. Adds Common to Mythic affix tiers, sigil-tier workstations, and elite "Apotheosis bosses." |
| Iridescent Codex | The progression engine. It tracks the four-lane token economy, converts materials/reagents into tiered tokens, and tracks boss kills. Heracles (the quest mod) backs it for v1; the Patchouli book is the documentation skin. See Part III and Part XII. |
| Progression token | A physical, tiered item submitted to the Codex to advance a tier. Tokens come from four lanes (Engineering / Magic / Exploration / Combat) into one combined pool. They replace the former internal boss-kill counter. |
| ISS | Iron's Spellbooks. The pack's primary spell-system mod; it provides the ink/rune/upgrade-orb reagents that are spread across every dimension's bosses. |
| F&A | Forbidden & Arcanus. T3 magic mod centered on the Hephaestus Forge. |
| Mythic Forge | Custom T4 crafting station for the five Mythic Catalysts: it goes into the grid and stays there. Its unique endgame items (Voidheart Blade, Oblivion Aegis, Riftwalker Boots, Oblivion Crown) wait for Oblivion's Rift, which is not built. |
| Iridescent Modular Spells | Custom Forge content mod that connects Tetra's modular-item workbench to ISS and Ars Nouveau spell books, with 15 modular variants. It ships inside the bundled iridescent_tetra_expansion jar (with Iridescent Reforging). |
| Token economy | Tier-transition model. A player advances a tier by reaching its token threshold (500 / 1000 / 2000, banked in one combined pool) or its boss-rush % (clear 80 / 90 / 100% of the tier's bosses). Four lanes feed the pool: Engineering / Magic / Exploration / Combat. See Part III. |
| Part | Topic |
|---|---|
| I | Vision & Pillars |
| II | The Tier System |
| III | Progression: the Token Economy |
| IV | Worlds & Dimensions |
| V | Combat & Difficulty |
| VI | Player Character |
| VII | Magic System |
| VIII | Tech System |
| IX | Equipment Systems |
| X | Endgame Loops |
| XI | Death & Penalty |
| XII | Quest System & Codex |
| XIII | Loot Economy |
| XIV | Storage, XP, Travel, Food |
| XV | Building & QoL |
| XVI | Implementation Status |
IridescentCraft is a power-fantasy modpack where players become absurdly powerful, but the world scales harder. The early game is open and exploratory on purpose; gating tightens over four tiers, and each tier unlocks new dimensions, new mod systems, and new equipment ceilings.
The pack is expert-lite: players automate, specialize, and hunt bosses for unique drops, but they are not asked to grind 80 hours of pre-progression bookkeeping to unlock the next tier. The goals are concrete: the moment a Mage destabilizes a planet with stacked spell power; the moment a Tech player walks through Glacio in a MekaSuit Mk2; the moment a Hybrid annihilates the Ender Dragon with Voidheart Blade in one hand and a Phoenix artifact equipped. The systems exist so that those moments are earned.
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Open early, gated late. T1 is permissive: explore the Overworld, learn Create, play with starter spells. Each tier transition after that is tighter. T2 unlocks dimensions, T3 unlocks late-game mod content, and T4 unlocks cosmic-tier mods. The squeeze is there to force decisions, not to add grind.
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Four-lane progression. Every tier transition can be solved through any single lane (Engineering, Magic, Exploration, or Combat) by banking enough progression tokens, or by clearing the tier's boss roster. Build a Create farm and submit the machines, cultivate Botania mana and submit the reagents, loot dimensions, or hunt bosses: each lane reaches the threshold on its own, and hybrids mix freely. Specialization is supported and never punished. (See Part III.)
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Abundance of tools, not scarcity. Gates decide when you unlock things, not whether you can. Mid-tier curios have no lifetime caps, rare drops are not lottery-locked, and a tier-skip mechanic was designed (boss tier-peek, not in the game) so players could sample next-tier power before unlocking it. The pack rewards engagement over patience.
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No-drop death, durability cost. Inventory survives death. The penalty is durability damage to equipped gear and XP loss. The Soulbound enchantment is the high-cost end-game protection. Dying isn't catastrophic, but it isn't free.
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Power requires power. Mob and boss scaling outpaces player scaling at every tier. By T4 the player needs god-tier gear, because the world is built to match it. That is why MekaSuit Mk2 stats are absurd and mage spell power stacks without a cap: the Ender Guardian, Ancient Remnant, post-buff Ender Dragon, and Glacio mobs are built for them.
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Boss fights are the pinnacle. The best weapons (Simply Swords uniques), the next-tier materials (Mahou reagents, ISS upgrade orbs, MekaSuit Mk2 components), and the rarest curios all come from bosses. Non-combat players can reach T4 through tech or magic alone, but the highlight gear comes from facing the bosses head-on.
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Play your way. Tech, magic, ranged, melee, summoner and hybrid are all valid paths to the endgame. The character system (13 classes × 11 races × 13 origins) encourages specialization, but no class is closed off from any tier. The Witch of Ink can build a Mekanism factory, and the MekaSuit-clad Tech player can equip Tetra-modular spell books. Build identity is encouraged; build silos are not.
Expert packs assume a long pre-progression: hours of pre-mod minigames before the first real mod unlocks. IridescentCraft does the opposite. Every mod is available from T1, but each is gated to the tier where its power level fits. Players begin with Create, a starter spell book, and Botania saplings on day one. They will not unlock Mekanism until T3, but the codex makes Mekanism's role clear from day one.
The pack keeps the systems readable while the unlock cadence stays dramatic.
The pack moves through four tiers. Each tier is a step-change in power, available content, and threat level.
Implementation note: tier transitions are explicit. The player unlocks the AStages stages
tier_2,tier_3,tier_4. Items, recipes, dimensions, and ores all gate-check against the active stage.
Design pillar: each tier feels complete. A player who never moves past T1 should still feel they are playing a full, satisfying modpack. Each tier ships with a dedicated dimension or alt-loop, enough biome/mob/ structure variety to fill 20+ hours of exploration, a workable progression ladder for both combat and magic builds, a complete cooking/farming layer, and at least one major endgame-style hook (a chase item, a worthy boss, a satisfying mid-tier capstone). Gates limit content access between tiers; they don't lower the quality within a tier. The pack is four overlapping modpacks stitched into a progression, rather than a tutorial that opens up at T4.
| Tier | Identity | "Complete experience" composition | Player feel |
|---|---|---|---|
| T1: Bronze Age Explorer | Overworld + Botania starter chain + Create kinetics + early ISS/Ars magic. Iron / copper / brass. (Post-alpha plan: Blue Skies as an alternative T1 dimension.) | Overworld worldgen depth, Botania mana entry, Create early automation, starter spell scrolls, first village trades, Tetra modular weapons / wands / books, Apotheosis affix loop (common-rare). | "I'm exploring and learning. Magic feels possible. Tech feels achievable." |
| T2: Enchanted Adventurer | Twilight Forest + Blue Skies' Everbright and Everdawn (until T1 move): three dimensional alt-paths. First mechanized tech via Thermal Series. New combat addons: Simply Swords uniques, Apotheosis-tier elite mobs, themed boss drops. | Three dimensions with distinct progression curves, first dimensional bosses (Naga / Hydra / Lich / Frostmaw / etc.), Thermal Series mechanized intro (steam dynamos / pulverizers / induction smelters), Ars Nouveau source infrastructure, Manasteel + Steel + dimension-themed metals. | "I'm specializing. My class identity is forming. I have a clear next-target boss." |
| T3: Empowered Slayer | Undergarden + Deeper Darker + Nether + Abyss. The Mekanism tier: most of the Mekanism progression chain (basic-to-intermediate factories, gas pipelines, fission/fusion prep). Diamond access. F&A Hephaestus Forge. Occultism spirit bindings. | Four mid-tier dimensions, Mekanism factories + Refined Storage networks, Terrasteel / Elementium / Enderium, Cataclysm boss line, Diamond/Netherite material chain unlocks, the affix Mythic ceiling. | "I'm powerful. I'm scaling. I have a factory or a mage-lab or a death-set." |
| T4: God-Killer | The Aether (Deep Aether's biomes included) + the End + Ad Astra planets. Full package: Mekanism advanced (MekaSuit, fission, antimatter), Mahou Tsukai, RFTools Dimensions, Ascension cycles, Rifts. | Endgame dimensions (each with its own boss + chase items), MekaSuit Mk2 + Mahou Tsukai + Ascension loops, Gaia / Aethersteel / Primordial Essence, Mythic Forge, Ancient affix ceiling. | "I'm absurd. The world responds in kind. The Ender Dragon and Ancient Remnant exist to be killed by me." |
→ Per-tier material lists and mod placements: Appendix §A and §F.
Tier gating is enforced through AStages (per-player tier flags), KubeJS event hooks, and a small set of datapack overrides (icraft_*_overrides). In concrete terms:
- Items: tier-inappropriate items cannot be used (held, equipped, or consumed) until the stage is unlocked. A T2 player who gets an Awakening artifact as a creative gift sees it inert until they reach T4.
- Dimensions: locked until the stage is unlocked. T2 dimensions (Twilight, Blue Skies' Everbright and Everdawn) open at T2; T3 dimensions (Undergarden, Deeper Darker, Nether, the Abyss) at T3; T4 dimensions (the Aether, End, the Ad Astra planets and each of their orbits) at T4. A dimension's tier is the tier of the way in: Iron's Spellbooks' pocket dimension is T4 because its spell cannot be cast before T4, and the Reality Marble is T4 because Mahou Tsukai is.
- Recipes: tier-gated crafting. Workbenches, advanced materials, and boss-tier crafting stations check the player's stage.
- Ores: visually replaced with their host stone until the appropriate tier. The player sees stone instead of diamond ore until T3, and holystone instead of aether_debris until T4.
Tier transitions happen by banking that tier's token threshold (through any mix of the four lanes) or by clearing its boss roster (see Part III). Players do not have to work every lane; one is enough.
Three things scale together across all four tiers:
- Player power: gear, spells, perks
- Mob threat: HP, damage, behavior, equipment
- Content surface: mods, structures, recipes
Player power scales fastest in the early mid-game (T1 → T2 feels enormous because that is when specialization kicks in). Mob threat scales fastest in the late game (T3 → T4, where the iridescent_difficulty curves, Majrusz Master-stage elites, and progressive boss buffs compound).
Design intent: players feel powerful at every tier, but never trivialize the next one.
→ Scaling factors and elite-mob rates: Appendix §D.
Tier progression runs on a four-lane progression-token economy, tracked by the Iridescent Codex. This is the pack's most distinctive structural decision, and every other system follows from it. It supersedes the older "branching unlock / internal boss-kill counter" model, which described paths that were largely never built.
The Iridescent Codex does three things:
- It receives and tracks tier progression through physical, tiered tokens.
- It converts specific material resources and magical reagents into tokens (each capped per resource).
- It tracks boss kills for the pure boss-rush route.
Build reality: the Codex's documentation skin is a Patchouli book (
iridescent_codex_data.jar, modIdicraft). The engine is Heracles (the quest mod), which already handles item submission, kill tracking, and stage granting, making it the pragmatic v1 of "the Codex does it." A bespoke Codex-terminal block + GUI is a possible later migration. See Part XII.
A player advances a tier by hitting either its token threshold or its boss-rush %:
| Transition | Token threshold | Boss-rush % |
|---|---|---|
| T1 → T2 | 500 | 80% of T1 bosses (8 of 9) |
| T2 → T3 | 1000 | 90% of T2 bosses (17 of 18) |
| T3 → T4 | 2000 | 100% of T3 bosses (all 44, incl. Lucifer) |
| T4 → finale | none | defeat the Ender Dragon (the pack finale; no gate: the Ad Astra planets open with T4) |
There is one combined token pool, fed by four lanes. The boss-rush denominator is the per-tier boss roster (see Boss-Catalog): the tier's named bosses plus some minibosses (the Mutant Monsters, Swampjaw and the Bellringer, Iron's Spellbooks' four casters, Coralssus and others), 9 / 18 / 45 entries. The counts are the bosses that exist in the pack as of 2026-10-12, recounted on 2026-10-16 when Frostmaw moved to T2, the Aether's three dungeon bosses to T4 (T4 has no boss rush) and Merlin and Circe to T3; /icraft codex bosses shows the live numbers. Until 2026-10-12 the rosters also listed bosses the pack does not have, so the route could not be completed.
