Build a civilization, one ant at a time

Catch wild ants with Tweezers, settle a Queen in a Terrarium, and watch her colony grow: eggs, larvae and thousands of workers. Put them to work foraging, farming and hunting, evolve them into iron, diamond and netherite ants, breed hybrids, and engineer the perfect Queen in the Genetic Laboratory.

Colonies are simulated as numbers on the server, so even a colony of thousands costs almost nothing; the ants you see are pictures of it.

Living colonies

• A Terrarium is a whole colony: a Queen, eggs, larvae, workers, food and health. It works on its own.
• Chambers grow it: place them against the Terrarium and they join into one glass build. Nest Chambers house more ants, Foraging Sites send workers out for resources, Harvesting Sites let farmer species grow food, Hunting Grounds let hunter species kill mobs for their drops (no mob is ever spawned), and Storage and Queen Chambers keep the finds and raise new Queens.
• Climate matters: each species likes temperate, cold, hot, underground or nether conditions. A block under the Terrarium sets its climate.
• Colony stages from a handful of ants to a metropolis: bigger colonies find rarer things.

46 species

• 16 wild species, each in its own biomes with nests to raid: Common, Wood, Stone, Snow, Desert, Farmer, Jungle, Swamp, Savanna, Shore, Blossom, Pale, Badlands, the hunting Army Ant, the Nether's Warped Ant and the End's Chorus Ant.
• Evolve them by feeding the Queen: iron, copper, coal, gold, redstone, lapis, amethyst, diamond, emerald, netherite, fire, soul, ender and more.
• 11 hybrids from crossing Queens in a Queen Chamber: Crystal Wood, Mechanical Miner, Honeypot, Reef, Sculk, Excavator and others.
• Endgame: the Wither Ant (Soul Ants fed a Nether Star) and the Dragon Ant (Ender Ants fed the dragon's breath).
• 13 more turn on with other mods' ores: tin, lead, silver, uranium, osmium, zinc and more (MachinaOpus, Mekanism, Create, Thermal, Immersive Engineering, AE2).

Progression through the dimensions

• The Nether's ants evolve only in a Terrarium in the Nether, the End's only in the End. Bring your colony there in Test Tubes, evolve it, and bring it home.
• The Chitin ladder: Hardened Chitin (Blast Furnace), Infernal Chitin (the Nether) and Void Chitin (the End) gate the upgrades and the highest genetics.
• Tier IV upgrades, the endgame: Void Chitin and netherite.
• 27 advancements, with a path through the Nether and the End.

Genetics

Every Queen has ten traits (productivity, egg laying, food use, resistance and more), and her daughters inherit them with variation. There are 31 mutations, good and bad. The FE-powered Genetic Laboratory raises traits, rerolls them, adds and purges mutations, and copies a Queen's genes.

The world

• Giant anthills: rare mounds over tunnels dug deep into the ground, with loot, soldiers that defend them and a Queen to catch.
• Nether anthills: the same nest dug into the Nether's floor, in soul soil and blackstone, home to Fire Ants.
• Home nests: pick up a wild nest with Silk Touch and place it at home. Its ants tend and harvest your crops within 10 blocks, replant them and carry the harvest inside, for hoppers and pipes to take out.

Gear and companions

• Chitin tools, armor and shield: iron-tier gear of overlapping scales. The helmet is an ant's head with antennae, and in the full set wild ants take you for one of their own.
• Guard Ants: a hunter colony gives up some of its ants for a tamed Guard Ant that follows you and fights for you, as strong as the colony's genetics.

Made for automation and modpacks

• Comparator outputs, and redstone to pause job sites and machines.
• Items and FE move through any mod's pipes and cables (tested with MachinaOpus).
• Species, evolutions, hybrids, mutations, lab costs, ant food and loot are all data packs; a server config sets every number. A full modpack and KubeJS guide is in the source repository.

Explained in game

The Terrarium's Info page shows what its ants find and hunt, the climate they need and what they evolve into. The Ant Identification Book has how-to-play pages and every species.

Getting started

1. Craft Tweezers and Test Tubes.
2. Find a wild nest and use the Tweezers on it (an empty Test Tube in your inventory) until you catch a Queen.
3. Craft a Terrarium, put the Queen and some Ant Food in it, and watch the colony start.
4. Add chambers against it as it grows. JEI or EMI shows every recipe and evolution.

Requirements

• Minecraft 26.3, NeoForge 26.3.0.101 or newer, Java 25.
• Needed on both the server and the client. Works in single player and on servers.

Optional companions

Links

• Source code and full documentation: GitHub
• Bug reports and ideas: Issues
• Gameplay guide · Modpack guide

You may use Ant Colonies in any modpack.