The ladder is strict (since October 2026). A tier can be bought only while the player holds the tier below: neither 1,000 tier-2 tokens nor a cleared tier-2 roster buys tier 3 for a player who has not reached tier 2. Kills made early still count once the tier below is held. Tier 1's tokens ask for nothing (every survival player holds tier 1).
| Lane | What it submits | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering | Bulk metals + milestone machine blocks (Create @ T1, Thermal @ T2, Mekanism @ T3) | Engineers, factory builders |
| Magic | Generation/cultivation/ritual reagents + apparatus, never spellcasting (Botania @ T1, Ars @ T2, advanced Botania + Occultism + F&A @ T3) | Mages, ritualists, cultivators |
| Exploration | Miniboss/boss first-kill + repeat-kill tokens, non-overworld dimension entry, chest/barrel finds | Explorers, dimensional travelers |
| Combat | Boss + miniboss kills (they feed the pool and count toward boss-rush %) | Warriors, hunters, hybrid melee builds |
Lanes mix freely, and the combined pool serves hybrids. Mixing is never required: each lane must reach the threshold on its own.
Each tier is reachable by a single pure playstyle.
- Engineering is capped per material, so its ceiling is Σ(all caps). After the 1/100 bulk-metal cut plus high-value machine blocks, the named submissions sum to ~590 / 1200 / 2400 against the 500 / 1000 / 2000 thresholds (~118 to 120%), so pure engineering closes on named submissions alone. The conversion tables are the complete set: only listed materials/blocks grant tokens, with no universal default and no unlisted long tail, so each tier's total is the engineering ceiling.
- Magic mirrors Engineering: capped Reagents (the "ore", e.g.
manasteel_ingot/source_gem/terrasteel_ingot) plus low-cap, high-value Apparatus (the "machines", e.g. Runic Altar / Source Jars / Hephaestus Forge), drawn only from the generation/cultivation/ritual side. Subtotals ~600 / 1250 / 2360. - Exploration and Combat are farmable (boss repeat-kills, respawning chests/dimensions), so they are always reachable; the open question there is grind, not feasibility.
The ore-base curve is intentional. Bulk metal contributes a rising share across T1/T2/T3 by design: higher tiers unlock ore multiplication (Mekanism 2 to 5×) and automation, so submissions track the player's growing production capability. Milestone machines stay the required push over the line (ore alone never reaches the threshold at any tier).
→ Full conversion tables (per-resource caps + rates) for Engineering and Magic: Appendix §A.7.
The token economies depend on a set of recipe overrides that un-gate "T1/T2" submissions with hidden dependencies on higher-tier materials or processes. All of them live in kubejs/server_scripts/recipes/ across the three distro roots:
- Blaze Burner → T1 (prefilled iron plates + campfire): un-gates Create's entire heated half.
- Create steel bridge (
create:mixing, heated): a clean Create (T1) → steel → Thermal (T2) route that bypasses the coke→Pyrolyzer Nether dependency. - Magma Crucible
nether_bricks → bricks: T3 → T2. - Ars Enchanting Apparatus
diamond → mana_diamond: frees the Magic T2 chain from a diamond (T3) gate.
→ Full ledger: Appendix §B.
One mechanism lets a current-tier player get small amounts of next-tier material, so they can sample next-tier power without skipping the unlock:
- Boss tier-peek drops: current-tier bosses occasionally drop next-tier reagents, at 5 to 15% rates. Twilight bosses can drop osmium or steel; Cataclysm T3 bosses can drop ancient_debris fragments. This rewards combat-focused players for engaging bosses harder than the tier requires. (Not in the game, and left out for now (2026-10-19): no boss drops a next-tier reagent. The pack's tier stages stop a player from picking up an item of a tier they have not reached, so such a drop would stay on the ground, and steel is a Tier 2 material now.)
It preserves the gate (a player cannot fully outfit themselves in next-tier gear without unlocking it) while rewarding investment. (A second mechanism was designed but never became recipes: transmutation, expensive recipes turning current-tier materials into a little next-tier material. Its placeholder items were removed in October 2026.)
→ The tier-skip recipe state: Appendix §B; boss drops: §C.
Lucifer is the combat capstone of T3 → T4: the final T3 boss in the 100% boss-rush clear. (A unique Lucifer's Token, a second combat door that would have let an explorer who banked their way up skip the rest of the roster, was never built and was retired from the design on 2026-10-17: his kill pays his kill tokens and the Capstone: Lucifer quest, and opens nothing.) Non-combat lanes skip him entirely: banking the 2000-token threshold through Engineering or Magic reaches T4 with no fight. So at T3 → T4 only, a truly combat-averse player has exactly one door, a non-combat lane. The pinch point is deliberate. See Part X.
The End is reached with Eyes of Ender today. Unlocking the End uses the vanilla process (stronghold + End Portal frames), with the Eyes of Ender staged at T4. Planned (not built yet): the Eye of Ender is to be replaced by an "End Compass", crafted from the Aether's materials (a T4 dimension), which would direct the player to an "End Bastion", so that the portal could not be targeted until the player has worked the Aether. Defeating the Ender Dragon is the pack finale (T4 is terminal, with no further token gate). The Ad Astra planets were designed as the post-game beyond it; in the game they are T4 dimensions, reached by rocket with the T4 stage (no dragon kill is asked). See Part IV and Part X.
The pack's dimensional layout is the spine of the tier system. Each tier opens a band of dimensions, and each dimension carries its own difficulty, themes, and content surface.
Two design choices set IridescentCraft apart from base Minecraft:
- The Nether is T3, not T1/T2.
- The End is T4, not the late-game finale of any tier.
Twilight Forest and Blue Skies (Everbright and Everdawn) occupy the T2 band as "first dimensional" content. The Aether (Deep Aether's biomes generate inside it) and the Ad Astra planets are T4 endgame, alongside the End.
A dimension is a content arc, not a place to grind. Each one has a thematic identity, a primary boss line, and a unique mechanic that distinguishes its play feel.
| Dimension | Tier | Boss line | Distinguishing mechanic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twilight Forest | T2 | 8-step encounter ladder (Naga → Lich → Hydra → Ur-Ghast → Knight Phantom → Snow Queen → Minoshroom → Alpha Yeti) | Canopy ambushes, dense fog, gentlest first-dimension experience |
| Blue Skies | T2 | Summoner / Alchemist / Starlit Crusher / Arachnarch | Everbright/Everdawn duality, elemental damage that bypasses armor |
| Undergarden | T3 | Forgotten Guardian / Forgotten / Rotbeast | Hostile underground biome, attrition focus |
| Deeper Darker | T3 | Sculk-themed | Oppressive darkness, stealth-required |
| The Nether | T3 | Cataclysm line (Netherite Monstrosity, Ignis) | Majrusz Master-stage scaling; Wither Skeletons act as mini-bosses |
| The Abyss (TATOS) | T3 | Elder / Ice Knight / Nightblade / Soul Guard / The Roka / Guard |
theabyss:the_abyss (TATOS mod, installed; dim gated T3). Oppressive darkness, corruption, fear aura and void whispers fire here via dimension_mechanics.js. A custom 8-ring kubejs:ring_* economy replaces theabyss's 30 stock rings (abyss_boss_loot.js + abyss_ring_effects.js); 7 elemental armor-set bonuses (abyss_armor_effects.js). |
| The Aether | T4 (T2 until 2026-10-16) | Slider / Valkyrie Queen / Sun Spirit | Vertigo, thin air, scarce holystone, flight rewarded |
| Deep Aether (biomes inside the Aether, no dimension of its own) | T4 | EotS Controller, custom T4 sky-end | Aethersteel chain (15+ items + 2 ore replacements). The planned End Compass is to be crafted from the Aether's materials. |
| The End | T4 | Ender Dragon (the pack finale) + Ender Guardian | Reached with Eyes of Ender, staged at T4 (a planned End Compass → End Bastion route would replace them); multi-zone scaling; Voidheart Blade Mythic Forge venue; the Dragon kill is the finale (it opens nothing further) |
| Ad Astra (Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Glacio, and the six orbits) | T4 | Per-planet | Reached by rocket: the rocket workbench is a T4 recipe and every planet and orbit has its own T4 gate (designed as the post-game after the Ender Dragon; since 2026-10-17 the design has no dragon gate either); 4-tier rocket gate; Glacio is the T4 endgame (MekaSuit Mk2 reagent) |
| Iron's Spellbooks' pocket dimension, Mahou Tsukai's Reality Marble | T4 | none | Small personal dimensions: the Pocket Dimension spell cannot be cast before T4; the Reality Marble comes with Mahou Tsukai, a T4 mod |
| Witch of Ink dimension (planned origin-specific content surface; not yet a separate dimension in pack) | T3+ (Origin-tied) | none | Origin-specific content surface |
Besides stat multipliers, each dimension has scripted mechanics that change how the player interacts with that space:
- Aether (T4; Deep Aether's biomes included): faster mobs, thin air, vertigo, updrafts. Its mobs get Speed I, and its flyers Strength I as well. Above Y 180 thin air brings Weakness unless the armor carries Aether Acclimation; sprinting above Y 200 sometimes brings vertigo (nausea); a player falling below Y 0 is caught once by an updraft (Slow Falling).
- Deeper Darker (Otherside): darkness empowerment + hexing. Sculk mobs get night-vision/AI buffs at spawn, and their hits carry a 15% chance of a random debuff (slowness/weakness/mining-fatigue/blindness). Genuine Deeper Darker flavor, fired via
dimension_mechanics.js. - The Abyss (TATOS): oppressive darkness, corruption, fear aura, void whispers. No held light + low light → mining fatigue + slowness; periodic hunger ticks (corruption); Darkness near Abyss bosses (fear aura); Weakness below Y=20 (void whispers). It fires in
theabyss:the_abyssviadimension_mechanics.js. (TATOS = "The Abyss: The Other Side"; installed, dim gated T3.) - End: multi-zone scaling. The dimension is divided into Outer Islands (T4 baseline), Deep End (T4-amplified), and Dragon's Domain (peak). The scaling factor doubles past a certain distance from spawn. Nine advancement overrides shape the End-progression flow.
- Ad Astra: atmospheric pressure + cryogenic damage. Each planet has its own atmosphere, and players need oxygen tanks (T4 entry equipment). Glacio adds cryogenic damage on top.
Each mechanic is implemented as a KubeJS server-tick handler with persistent player-data flags.
→ Numerical specifics (oxygen drain rate, fear buildup, corruption per second): Appendix §D.
Dimensions are gated through AStages dimension flags. A T2 player who tries to enter the Nether sees the portal fail to ignite, with a chat message saying their access is insufficient. Dimension entry items (Aether portal blocks, the Blue Skies arc, Nether ignition) check stage flags before triggering. A Twilight Forest portal lights for anyone, but stepping through it without Tier 2 is refused, as for every gated dimension.
Design note: a T1 token lights the Twilight Forest portal, so it does not need vanilla diamond. The pack's first dimension should not gate on diamond access, since diamonds are T3. Since 17 October 2026 the activator is the Codex Token I (the Tier 1 token from boss kills, chests and submissions), added to the mod's own diamond; the Tier 2 dimension gate, not the activator, keeps players below Tier 2 out. From April to October 2026 the activator was a legacy token nothing gave, and the portal could not be lit in survival.
The End's access is special (planned). Today the vanilla stronghold + End Portal process is used as it is, with Eyes of Ender staged at T4. The plan is to replace the Eye of Ender with an "End Compass" crafted from the Aether's materials (a T4 dimension). The compass would direct the player to an "End Bastion" structure (reusing the
boss_compasswaystone system). Players then could not even target the End portal until they had worked the Aether, so the End would be genuinely post-Aether. The End Compass itself, its exact material bill and the End Bastion structure are build items still to be determined.
The pack's combat model is player escalates, world escalates harder. Both player power and mob threat scale across T1 to T4, but mob threat scales more aggressively. By T4, an unbuffed player who meets an unbuffed mob loses; the player's job is to be buffed.
Threat scales along several axes, each controlled by a different system and tunable independently.
| Axis | System | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| HP + damage (dimension) |
iridescent_difficulty (bespoke, time-based) |
Per-dimension multipliers that ramp linearly while the dimension is loaded, then freeze at a cap. The End alone uncaps after the Ender Dragon dies. It replaces the former ScalingMobs / Improved-Mobs-accumulator / Azukaar's stack. |
| HP (static mob tier) |
mob_scaling_unified.js tier-HP block |
Flat per-category multipliers (basic 3× / mid 1.5× / elite 1.25×), composed on top of the dimension multiplier. |
| Behavior + AI | Cataclysmic Combat / Difficult Caves | Enhanced AI: tool use, block breaking, coordination, cave-specific aggression. |
| Elite-mob density | Majrusz's Progressive Difficulty | Three-stage (Normal / Expert / Master) elite-mob scaling, tied to progression milestones (Nether entry → Expert, Dragon kill → Master). It replaces the removed Champions Unofficial. (Majrusz's own per-mob stat scaling is disabled in its config; iridescent_difficulty owns dimension stats.) |
| Boss persistence | Per-kill scaling, per player (boss_progressive.js) |
A boss is stronger for the players who have beaten it before: the highest kill count among the players within 64 blocks sets the bonus, from +15% health at the 2nd fight to +150% from the 15th. It stacks on top of the dimension multiplier. The Wither, the Ender Dragon, the Warden and the Elder Guardian are exempt. |
→ Per-dimension multiplier tables + the time-based curve: Appendix §D.4 and Progression Overview.
Player power scales along four axes:
- Equipment: Tetra-modular weapons, modular spell books, tiered armor sets (vanilla → mod-tier → boss-drop). See Part IX.
- Attribute baseline: Origins, Races, and Classes provide innate stat modifiers. JustLevelingFork adds passive HP/damage scaling per character level.
- Skill investment: Pufferfish's Skills has six skill trees with command-reward effects, fed by XP investment.
- Consumable stack: Spice of Life HP bonuses, Iron's Spellbooks elixirs, Apotheosis gem socketing, Relics charm leveling.
Design intent: player power is uncapped on several axes. Mage spell power stacks without a ceiling across classes, aptitudes, curios and consumables (Tetra gear is the exception: each piece of it is sized to Iron's Spellbooks' own, see the mage power curve below), and MekaSuit Mk2 stacks armor + utility modules without a hard cap. The world is built to match the stat ceiling, so "broken" builds are appropriate here.
Each tier has a roster of bosses that are its difficulty climax and loot peak:
- T2 bosses: Twilight (8) + Blue Skies (4) + Frostmaw (Everbright). The entry-tier challenge.
- T3 bosses: Cataclysm (8) + Ignited Revenant + Wither + Stalker, capped by Lucifer (the T3 → T4 combat capstone). The mid-game peak.
- T4 bosses: Ender Dragon (the pack finale) + Ender Guardian + Gaia Guardian + Warden + the Aether's dungeon bosses (Slider / Valkyrie Queen / Sun Spirit). The endgame.
Boss kills feed the Combat lane of the token economy and count toward the boss-rush % (Part III). The Codex (backed by Heracles) tracks kills per tier: clearing 80 / 90 / 100% of a tier's roster advances the tier automatically (only with the tier below held), and individual kills also drop physical tokens into the combined pool. Lucifer is the last boss of the T3 roster. He is the combat capstone, not a universal gate: non-combat lanes reach T4 by banking the 2000-token threshold and never fight him (see Part X). The former model, in which an internal counter granted tiers, is superseded: tokens are physical and tracked by the Codex.
The pack accepts that some builds will be broken; that is the point of a power fantasy. It does not accept builds broken through exploits. Every audit-driven gate (the five Mekanism processing-recipe blocks, the Botania Orechid datapack, the Occultism miner override, the Cataclysm boss-themed weapon allocations) closes a path that would let a low-tier player skip into broken-tier gear without earning it.
→ Running ledger: Appendix §B.
Besides stat scaling, each dimension has its own combat identity: unique mob behaviors, environmental hazards, and play-feel modifiers that call for different strategies. Damage scales fastest and HP moderately. Combat in harder dimensions is dangerous; players must respect enemies, not just out-stat them.
Three principles guide the per-dimension design:
- Enemies are lethal but killable. A well-geared player tears through trash but respects elites and fears bosses.
- Every dimension feels mechanically unique. Each dimension has combat behaviors and enemy mechanics that demand different strategies, beyond stat inflation.
- Build diversity matters in combat. A Berserker and a Vanguard fighting the same mob should have fundamentally different experiences, not just "faster" or "slower" versions of the same fight.
Overworld (T1): Learning Ground. Vanilla mob behavior with no surprises; this is the baseline. Mob density rises at night, and full-moon nights spike the spawn rate and the elite-mob rate. Basic AI only: mobs do not use gear, break blocks, or coordinate.
Twilight Forest (T2): The Dark Forest. Dense canopy and ambushes out of limited visibility. 15% of mobs spawn briefly invisible (Canopy Ambush). Boss arenas put a damage and regen aura on nearby mobs (Twilight Corruption: clear trash before pulling). Twilight-native mobs share aggro within 16 blocks (Pack Tactics). 20% of mobs equip dropped weapons. Environment: thorn hedges damage on contact, and permanent fog reduces visibility.
Blue Skies (T2): Elemental Gauntlet. Two dimensions (Everbright / Everdawn) with elemental themes. 30% of mob damage is converted to elemental (fire / ice) damage, which bypasses standard armor but is mitigated by elemental resistance enchants. Periodic elemental storms buff matching-element mobs for 2 minutes. Mobs at high altitude gain a small speed bonus. Ranged mobs prioritize high ground; melee mobs try to knock players off platform edges.
The Undergarden (T3): Toxic Attrition. The environment drains the player. 25% of mob hits apply a 5-second poison (scaled with the dimension multiplier). Mobs have natural damage reduction that regenerates if they are not hit for 5 seconds (Fungal Armor, which rewards sustained aggression). Detection range extends to 24 blocks in darkness; light sources reduce it. Standing still for 10+ seconds applies Weakness I (Decay Aura: keep moving).
Deeper Darker (T3): Horror Survival. Stealth matters. Sprinting, breaking blocks, and fighting generate "noise" that extends mob aggro radius to 24 blocks; sneaking holds it at 8. Mobs near sculk gain damage and detect vibrations through walls. Mobs at light level 0 gain +20% to all stats; at light level 7+ they lose 10%. Below Y=-32, all entities take 1 damage / 30s (Rift Pressure). Mobs make no warning sounds: there are no aggro growls before attacks.
The Nether (T3): Relentless Aggression. Permanent aggro from 20 blocks. 30% of melee damage is fire (it bypasses armor; the Heatward enchant mitigates it). Killing Blazes has a 20% chance to spawn 2 smaller "Ember" adds. Mobs inside Nether Fortresses gain stat bonuses and resist knockback (set-piece encounters). Lava-adjacent mobs regenerate. Mobs run at maximum aggression (design intent; Improved Mobs, which was to drive it, was removed): all mobs use found gear, piglins flank in hunting parties of 4 to 6, and hoglins charge toward lava (intentional environmental kills).
Deeper Darker (Otherside, T3). Darkness empowerment + hexing. Sculk mobs spawn with night-vision (darkness-empowered AI), and their hits have a 15% chance of a random short debuff (slowness/weakness/mining-fatigue/blindness). Sculk-adjacent mob synergies; stealth required.
The Abyss (TATOS, T3). An oppressive darkness mechanic: no held light + low light applies mining fatigue + slowness. Corruption ticks (periodic hunger); fear aura (Darkness within 16 blocks of Abyss bosses); void whispers (Weakness below Y=20). It fires in theabyss:the_abyss via dimension_mechanics.js. A custom kubejs:ring_* content surface (8 rings + 7 elemental armor sets + themed loot tables; see master-appendix §C.11) replaces theabyss's 30 stock rings. TATOS ("The Abyss: The Other Side") is installed; the dimension is gated T3.
The Aether (T4): Aerial Warfare. (T2 until 2026-10-16.) Vertical combat, narrow platforms, lethal falls. Its mobs move with Speed I, and its flyers also hit with Strength I. Thin air above Y 180 brings Weakness unless the armor carries Aether Acclimation; sprinting above Y 200 sometimes brings vertigo (nausea); a player who falls below Y 0 is caught once by an updraft (Slow Falling). 40% of mobs fly or hover. Cloud cover above Y>192 hides 10% of mobs until close range (soft ambush). Rare gravity wells halve fall damage but double knockback. Valkyrie-type mobs have parry mechanics and periodically block frontal attacks.
Deep Aether (T4; its biomes, inside the Aether): Ascension Trial. Aerial combat, escalated difficulty, multi-phase mob attack patterns. Random wind shears push players and projectiles off course. 20% of mobs spawn with one-hit absorption shields (which rewards sustained combat over alpha strikes). Procedural Ascension Towers: each floor adds stats, and the top floor has a mini-boss. Combo attacks (2 to 3 hit sequences with increasing damage), telegraphed special attacks (1-second windup), and allies that heal each other if not interrupted.
The End (T4): The Crucible. Three zones with escalating mechanics, each adding to the one before:
- Outer Islands. Mobs gain damage as the player approaches the void. 15% of attacks apply a 2 to 4 block teleport in a random direction (Ender Displacement). Shulkers fire in coordinated volleys.
- Deep End / End Cities. Adds Void Corruption stacks (-2% HP / +3% damage per stack, max 10; leaving the End clears them). Killing Endermen has a 10% chance to teleport in 3 to 5 already-aggro'd Endermen. 10% of mobs briefly phase through walls.
- Dragon's Domain. Adds a global stat bonus to all mobs while the Dragon is alive. Void Storms every 10 minutes deal sustained damage to all entities not under shelter. Reality Fracture reverses player controls for 2 seconds (with a purple-particle warning 1s before). Elite (Majrusz Master-stage) mobs in Dragon's Domain always roll their full Apotheosis affix complement.
Peak AI aggression in the End (design intent, now driven by Cataclysmic Combat + KubeJS handlers instead of the removed Improved Mobs): all mobs use found gear and enchanted weapons; mobs break any block (including obsidian, slowly); ranged mobs suppress while melee flanks; in multiplayer, mobs target the weakest player; Endermen teleport behind players for backstabs; elite mobs adapt to player behavior (kiters → mobs speed up; face-tankers → mobs spread out).
Ad Astra Planets (T4). Each planet has its own atmosphere and mechanics: oxygen drain without a tank, atmospheric pressure damage, and Glacio-specific cryogenic damage. Elite-mob density runs at its highest (Majrusz Master-stage) on every planet, and the planets and orbits run the T4 difficulty curve (since October 2026; before that they were on no list and ran the T1 curve). Glacio is the T4 endgame.
| Tier | Trash kill speed (avg build) | Player threat level | Combat feel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 to 2 hits | Low (10+ hits to die) | Tutorial. Learn mechanics, get comfortable. |
| 2 | 2 to 3 hits | Moderate (6 to 8 hits) | Engaging. Pay attention. Ambushes and elements start. |
| 3 | 3 to 5 hits | High (4 to 6 hits) | Intense. Mechanics demand specific strategies. Poison, stealth, fire pressure. |
| 4 | 4 to 8 hits (build-dependent) | Lethal (3 to 4 hits for a glass cannon) | Endgame. Every fight matters. Environmental + mob synergy. One mistake = death. |
→ Per-class HP/DPS estimates, kill-speed targets, full multiplier table, per-kill boss scaling, regular mob equipment percentages: Appendix §D.
Character creation is three sequential prompts on first join: Origin → Race → Class. This three-layer model gives more build identity than any two-layer system, while each layer's choice stays readable.
| Layer | Source | What it provides | Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin | Origins (Forge) + Iridescent Origins | Species fantasy with unique abilities and tradeoffs | 13 (9 vanilla rebalanced + 4 custom; no Human, no Mundane) |
| Race | Iridescent Origins (Race layer) | Stat baseline and thematic flavor | 11 |
| Class | Iridescent Classes | Combat role, HP tier, glass-cannon status; defines playstyle | 13 |
A two-layer system (Origin + Class) collapses too many dimensions into one choice. Splitting Origin (species fantasy) from Race (stat baseline) and Class (combat role) gives:
- Build diversity: a Faefolk Battlemage plays differently from a Demi-God Battlemage, and a Berserker Witherborn plays differently from a Berserker Avian.
- Identity readability: each layer answers one question. "What am I?" (Origin), "What am I made of?" (Race), "What do I do?" (Class).
- Respec flexibility: respec only affects Class (combat role). Origin and Race are permanent, so the cost of switching combat identity is bounded.
Besides the nine rebalanced vanilla origins, the pack ships four custom ones:
- Witch of Ink: passive hyperscaler (boss-kill counter; capstone Blessing of Penthesilea at 200 kills)
- Artificial Construct: machine-themed tech bias (iron eating; 5-level iron-consumed ladder)
- Witherborn: undead aesthetic + Wither immunity
- Slimebodied: slime physics + bouncing combat
Each has its own progression hook and dimension tie-in. Values + capstone payouts live in Appendix §K.4.
Several classes are explicitly glass cannons, with a high damage ceiling at the cost of survivability. Two of the Mage classes, Archmage and Void Summoner, sit in this category: low base HP, high spell-power scaling, a weak melee penalty. By T4, a Mage with a fully built Voidheart Blade and three spell-power curios outdamages any tank class, but a single hit kills them.
Design intent (the mage power curve): mages are back-loaded glass cannons on purpose, weak early, with the highest peaks late. The peaks come from stacking classes, aptitudes, curios and consumables; Tetra gear is sized instead: a full set of Tetra armour, a modular wand and a modular book each stay within Iron's Spellbooks' own best of their kind, +15 % (decided 2026-10-19, Appendix §L.3). That makes the back-loaded power fantasy, and the world's T4 threat ceiling is built to match it.
→ Full Origin / Race / Class roster + ability tables: Appendix §A.6.
The Class layer holds the largest HP and damage levers: the half-equipment-HP rule, the tank's armour and the mage classes' spell power (up to x2.5 in a school). Races change health and damage too, on a scale close to the classes': a race's max health runs from 16 to 28, a class's from 16 to 24 (measured on a full-pack boot, 2026-10-19). Origins are species fantasy first, but five of the thirteen start with less health (measured on a full-pack boot, 2026-10-19): Arachnid and Phantom 14 (Fragile, -6), Slimebodied 15 (-25%), Witch of Ink 16 (-4) and Feline 18 (Nine Lives, -2; the pack's own Nine Lives override, -20% or 16 health, is written but does not load yet). Shulk and Artificial Construct add armour (+8, +4). No origin changes an ordinary hit (a melee hit, an arrow and a level-1 Firebolt measured the same as with no origin). Two grow with play, by their scripts: the Artificial Construct gains health and damage as it eats iron, the Witch of Ink +15% health at its 200-kill capstone.
Design rule: Race + Class have meaningful tradeoffs. Skills are pure bonuses with no drawbacks.
Nine of the eleven races change health or damage (health and damage dealt measured on a full-pack boot, 2026-10-19): Orc 24 health and +10% melee damage, Demi-God 28 health, Ryu 24 health and 25% less damage taken, Faefolk 17 health, +30% magic and -30% melee damage, Fallen Angel 16 health, +15% damage dealt and a permanent Strength I (+3 melee damage), Kirin 18 health (16 once the pack's own Nine Lives override loads; it does not yet), Halfling -5% melee damage, Elf +15% ranged and +5% magic damage, Revenant +20% melee damage in the dark and Weakness in sunlight without a helmet. Human and Dwarf (fire resistance only) change neither. Kept as built on recommendation (2026-10-19, for review): the traits are what makes each race, and the class layer still holds the larger levers (magic up to x2.5 against a race's x1.3). Appendix §K.3 has the full tables.
| Archetype | Classes | HP modifier | Equipment HP | Damage modifier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pure Tank | Vanguard | +20% | Normal | -30% melee damage |
| Tank/Support/Healer | Paladin | +10% | Normal | none |
| Hybrid | Samurai, Battlemage, Wanderer | +5% | Normal | none |
| Crafter | Artificer | 0% | Normal | none |
| Melee DPS | Berserker | -5% | Normal | none |
| Summoner | Void Summoner | -10% | Half | none |
| Ranged DPS | Ranger | -20% | Half | none |
| Offensive Caster | Archmage | -20% | Half | -50% melee |
| School specialist (burst) | Elemental | -20% | Half | none |
| School specialist (sustain) | Blessed | +10% | Normal | none |
| School specialist (attrition) | Corrupted | -10% | Normal | none |
Half-equipment-HP (Ranger, Archmage, Void Summoner, Elemental) means equipment-sourced HP bonuses count at 50% effectiveness: the Vitality enchantment, Hearty/Vigorous/Vital affixes, curio HP bonuses, and armor attribute modifiers all halve. Vanilla armor base values are unaffected. This is how the glass-cannon pillar is implemented mechanically: their damage ceiling is high and their HP ceiling is half.
Vanguard's -30% melee damage penalty is the matching tank tradeoff: maximum survivability, weakest melee damage. Arrows, magic and spells are not reduced. The Vanguard's role is to absorb hits, not deal them.
→ Per-class weapon affinities and active/passive ability rosters: Appendix §K.
Races provide innate traits with mild tradeoffs, less impactful than the class choice. A race is permanent from character creation.
Race design principles: every race has 2 to 3 benefits and 1 to 2 drawbacks. Drawbacks are inconveniences, never crippling. Races do not duplicate class identities (no "warrior race" overlapping Berserker). Races may change health and damage (see the note above); equipment effectiveness and the large school multipliers belong to the Class layer.
What races can modify: health and damage (as above), movement speed (small, ±5 to 8%), hunger/saturation, vision (night/underwater), environmental resistances (fire/cold/fall), size (via Pehkui), resource interaction (mining/farming), social (villager prices, mob aggro).
The 11 race roster spans utility flavor (Human, Halfling), mobility specialists (Elf, Kirin, Fallen Angel), durability specialists (Dwarf, Demi-God, Ryu), and theme-driven races (Orc, Faefolk, Revenant). Each race has a "natural class pairing", but every race-class combination is viable.
→ Full race trait tables: Appendix §K.3.
Pufferfish's Skills adds a layer on top of the three character layers: six trees, each with its own XP track, and each built as a Trunk (shared first 8 nodes) → Branch A / Branch B (specialized paths) → Capstone (deep-investment payoff).
| Tree | XP source | Trunk theme | Branch A | Branch B |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warfare | Melee kills | melee damage, attack speed, melee resistance, HP | Sustained DPS + life steal (Berserker's Path) | Crit + weapon mastery (Duelist's Path) |
| Marksman | Ranged kills | ranged damage, draw speed, accuracy, movement | Single-target sniper (Sniper's Path) | AoE + fire rate (Volley Path) |
| Sorcery | Spell casts + magic kills | magic damage, mana regen, cast speed, magic resistance | Raw spell power (Destruction Path) | Healing + summoning (Enchanter's Path) |
| Fortitude | Damage taken | HP, all-resistance, healing received, knockback resistance | Tank HP + armor (Iron Wall) | Sustain + regen (Survivor's Path) |
| Gathering | Mining, chopping, harvesting, fishing | mining speed, breaking speed, crop yield, fortune | Mining + ore yield (Prospector's Path) | Farming + fishing (Harvester's Path) |
| Engineering | Crafting, machine operation, smelting | crafting speed, material save, machine speed, durability | Crafting quality (Artificer's Path) | Machines + automation (Engineer's Path) |
Each tree has 28 nodes (Warfare 29), 169 across all six trees. A heavy endgame player reaches ~120 to 150, enough for 2 to 3 deep trees plus 1 to 2 trunks. The forced prioritization is intentional.
Generalist vs specialist: spread points across multiple trees for broad, moderate bonuses (good for Wanderer, Battlemage, Samurai), or go deep into one tree for powerful focused bonuses + capstone abilities (good for Berserker, Archmage, Ranger). Neither is strictly better. The math is tuned so going deep gives ~+15 to 20% more effectiveness in your specialty than spreading, while generalists get meaningful bonuses across multiple contexts.
The recommended primary tree per class. Players are not locked in (every class can invest in any tree), but class kits and weapon affinities make some pairings more efficient.
| Class | Primary tree | Secondary | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berserker | Warfare (Branch A) | Fortitude (Branch B) | Life-steal + sustain → unkillable in sustained fights |
| Samurai | Warfare (Branch B) | Marksman (Branch A) | Crit scaling + ranged precision = Way of the Blade synergy |
| Battlemage | Warfare (trunk) | Sorcery (Branch A) | Moderate melee + strong spells = Arcane Infusion fuel |
| Wanderer | Any 3 to 4 trunks | none | A generalist wants broad, moderate bonuses |
| Paladin | Fortitude (Branch A) | Sorcery (Branch B) | Tank HP + healing = Holy Aura + Lay on Hands |
| Vanguard | Fortitude (Branch A) | Warfare (trunk) | Maximum HP + some melee to offset the -30% melee damage penalty |
| Ranger | Marksman (Branch A) | Gathering (trunk) | Max ranged damage + fortune for resource runs |
| Archmage | Sorcery (Branch A) | Marksman (trunk) | Deep spell power + ranged passive utility |
| Artificer | Engineering (Branch A) | Gathering (Branch B) | Crafting quality + farming/fishing supply |
| Void Summoner | Sorcery (Branch B) | Fortitude (Branch B) | Summoning depth + sustain to keep summons alive |
| Layer | Respec? | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | No, permanent | n/a |
| Race | No, permanent | n/a |
| Class | Yes, at the Class Altar | 1 tier-appropriate boss drop + 30 XP levels |
| Skill point | Not available in the game (designed: per point, 5 levels) | n/a |
Skill points are not lost on death or on class respec; they are permanent growth. A Berserker with 30 Warfare points who switches to Paladin keeps those points (suboptimal for Paladin but still functional). This leaves room for hybrid builds without forcing a full skill reset every time the player tries a new class.
JustLevelingFork runs alongside the skill trees as passive HP / damage / speed scaling per character level. It uses a flat XP curve (~1000 to 2000 XP per level), tuned so leveling never feels like an XP sink. Leveling happens as the player plays, with no investment decisions, as a steady reward for engagement.
Both Pufferfish (active investment) and JustLevelingFork (passive scaling) run alongside vanilla XP and the Apotheosis enchanting economy. The skill trees use per-tree XP pools (melee kills feed Warfare, ranged kills feed Marksman, etc.), which steers players toward the trees that match their activity.
Magic in IridescentCraft is an interlocking economy across six magic mods, gated tier by tier and linked by a cross-mod loot economy.
The progression chain: Botania (T1 entry) → Ars Nouveau (T1 entry through T2 infrastructure) → Iron's Spellbooks (T1 starter through T4 endgame, modular) → Forbidden Arcanus (T3 chokepoint) → Occultism (T3 spirit-binding) → Mahou Tsukai (T4 endgame).
Design intent: each tier brings in new mods without retiring older ones. A T4 mage uses Botania mana flowers, Ars source jars, ISS modular books, F&A Hephaestus Forge, Occultism Marid miners, and Mahou rituals at the same time.
Botania. Starter mana chain (Apothecary → Pure Daisy → entry-tier Mana Pool → Manaweave Cloth). Orechid is T1, restricted by datapack to non-tier-skipping ores.
Iron's Spellbooks. Starter scrolls (random pre-rolled spells), copper spell book, six starter spell types (magic_missile, firebolt, magic_arrow, fang_strike, summon_vex, healing_word). Class-kit Mages start with two pre-NBT-baked scrolls. Village chests and Overworld T1 loot drop usable scrolls.
Ars Nouveau. The novice spell book is T1-craftable (book + iron tool; no Imbuement Chamber needed), and T1 form glyphs seed into chest loot. A new player can inscribe at a Scribes Table on day one.
The cross-mod ink economy starts here: ISS common_ink and uncommon_ink drop from T1 and T2 mobs, so early players can scribe simple spells.
Ars Nouveau (deep). Imbuement Chamber, Arcane Core, ritual brazier, full source-network expansion. The Apprentice spell book unlocks, and the spell-crafting bench is gated behind T2. T2 form glyphs (aoe, underfoot) and mobility/utility effect glyphs seed into Twilight / Blue Skies chest loot.
Botania. Manasteel chain, Mana Spreader fundamentals, Runic Altar, mana diamond and mana pearl transmutation outputs.
Iron's Spellbooks. rare_ink starts dropping; T2 boss runes (fire, ice, nature, protection) appear in T2 boss-drop loot files.
Forbidden Arcanus. Hephaestus Forge (T3-gated recipe). Arcane Crystal (T3-gated worldgen + ore replacement).
Design note (per-item gating): F&A is not gated as a whole mod. Passive items (Aureal bottles, edelwood) leak into the early game on purpose; per-item gating handles the progression-critical chain.
Occultism. Foliot / Djinni / Afrit summon books, Books of Calling, Iesnium chain. The dimensional miner exploit is closed via the icraft_occultism_overrides datapack. Like F&A, Occultism is gated per item, because gating the whole mod would block its passive items.
Iron's Spellbooks. epic_ink, T3 runes (blood, ender, cooldown) and upgrade orbs (fire, ender, lightning) drop from Cataclysm + Stalwart Dungeons + custom-boss loot tables. T3 Diamond Spell Book (modular variant).
Mahou Tsukai. A T4 player-spell mod with no native mob drops. The pack injects Mahou reagents (attuned_emerald, fae_essence, attuned_diamond, kodoku) into T4 boss drops. Cataclysm Ender Guardian, vanilla Warden, and Ender Dragon all contribute Mahou reagents.
Design note: this is the cross-mod synergy peak. A Mage farming bosses progresses five magic mods at once.
Iron's Spellbooks. Netherite Spell Book + seven themed modular variants (Dragonskin, Druidic, Blaze, Evoker, Necronomicon, Villager, Rotten). Legendary ink drops from T4 bosses.
Botania. Gaia Ingot, Gaia Block. The Voidheart Blade is forged from awakened_lichblade (Ancient Remnant T4 drop) at the Mythic Forge using gaia_ingot, icraft_rift_shard, void_fragment, and primordial_essence. The Gaia Guardian is the Botania T4 capstone.
The pack's signature magic system is the Iridescent Modular Spells mod, a custom Forge content mod that connects Tetra's modular-item workbench to Iron's Spellbooks and Ars Nouveau spell books.
Each modular book has 4 module slots (front_cover / back_cover / spine / pages for ISS; front_cover / back_cover / spine / dye for Ars). A slot accepts Tetra material categories (metal, skin, bone, gem, fibre, fabric), and the modules add the same small bonus whatever they are made of (since 2026-10-19: back cover +20 max mana, spine +5 % cooldown reduction, or +5 % mana regen on an Ars book); a cover of a magic material adds that material's own bonus (+5 % a module). Lining improvements (fabric / fibre / skin) layer on top.
Intrinsic stat overlay. Each book has a BookKind (COPPER, IRON, GOLD, DIAMOND, NETHERITE, DRAGONSKIN, DRUIDIC, BLAZE, EVOKER, NECRONOMICON, VILLAGER, ROTTEN, plus three Ars tiers: NOVICE, APPRENTICE, ARCHMAGE) that contributes a baseline stat profile. The Diamond Spell Book is +50 mana / +0.10 spell_power; the Necronomicon is +100 mana / +0.30 spell_power / +50% Necro school. These add to the module and lining bonuses; the book's kind sets its bonus, the modules do not grow with their material (2026-10-19).
Tetra replacement system. Vanilla ISS / Ars spell books convert to modular variants on the next inventory tick. The conversion is transparent, so vanilla books need no recipe stripping and their loot tables need no rewrite.
12 ISS variants + 3 Ars variants = 15 modular spell books in total, each tier-staged and each craftable at the Tetra workbench.
Unified mana pool (2026-05-15). From the player's side, ISS and Ars Nouveau share a single mana pool. Ars's IManaCap is mixin-routed to the ISS MagicData pool: getCurrentMana / getMaxMana read from ISS, removeMana deducts from ISS at half rate (Ars's "reliable spammable" identity: a 50-cost Ars spell deducts 25 ISS mana), and the Ars HUD bar is hidden (the ISS bar is canonical). Magic classes get a larger ISS max_mana from their Origins powers to support sustained casting: from a base of 100, Archmage 250, Elemental, Blessed and Corrupted 200, Battlemage 190, Void Summoner 190. ISS school SP (fire_spell_power, ice_spell_power, etc.) also boosts Ars elemental glyph damage through two handlers (LivingHurtEvent for direct Ars damage types, SpellDamageEvent.Pre for glyph-school-tagged damage). ISS's built-in Apotheosis gems are buffed and folded into the same gem ladder as native Apotheosis gems. See Appendix §M.
Future work: the Phase 7 design adds 6 elemental subclasses (Pyromancer / Cryomancer / Necromancer / Priest / Druid / Stormcaller) on top of the Mage classes, added alongside them rather than replacing them. Each gives +50% to one school with a -10% melee malus (vs Archmage's -50%). Implementation is deferred.
→ Detailed stat profiles, slot definitions, lining attribute mappings: Appendix §E.
Tech in IridescentCraft is a clean four-tier ladder: Create (T1) → Thermal + Industrial Foregoing basic (T2) → Mekanism basic + Refined Storage + IF advanced (T3) → Mekanism advanced + RFTools + Ad Astra (T4).
Each tier opens a new automation paradigm without retiring the previous one. A T4 player runs Create kinetics for cosmetic processing, Thermal phytogenic insolators in greenhouses, Mekanism Digital Miners for resource generation, and Ad Astra rockets for planetary travel, all at the same time.
Available immediately: stress units, crushing wheels, mechanical mixers, deployers, encased fans, plus Pretty Pipes for early item logistics. Nothing gates it; it is the player's first power source.
Crushing wheels run at ~1.5× the ore processing rate. Create's whole feel is engineering puzzles + visible mechanical motion rather than resource numbers go up. The pack uses Create as the T1 baseline because it does not trivialize anything: it shapes how the player thinks about automation before higher-tier mods add raw throughput.
The T2 stage unlocks Thermal Series (Phytogenic Insolator, Smelter, Pulverizer, basic Resonant cells) and IF basic (Block Placer, Block Breaker, basic mob interaction).
The Thermal Pulverizer is the first 2× ore processing, and it pulls the player into RF power generation. The Phytogenic Insolator handles automated farming, Botania flowers included (cross-system synergy). IF basic provides the first non-Create item logistics that need no kinetic stress.
The T3 stage opens the major tech jump:
- Mekanism basic: up to 5× ore processing (Enrichment Chamber → Combiner chain), energy cubes, basic factories.
- Refined Storage: digital storage (controller, grid, drives, crafters).
- IF advanced: Laser Drill, Mob Crusher, the auto-mining stack.
Cross-mod tier-skip blocks ship at T3 to prevent shortcut paths. Mekanism Enriching/Combining/Purifying/Injecting are blocked from converting low-tier inputs to diamond/emerald/netherite_scrap. Create:mixing is blocked from converting copper to osmium ingot. The Botania Orechid datapack sets the diamond and ancient_debris Orechid weights to zero. The Occultism dimensional-miner override keeps Foliot / Djinni miners from producing T3+ ores, a previously open exploit vector.
The T4 stage opens Mekanism advanced (Digital Miner, Fusion Reactor Controller, MekaTool, MekaSuit + 4 pieces, Antiprotonic Nucleosynthesizer, atomic_alloy, SPS, with the advanced chain staged item by item) and RFTools Dimensions (Dimension Builder, Dimension Editor, dimensional_shard_ore at T4 master only).
The advanced-power bargain: Mekanism's machine energy costs are deliberately raised at the top end, so the answer to that cost is the reward chain itself. Fusion and the SPS-to-antimatter run are the rewarding power sources that make advanced Mekanism worth building, and antimatter doubles as the apex reagent that ties the tech endgame into the Mythic chain. Radiation and reactor meltdowns are force-disabled. The stance is dangerous but recoverable: top-tier reactors stay a build-and-tune challenge, not a save-erasing catastrophe.
Ad Astra opens here too. The NASA Workbench is a T4 recipe (netherite ingots + Mekanism Steel Casing + a steel block; until October 2026 it asked for a retired T4 token that nothing gave, so no rocket could be built), and every planet and orbit has its own T4 gate. The 4-tier rocket progression gates each planet behind a rocket tier, and the T4 Glacio rocket needs primordial_essence. Jet Suit recipes are stripped; MekaSuit fills that niche.
The pack's tech-endgame chain is base MekaSuit (T4 entry armor) → MekaSuit Mk2 (post-T4 ascension target), crafted at a crafting table. Mk2 is a per-piece, in-place upgrade: each MekaSuit piece is transformed on its own, consuming that piece plus endgame reagents (Aethersteel, an Antimatter Pellet, Primordial Essence) and returning the same piece, upgraded.
Design intent: this turns the natural Ad Astra "you've reached the last planet" moment into a tangible reward. The upgrade is non-destructive: it preserves the piece's installed modules, stored energy, and enchantments, so the player keeps everything they invested in the base MekaSuit instead of rebuilding from scratch.
Each Ad Astra planet has a unique extracted-element economy. Moon Stone → Helium-3 + Titanium Dust. Mars Stone → Ferric Oxide + Cryogenic Crystal. Venus, Mercury, and Glacio each contribute their own. Recipes route through Create Crushing Wheels, so the planetary loop reuses T1 infrastructure for T4-tier rewards.
Refined Storage gets a special-case dual-path recipe model:
- The tech path uses Mekanism + Thermal materials.
- The magic path uses Botania + Ars Nouveau materials.
- Hybrid bonus: using both yields efficiency benefits.
This is the pack's most explicit cross-system synergy and the proof of the dual-path pillar at the storage layer.
→ Full stage list, cross-mod tier-skip block recipe IDs, Ad Astra rocket recipe matrix: Appendix §B and §G.
Equipment is split into five sub-systems: weapons, armor, curios, modular spell books (covered in Part VII), and the modular-tools workbench. Each follows the same design instinct: a clean role separation between crafted and dropped gear.
Tetra modular (the Tetra + art_of_forging + adtetra stack) is the primary crafted-weapon system: parts-based, customizable, and scaling with material tier. A T2 modular sword is a multi-part build (blade + hilt + guard) using T2 materials, honed at the workbench. T4 modular is the netherite-tier ceiling for crafted weapons. (Older docs called this "Truly Modular"; that mod family is not in the pack, and the Tetra stack fills the crafted-weapon role. See Appendix §F.5.)
Simply Swords is the unique trophy-weapon system: 42 named uniques, boss-drop only. Unique-weapon recipes are stripped. Each unique drops from a specific boss (Tempest from Naga, Soulrender from Lich, Emberblade from Hydra, etc.), and a unique's tier is its boss's tier. Since 2026-10-18 every one has a boss: the last five, kept in reserve until then, drop from Lucifer, Virtue, the Ender Golem and the Void Worm. (Three names the old lists carried, Twilight, Enchanted Estoc and Dreadtide, are not items of the installed Simply Swords and were dropped from them.)
Design intent: the split is clean. Crafted weapons are deterministic (build it from materials, get it); trophy weapons are aspirational (kill the boss, get the unique). A Mage can ignore Simply Swords entirely, and a Hunter can ignore the Tetra crafted weapons entirely. Both reach T4.
Other weapon sub-systems:
- Iron's Spellbooks: staves and spell scrolls (T1 to T4 progression).
- Cataclysm: signature boss weapons from Cataclysm boss drops.
- Mahou Tsukai: T4 ritual-cast weapons.
- Mekanism MekaTool: T4 tech multitool.
- Too Many Bows: 14 named EPIC bows allocated T2 to T4 across chest pools.
- Better Combat: passive animation/feel overhaul, always active.
- Apotheosis affixes: a modifier layer on top of any weapon.
Armor follows the same crafted-vs-dropped split. Modular armor comes from Iridescent Reforging (shipped in the bundled iridescent_tetra_expansion jar), a custom Tetra-armor extension that brings Tetra's modular framework to the armor slot. Players drop any armor (vanilla iron, ISS Cultist Hood, Aether Phoenix, Aquaculture Neptunium, etc.) into a Tetra workbench's input slot, and it is replaced by a Reforged variant with default modules pre-installed. Specialized armor keeps its identity (school spell power, set bonus, Apotheosis affixes, enchantments, Geckolib visual model) through an ItemUpgradeRegistry replacement hook that patches NBT after Tetra's swap. Vanilla armor gets the modular shape with an iron-tier default module. Honing and module upgrades happen at the same workbench. Boss-drop armor is mod-specific:
- Cataclysm Ignitium / Cursium / Witherite armor sets: recipe-stripped, boss-drop only.
- Iron's Spellbooks Pyromancer 4-piece: mob drop.
Iron Jetpacks are ungated from T1; early flight is intentional. Mahou Tsukai defensive spells, MekaSuit Mk2, and the Mythic Forge endgame uniques (Voidheart Blade, Oblivion Aegis, Riftwalker Boots, Oblivion Crown) are T4 specific.
Armor philosophy: layer types should not stack power. A T3 player picks one of Refined Obsidian (Mekanism), Terrasteel (Botania), Diamond (vanilla), or boss-drop (Cataclysm Witherite / Cursium / Ignitium). The combinatorial space is wide enough that the choice itself is the build identity.
Curios drop from tier-appropriate chest loot tables, spread across 4 chest pools by dimension band:
| Pool | Dimensions | Combined drop rate |
|---|---|---|
| T1 | Overworld | ~10% |
| T2 | Twilight, Blue Skies | ~12% |
| T3 | Nether, Undergarden, Deeper Darker (Otherside), the Abyss | ~14% |
| T4 | End, Aether (Deep Aether's biomes included) | ~16% |
Design intent: players can equip almost anything they find; early curio access is rare enough not to break the gating, and it rewards engagement. The one exception is the Class Artifacts set: its 14 class artifacts and the Artifact Piece Pouch are staged at T2 and their 14 Awakening variants at T4 (a decision of April 2026, against early lottery wins). A player without the stage cannot pick one up, carry it or equip it, so they drop only from bosses of their tier: pouches from T2 and T3 bosses, Awakening artifacts from T4 bosses.
The curio mod stack: Artifacts, More Artifacts, Relics, Celestial Artifacts, Elytra Slot. Each contributes a tier of items to the chest pools.
Fight-breaking curios (fire/wither/poison immunities, flight-granting items) are restricted to T2+ chest pools. A T1 player cannot roll a fire-immunity ring from an Overworld dungeon. This is the only "soft gate" on curios, and chest pool composition enforces it, not item bans.
Relics has a leveling system: each Relic earns XP from use and unlocks tiered abilities. The XP investment cost acts as a natural soft gate. Early players cannot afford to max their best Relics; endgame players can.
Tetra is the cross-cutting framework. Nine mod-integrated material categories are wired in: vanilla metals + 27 modded metals + 5 gems + skin / bone / fibre / wool natively from Tetra. The pack ships an icraft_tetra_materials datapack that adds them. Players craft Tetra modular weapons, modular spell books, and modular tools at the same workbench.
This makes the cross-mod material economy feel coherent. A diamond pickaxe head can hold a steel handle with a knightmetal accessory and a fiery cap; the player hones the result at the workbench, then improves it further with linings.
Copper added as a low tier material (2026-05-14). Copper variants now sit between leather and iron on every armor + wand + spell book module that accepts metals. Tetra's material.primary scales copper's stats to ~80% of iron's automatically, without per-module authoring (copper.primary=4 vs iron.primary=5).
Honing system (2026-05-14). Two parallel hone systems share the workbench infrastructure: wand multi-option (4 modules × 3 mutually-exclusive paths × 5 levels), and armor major-slot archetype-gated (4 archetypes × 4 pieces × 5 levels). See Appendix §L.
→ Full curio chest-pool composition, Simply Swords boss allocation, custom-item registry: Appendix §C and §E.
T4 is the starting line for five interlocking endgame meta-loops, not the finish line. Each loop generates progression for the others, so players move between them instead of picking one and stopping.
Three gates structure the T3 → T4 → post-game arc:
-
Lucifer, the T3 → T4 combat capstone. Lucifer is the final boss of the T3 boss-rush (the 100% clear). A unique Lucifer's Token (a second combat door, for an explorer who banked their way up and then fights him) was never built and was retired from the design on 2026-10-17; no other route depends on him. He is the combat capstone, not a universal gate: a non-combat player reaches T4 by banking the 2000-token threshold via Engineering or Magic and never fights him. So at T3 → T4 only, a combat-averse player has exactly one door: a non-combat lane. The pinch point is deliberate (wired as Lucifer's slot on the T3 roster).
-
The End, to be gated behind the Aether (planned). Today the End uses the vanilla stronghold + End-Portal process with Eyes of Ender, staged at T4. The plan replaces the Eye of Ender with an "End Compass" crafted from the Aether's materials (a T4 dimension). The compass would direct the player to an "End Bastion" (reusing the
boss_compasswaystone system), so the End portal could not be targeted until the player has worked the Aether, and the End would be genuinely post-Aether. (Build TBDs: the End Compass itself, the End Bastion structure, the compass→structure mechanic, and the exact material bill.) -
The Ender Dragon, the pack finale. T4 is terminal: there is no further token gate. Defeating the Ender Dragon is the pack finale. The Ad Astra space tier was designed to open after it; since 2026-10-17 it does not, by design: the planets and orbits are T4 dimensions that ask only for the T4 stage and a rocket. (The End is also the only dimension that uncaps its
iridescent_difficultycurve, once the Dragon dies; see Part V.) Killing the Ender Dragon completes the final quest (Finale: The Ender Dragon), the "you beat the pack" trophy moment.
| Loop | What it offers | Gates into |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Oblivion's Rift | Procedural infinite dungeon. Floor depth scales loot quality. The pack's primary endgame activity. | Provides materials for Loop 2 (Mythic Gear). |
| 2. Mythic Gear Chase | Vertical power with diminishing returns and a hard ceiling. Voidheart Blade, Oblivion Aegis, Riftwalker Boots, Oblivion Crown, MekaSuit Mk2, Mythic Catalysts I to V. | Lets the player push deeper into Loop 1. |
| 3. Build Diversity | Horizontal replayability through class/build experimentation. Every class experiences the Rift differently: Berserker rushes trash, Vanguard pushes deeper floors, Void Summoner trivializes some floor modifiers but struggles with Silenced. | Different builds approach Loop 1 differently. |
| 4. The Compendium | Collection, achievements, cosmetic chase. A massive completionist checklist: Bestiary, Boss Chronicle, Rift Records, Gear Collection. | Tracks all four other loops; long-tail completionist target. |
| 5. Creative Endgame | Megabuilding with endgame-exclusive materials and tools. RFTools custom dimensions + Mythic Forge trophies + decorative endgame. | Uses resources from all other loops. |
Soft endpoint: killing the Ender Dragon and completing the final quest chain means "you beat the pack". It is the credits-equivalent moment, with a unique trophy and bragging rights, around hour 150 to 200. The next 200+ hours come from these five loops feeding into each other.
Rifts are the procedural-dungeon endgame. Each Rift run:
- The player crafts a Rift Keystone (T4 reagents: Dragon Heart + Void Essence + Gaia Ingot + Nether Star + Iridescent Rift Shard).
- The Keystone is consumed at a Rift Anchor block to enter a procedurally generated dungeon (RFTools Dimensions is the backbone; structure datapacks fill the content).
- Dungeon depth scales loot quality. Deeper floors drop Iridescent Rift Shard, Void Fragment, and the rare Rift Core.
- Rift floor modifiers randomize each run: Silenced (no spells), Disarmed (no ranged), Thorned (reflect damage), Volatile (mob explosions on death), etc. Some modifiers hard-counter specific builds; others trivialize them.
- Death inside the Rift returns the player to base; the keystone is consumed regardless of completion.
The Void Coffer lets the player bank items mid-Rift without losing them on death. (Not in the game: its recipe is closed until the Rift exists.)
Compendium tracking captures every Rift-shard pickup, Rift Keystone craft, Rift Core acquisition, and Primordial Essence acquisition. Floor depth records feed into Loop 4.
The Mythic Forge is the uniques-crafting endgame. Crafted from Iridescent Rift Shard + Mekanism Teleportation Core + Crying Obsidian + Steel Casing + Netherite, it is the workbench for six endgame products:
- Mythic Catalysts I to V: escalating power tokens used as "apply this Mythic effect to gear" reagents. The top two tiers (IV and V) require an Antimatter Pellet apex reagent, which makes the engineering endgame (the SPS-to-antimatter run) a hard gate on the highest Mythic catalysts. It is one of several deliberate antimatter sinks, alongside the per-piece MekaSuit Mk2 upgrade and a Codex pellet-to-token exchange (capped) that lets a pure tech player convert antimatter into progression tokens.
- Mythic Reforge Token: an Apotheosis-style gear-modifier reset (3 Primordial Essences). (Not in the game: its recipe is closed until the Rift exists.)
- Voidheart Blade (sword): base
simplyswords:awakened_lichblade(Ancient Remnant T4 drop). On-kill damage stacking. - Oblivion Aegis (chestplate): base netherite chestplate. Death-delay protection.
- Riftwalker Boots: base netherite boots. Teleport + speed.
- Oblivion Crown (helmet): base netherite helmet. Wallhack vision + first-strike bonus.
All four Mythic Uniques use Rift Blueprints as a slot ingredient. Blueprints drop from Rift completions, which ties Loops 1 and 2 together. (Not in the game: the Rift is designed, not built, so nothing drops a Rift Blueprint. Since 2026-10-19 the four Unique recipes, the Rift Keystone, the Void Coffer and the Mythic Reforge Token are closed until the Rift exists; the Mythic Forge and the five catalysts still craft.)
Endgame replayability comes from respeccing class and running the Rift again in a different way. Each of the 13 classes experiences the Rift very differently:
- Berserker rushes through trash but struggles with kiting floor guardians.
- Ranger handles floor guardians easily but gets overwhelmed by trash swarms.
- Vanguard is slow but nearly unkillable, and pushes deeper floors than DPS classes.
- Void Summoner trivializes some floor modifiers (Thorned, Volatile) but struggles with Silenced.
- Some Rift floor modifiers hard-counter specific builds (Silenced = bad for Archmage, Disarmed = bad for Ranger).
The Compendium (Loop 4) includes class-specific Rift challenges that reward completing the same content with different builds.
Why respec exists at endgame: the Class Altar respec cost (1 boss drop + 30 levels) is sized for endgame players. The intended cadence is respeccing 5 to 6 times over a long playthrough: the player tries Berserker, then Vanguard, then Void Summoner, each on a fresh Rift run.
The Compendium is the completionist endgame: a massive in-game checklist of everything the player has accomplished, implemented as a quest-book chapter + custom advancement triggers. Every Compendium entry has a tangible reward: cosmetic, functional, or both.
Bestiary (enemy tracking). Every unique enemy type is tracked: ~80 to 100 mob types across all dimensions.
| Milestone | Kills | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Discovered | 1 | Entry appears in Bestiary |
| Studied | 25 | Mob's HP, damage, and weaknesses visible (Jade HUD) |
| Expert | 100 | +5% damage vs this mob type (permanent passive) |
| Master | 500 | +10% damage vs this mob type + cosmetic trophy item |
A Champion Bestiary was designed to track the affix combinations of Champions Unofficial's elite mobs (a "Champion Scholar" title and a Champion's Eye curio that shows Champion affixes from 16 blocks away). Champions Unofficial was removed on 2026-04-07, so it has nothing to track.
Boss Chronicle. Tracks every boss killed and the per-kill scaling it was killed at (your own counts: /icraft bosskills).
| Milestone | Reward |
|---|---|
| First kill of any boss | Chronicle entry + boss lore text |
| Kill every T2 boss | Title: Dungeon Delver |
| Kill every T3 boss | Title: Realm Walker |
| Kill every T4 boss | Title: God-Killer + unique cape cosmetic |
| Kill Ancient Remnant at 10th+ difficulty | Title: Rift Conqueror + Rift Trophy (placeable, animated) |
| Kill every boss at 5th+ difficulty | Veteran's Medal curio (+3% all stats, +10% XP) |
| Kill every boss at 10th+ difficulty | Legend's Insignia curio (+5% all stats, +15% XP, +10% loot) |
Rift Records. Tracks the deepest floor reached.
| Milestone | Reward |
|---|---|
| Reach Floor 5 | Title: Rift Diver |
| Reach Floor 10 | Rift Compass curio (shows Rift loot tier of current floor) |
| Reach Floor 15 | Title: Rift Veteran + cosmetic armor overlay |
| Reach Floor 20 | Title: Void Walker + Riftwalker Boots blueprint guaranteed |
| Reach Floor 25 | Title: Rift Breaker + unique weapon cosmetic (void aura) |
| Reach Floor 30 | Title: The Unfathomable + animated void armor cosmetic set |
| Complete a run with every floor modifier active | Title: Masochist |
Gear Collection. Tracks the unique items discovered, equipped, and crafted.
| Milestone | Reward |
|---|---|
| Equip 1 Legendary affix item | Collection entry |
| Equip items from every material tier | Title: Well-Equipped |
| Obtain all 4 Mythic Unique blueprints | Title: Mythic Collector + display pedestal recipe |
| Craft all 4 Mythic Unique items | Title: Mythic Forgemaster + Mythic Forge operates 50% faster |
| Obtain a "perfect" affix item (max affixes, all Legendary) | Achievement entry |
100% Compendium completion is the "true endgame", estimated at 400+ hours. It requires mastering every class, clearing deep Rift floors, killing every boss at high Progressive difficulty, collecting all Mythic items, and exploring everything.
T4 unlocks RFTools Dimensions: players can create custom dimensions with controlled biomes, terrain, and lighting. Custom dimension templates unlock through Compendium milestones.
- Decorative trophies: Compendium milestones unlock placeable trophy blocks (animated boss heads, glowing Rift floor markers, class mastery statues, dimensional trophies).
- Megabuilding materials: endgame-exclusive materials (Aethersteel blocks, Gaia Ingot blocks, planetary stones, ascension sigils) become decorative palette options.
- Ongoing engagement: maintaining a custom dimension costs RF, so endgame megabuilders stay engaged with the tech systems.
After T4, Glacio and the Mythic Forge endgame, the player can ascend: they lose some progression but gain permanent stat multipliers and access to ascension-only content.
Ascension consumes Iridescent Rift Shard + Void Fragment + Gaia Ingot + Cataclysm Void Core + Cataclysm Monstrous Horn. Five ascension levels (A1 to A5) are available. Mob HP and damage scale 1.2× per level (A5 = 2.0× HP, 2.0× damage on top of dimension multipliers). The pack's late-game endgame is "how high can you ascend before the world breaks you?"
Design intent (irreversibility): ascension is per-character and irreversible. There is no toggling it on and off to farm easy content with A5 rewards. Stat bonuses are percentage-based, so they keep pace with scaling enemies without trivializing early content.
The Ascension system is designed to layer multiple difficulty + reward features on top of the base scaling. Some have shipped; the others are deferred design.
| Feature | What it does | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Mob HP/damage scaling | 1.2× per ascension level, multiplicative with dimension scaling | Shipped |
| Stat bonus per level | Permanent +5% per stat per A-level, capped at A5 | Shipped |
| Ascension Sigils | Curio item per A-level, occupies a curio slot, competes with other curios | Shipped |
| Nemesis System | Mobs that kill the player gain a "nemesis" tag + stats; killing them grants bonus rewards | Future |
| Corrupted Champions | At A2+, Champions were to roll for "Corrupted" status: extra affix + special loot table (designed for Champions Unofficial, removed on 2026-04-07) | Future |
| Rift Echoes | At A3+, 20% chance after a boss death spawns a shadow copy with reduced HP + 2 random Rift modifiers | Future |
| Night Raids | At A4+, scheduled wave events every 3rd night | Future |
| Corruption Zones | At A2+, scripted zones with area effects; A5 zones persist and expand | Future |
| Gauntlet Challenges | Weekly-rotating quest set with KubeJS-driven rotation | Future |
| Oblivion Trial | Special RFTools dimension with forced sequential floors, no Void Coffer banking, death = clear inventory | Future |
Implementation note: the "Future" features above exist as design specs, not yet as runtime systems. Each has a documented fallback simplification (e.g., Nemesis System → flat +XP bonus on death recovery; Corruption Zones → static pre-placed zones; Rift Echoes → flat % material drop chance from all bosses at A3+) that keeps the core value without the full implementation.
→ Mythic Forge recipe matrix, ascension scaling formulas, Rift floor loot tables: Appendix §E.
The pack's death model is inventory-kept, durability-cost. Players never lose items on death; the cost is durability damage to equipped armor and the held weapon, scaled by the dimension where the death happened.
- Vanilla drop everything punishes dimensional exploration too harshly for a pack designed around 9 dimensions.
- Keep everything for free undervalues death entirely.
The middle path, scaled durability damage, keeps the player's gear in their inventory but takes a percentage hit that scales with dimension difficulty. A T1 Overworld death is a slap on the wrist (10% durability on iron = cheap repair). A T4 End death is significant (25% durability on netherite = expensive but capped repair).
This is the Hytale-inspired twist. At 0 durability, items become inert (they cannot deal damage, provide armor, or mine) but stay in the inventory with a "(Broken)" tooltip indicator. Repair restores them to functional gear.
Design intent: this removes the "I'm afraid to use my best gear" syndrome. The worst case is "you have to repair before using", not "you destroyed your gear."
Repurposed from Ensorcellation as the pack's most valuable enchant:
| Level | Effect |
|---|---|
| I | 50% of death durability loss prevented |
| II | 75% of death durability loss prevented |
| III | 100% durability loss prevented + items cannot go inert from death |
A treasure enchant that needs high Arcana. Soulbound III completely negates the death penalty for that item, which makes it the endgame insurance policy.
→ Per-dimension durability loss scale and repair-cost cap formula: Appendix §D.5.
The pack ships two complementary systems under one identity: Heracles (the active quest tracker, and the progression engine) and the Patchouli Codex (lore + reference book, the documentation skin). Together they are the Iridescent Codex of Part III.
Besides tracking quests, Heracles is the engine that runs the token economy (Part III). Its item submission, kill tracking, and stage granting handle three load-bearing roles:
- Token submission + tier advance (the gate). Submitting Engineering / Magic / Exploration / Combat tokens banks them toward the tier threshold (500 / 1000 / 2000); reaching it grants the next AStages tier flag. This is the progression gate: Heracles token submission is one of the two advance routes (the other is the boss-rush %). Earlier docs called the quest tree "NOT a progression gate"; under the locked framework, it is.
- Boss-rush tracking. Heracles tracks per-tier boss kills for the boss-rush route (80 / 90 / 100% clear → auto-advance, only with the tier below held). Boss-hunting quests also gate side rewards (Mythic Catalyst recipes, the Riftwalker Boots schematic, etc.).
- Discoverability + optional rewards. The quest tree doubles as the player-facing index of pack content (every dimension, boss, and system gets a quest pointing at it), and it adds food-diversity, automation, and exploration completionism rewards.
Design intent: the Patchouli Codex is the documentation skin; Heracles is the mechanism. A player still advances by doing the things (submitting materials, killing bosses), and Heracles is the surface that receives those submissions and grants the tier. This supersedes the older "quests are a purely optional parallel rail; a KubeJS counter auto-grants tiers" model: the token economy is the gate, and Heracles runs it. (The legacy
milestone_detection.jssingle-kill / cumulative-10 / craft-one-item counter is retired; only its boss-kill tracking survives into the Combat lane.)
The book is organized as a hub-and-spoke layout with branching paths inside each tier chapter. Skill-point rewards are tuned so completing one full path per tier covers the player's needs; completing multiple paths grants bonus skill points.
| Chapter | Status | Skill points (min → max) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome | Always available | 3 | Tutorial, character introduction, codex orientation |
| Tier 1 | Always available | 5 → 15 | 4 lanes (Engineering / Magic / Exploration / Combat). Min single-lane; max all lanes + hybrid bonuses |
| Tier 2 | Locks until T1 complete | ~5 → 20 | Same lane structure, more depth |
| Tier 3 | Locks until T2 complete | ~5 → 20 | Same; the T3 → T4 Lucifer combat pinch sits here |
| Tier 4 | Locks until T3 complete | ~5 → 15 | Endgame entry |
| Crucible | Locks until T4 complete | 5 | Mythic Forge milestones, Rift records, Compendium-aligned challenges |
| Community | Always visible | 0 | Server-wide buff observation quests; no individual reward |
| Prestige | Locks until ascension unlocked | 0 | Ascension-specific tracking; bonuses are A-level perks, not skill points |
Quests across all chapters are designed to give ~80 to 95 skill points in total; in the game no quest gives skill points yet (quest rewards are items, XP and commands). Combined with mob-kill XP across the six skill trees, a heavy endgame player reaches ~120 to 150 total skill points (the six trees hold 169 nodes, one point each).
Each tier chapter follows the same hub structure:
- Tier baseline gate: the central node, always required.
- Forked Choice (T2+): a split into 2 to 3 paths (Tech, Magic, Combat). Each path has 4 to 6 quests.
- Pillar Choice (T3+): within a path, the player picks a specialization (e.g., the Magic path branches further into Botania-focus / Ars-focus / F&A-focus).
- Mythic Choice (T4): an endgame goal set chosen by the player (e.g., "complete 3 Mythic Uniques" vs. "reach Rift Floor 20" vs. "kill every T4 boss at 10th+ difficulty").
- Bonus quests: completing additional paths beyond the player's primary one grants extra skill points + loot boxes.
Locked chapters prevent overwhelm. A T1 player sees only the Welcome and Tier 1 chapters; the rest unlock as tiers complete.
Anti-overwhelm design: the quest book is a guide, not a cage. Each quest's description teaches the player about the system it involves, so the quest book doubles as documentation.
On ascension, all quest progress resets. Skill points already earned are tracked separately in Pufferfish's persistent data, and the quest reset does not affect them. The KubeJS prestige handler marks which quest-sourced skill points have been earned, so they cannot be earned again on later ascensions.
The Codex is the lore and reference layer. The pack ships a custom Patchouli content jar with 14 categories and 113 entries (as of 2026-10-18), among them:
- Choosing Your Build: origin / race / class guide for new players.
- Origins Guide: full 13-origin breakdown with abilities and tradeoffs.
- Classes: combat-role guide to 10 of the 13 classes.
- Progressive Difficulty / Enchantments / Affixes: combat system reference.
- Tier System: what each tier unlocks, kept in sync with this design doc.
- Mods Overview: per-mod role and tier placement.
Codex entries are advancement-gated: entries about T4 content show only after the player has unlocked T4. This keeps the codex spoiler-light for early players while it still serves as the canonical in-game reference.
The Patchouli jar carries a bytecode patch that disables resource-pack enforcement on the codex book.
→ Appendix §J for the patched-jar reference.
The loot economy is the most distributed system in the pack: 322 references to ISS alone, 88 entities with explicit LootJS rules, 4 dimension-banded chest pools, 10 boss-drop allocation files. This part summarizes the design intent; the exact tables live in the appendix.
The pack's most distinctive loot mechanic is the Iron's Spellbooks ink / rune / upgrade-orb economy, spread across every boss tier. Every dimension's bosses contribute reagents to the shared ISS ecosystem:
| Tier | Reagents |
|---|---|
| T1 and T2 mobs | common_ink + uncommon_ink. Mostly Alex's Mobs and Twilight Forest mobs. |
| T2 bosses | rare_ink + T2 runes (fire, ice, nature, protection) + tier-themed Simply Swords uniques. |
| T3 bosses | epic_ink + T3 runes (blood, ender, cooldown) + upgrade orbs (fire, ender, lightning). |
| T4 bosses | legendary_ink + Mahou reagents (attuned_emerald, attuned_diamond, fae_essence, kodoku). |
Mahou Tsukai gains the most from this connective tissue: it has no native mob drops, so the pack injects Mahou reagents into other mods' bosses (Cataclysm Ender Guardian, vanilla Warden, Ender Dragon all contribute Mahou reagents). This makes Mahou a viable T4 magic mod for combat-focused players.
Curio, artifact, relic, and spell-book chest loot is distributed across 4 tier-banded pools:
| Pool | Dimensions | Combined drop rate | Pool size |
|---|---|---|---|
| T1 | Overworld | ~10% | ~19 items |
| T2 | Twilight, Blue Skies | ~12% | ~31 items |
| T3 | Nether, Undergarden, Deeper Darker (Otherside), the Abyss | ~14% | ~38 items |
| T4 | End, Aether (Deep Aether's biomes included) | ~16% | ~33 items |
Per-tier rates rise modestly as the player progresses, signaling you're getting better stuff. The per-item rate is the combined rate divided by pool size, so each individual item is roughly a 0.3 to 0.5% chance per chest. Rolls are independent per item.
Most structures pull only from the four dimensional pools above. Marquee structures (high-profile, theme-coded landmarks the player travels to deliberately) get an additional layer: a small (10 to 15 item) themed pool curated to match the structure's lore, layered on top of the dimensional baseline.
Marquee chests get the themed pool layered on top of the dimensional baseline. The themed pool rate is calibrated at ~70% of the tier rate (~7% T1, ~8.4% T2, ~9.8% T3, ~11.2% T4). The combined per-chest rate at marquees is therefore ~1.7× the tier rate (~17% T1, ~20% T2, ~24% T3, ~27% T4); generic chests stay at the tier rate (~10/12/14/16%). Players who seek out marquee landmarks are rewarded with drops that are both more frequent and more thematic, which fits the "player-intentional" design criterion. The themed pool dominates by flavor (curated, theme-coherent items), while the dimensional baseline adds background variety.
Marquee status requires three criteria:
- Distinct theme. A coherent lore identity (magic / aquatic / sculk / piglin / fire / ancient / etc.) that maps to artifact-mod content.
- Player-intentional. Players seek the structure out; it is not generic ambient loot.
- Theme-appropriate inventory. At least 8 artifacts in the catalog fit the theme.
Theme overrides act as flavor, not as power escalation. Per-item rates inside the themed pool are scaled to the dimension's tier (the pool adds about 70% of the tier rate). A T1 marquee chest does not gate stronger artifacts than a generic T1 chest, only more theme-coherent ones.
The fight-breaking-curio soft gate from Part IX still applies: regardless of theme, T1/T2 marquee pools may not contain fight-breaking curios (fire/wither/poison immunities, flight-granting items). Those remain T2+/T4-only by composition.
ISS spellbooks (copper_spell_book, apprentice_spell_book etc.) appear at a cap of 2% per marquee chest, because the starter kit already solves the "hard to start magic" onboarding problem that justified higher legacy rates. ISS scrolls are uncapped and remain a primary mage-progression vector.
Cataclysm-themed structures are left out of the marquee roster on purpose: Cataclysm boss drops (cataclysm_boss_drops.js) already cover Cataclysm flavor, and marquee pools on top would double the coverage.
→ Marquee roster, theme definitions, and per-structure item lists: Appendix §N.
Boss-specific drops live in ten dedicated files under kubejs/server_scripts/loot/:
| File | Coverage |
|---|---|
iss_boss_drops.js |
5 ISS bosses + ISS mob types (cryomancer, pyromancer) |
iss_boss_first_kill.js |
Guaranteed first-kill drops (Necronomicon from Dead King, Evoker Spell Book from Archevoker) |
cataclysm_boss_drops.js |
8 Cataclysm bosses with ISS reagent + Simply Swords drops |
twilight_boss_drops.js |
8 Twilight bosses with ISS reagents + Simply Swords uniques |
blue_skies_drops.js |
4 Blue Skies bosses + Runic Arc allocation |
alexsmobs_drops.js |
21 Alex's Mobs entities (with mimicream nerf to 1%) |
stalwart_dungeons_drops.js |
7 nether mini-bosses |
mahou_synergy_drops.js |
14 cross-mod boss → Mahou reagent drops |
dimensional_boss_drops.js |
11 cross-dimensional bosses (Aether, Deep Aether, Undergarden, Mutant Monsters, Warden) |
terramity_boss_drops.js |
7 Terramity non-gun melee weapons |
Boss-drop tier integrity: the following items are recipe-stripped and absent from every chest pool. They exist only as boss drops or through bespoke crafting.
- Simply Swords uniques: boss-drop only.
- Cataclysm boss-set armor (Knight, Ignitium, Cursium, Witherite): boss-only.
- MekaSuit Mk2: its Primordial Essence drops only from late bosses (the Ender Dragon, the Gaia Guardian, the Ancient Remnant, the Ender Guardian).
- Custom mythic uniques (Voidheart Blade, Oblivion Aegis, Riftwalker Boots, Oblivion Crown): Mythic Forge crafting only.
- Awakening artifacts (rpgseteffects): direct T4 boss drops only (the loot pouch table strips them at T2).
→ Full 88-entity boss → loot mapping with drop chances: Appendix §C.
Four smaller systems, grouped here. Each has its own progression curve, but the curves are mostly independent of the main tier system.
| Tier | Storage | Transport |
|---|---|---|
| T1 | Sophisticated Backpacks (iron), Storage Drawers (basic) | Pretty Pipes, Create belts |
| T2 | Sophisticated upgrades (steel), Drawers upgrades | Thermal Ducts, IF basic transport |
| T3 | Refined Storage (digital), Sophisticated (diamond) | XNet, IF advanced |
| T4 | RS advanced (Infinity Booster, Extra Disks), Sophisticated (netherite) | Mekanism QIO, RFTools |
EnderChests / EnderStorage are gated to T4: cross-dimensional item transfer is endgame, not a starter convenience.
Flux Networks are ungated. Cross-dimensional RF is acceptable as a server-bootstrapping convenience.
XP is plentiful, with many things to spend it on.
Sources. Mob kills (dimension-multiplied), XP from Crops, boss kills, quest rewards, villager emerald-to-XP trades, cooking and crafting XP.
Sinks. JustLevelingFork leveling, Pufferfish Skills investment, Apotheosis enchanting (flat-cost, not exponential), Relic leveling, anvil operations (Easy Anvils reduces but does not eliminate cost), Reforging.
Design intent: the XP-accessibility mods (Tax Free Levels, Easy Anvils, Easy Magic, Table of Experience) are intentional. The sinks are what matter: players should always have something worth investing XP in.
Free teleportation philosophy: exploration should feel liberating, not punishing.
- Waystones: finding and activating them is free in all dimensions. Crafting a new waystone is expensive at all tiers (rare custom boss drops). Waystone Towers generate naturally as a fast-travel network. Cross-dimensional teleport works freely between activated waystones.
- Iron Jetpacks: T1 (low-tier), better with material tier. Early flight is intentional.
- Icarus: T3-gated.
- Origins flight: ungated, intentional.
- Elytra Slot: available when an elytra is obtained (T4, naturally from the End).
Food diversity is a major progression system: diversity = HP bonuses = survival in harder dimensions.
The mod stack: Hunger Overhaul (faster drain), Spice of Life: Carrot Edition (diverse-eating HP bonuses), Farmer's Delight + addons (complex cooking), Pam's HarvestCraft 2 (hundreds of crops), Cooking for Blockheads (kitchen multiblock), Brewin' and Chewin' (fermentation), Simple Farming, Sleep Hunger.
Design intent (a natural soft gate): all food and farming is ungated from T1, with no crop or recipe staging. Players who diversify gain Spice of Life HP bonuses; players who eat only steak struggle in T3+ dimensions because they miss those HP bonuses. The best food diversity requires dimensional ingredients (Nether's Delight = T3, Alex's Delight = mid-tier). Cooking is a parallel progression that rewards engagement without hard-blocking.
Both are completely ungated from T1. The pack's stance: building and QoL features should never feel restricted, because they make the world more livable, not more powerful.
Building mods. Chipped, Macaw's suite (Bridges, Fences, Furniture, Roofs, Trapdoors), Decorative Blocks, Decorative LGBT Wall Flags, Valhelsia Furniture, Domum Ornamentum, ConnectedTexturesMod, Connected Glass, chisels-and-bits, Structurize.
QoL mods. JourneyMap, Jade, AppleSkin, Mouse Tweaks, Controlling, Inventory HUD+, Overflowing Bars, Fast Leaf Decay, TrashSlot, Trash Cans, FTB Ultimine, FTB Chunks, FTB Essentials, No Chat Reports, Simple Voice Chat, all performance mods (Embeddium, ModernFix, etc.).
These mods support the pack's expert-lite identity: powerful tooling, low overhead, no busywork.
For the live implementation status of every system in the pack, see the Implementation Status table on Home. The table lists every major system, sub-system, and mod integration with an Implemented / In Progress / Planned status flag.
Source-of-truth split:
- The status table is authoritative for "what is shipped."
- This document is authoritative for "what is intended."
- The two stay loosely synchronized: when intent changes, this doc updates; when implementation changes, the status table updates and the changelog logs the change.
For per-mod balance audit verdicts (which mods are GREENLIT, LIGHT POLISH, MEDIUM REWORK, etc.), see the private contributor-only IridescentCraft-internal repo's audits/ directory. That repo is the living document for ongoing balance work.
All numerical data, recipe state, drop tables, mod rosters, custom-item registries, KubeJS script index, and bytecode-patch references live in Master-Design-Appendix.
Getting Started
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- Progression Overview
- Classes and Races
- Systems Overview
- Tetra Materials
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