1.3.0 — Seven new ultimates

Holy and Eldritch got their second ultimates in 1.2.0. With seven more, every school now has two, and the set stands at eighteen. Each new one was built to sit beside the original in its school, not on top of it: a different question answered with the same school's power.

The one-Apex-spell-per-book rule from 1.1.0 still applies: pick the one you are bringing.

The new spells

Thousand Blades (Evocation) — A wall of sixty-four golden gates opens behind you and empties itself: a hundred and twenty giant blades over eight seconds, each one drawn point first and bending in a long arc toward one of the sixteen nearest hostiles. Near the end a great gate opens over the thickest of the crowd and a sword thirty blocks long comes down the diagonal into them. Mana 540 (+115), cooldown 175 s, power 22 (+6).

Phoenix (Fire) — A bird of fire climbs out of a pillar of flame and flies two laps over the target — wide, then tight — leaving two burning rings on the ground. Then it climbs, folds its wings and dives into the middle, and the explosion gives the bird back one last time before it comes apart into embers. Mana 560 (+115), cooldown 180 s, power 21 (+6).

Ice Age (Ice) — The sky goes dark, an aurora unrolls across it, and a blizzard comes down as a single vortex seventy blocks tall while frost runs out over a field fifty-six blocks across. Everything hostile inside is chilled and slowly frozen solid while spears of frost fall out of the storm. Then the vortex draws in on itself and the field shatters at absolute zero — 35% harder on anything frozen solid. Mana 600 (+120), cooldown 190 s, power 22 (+6).

Thunder Dragon (Lightning) — A dragon of lightning a hundred and fifty blocks long swims a ring under a storm, spitting twelve strikes at the creatures below, each wider than the last. Then it climbs, hangs, and dives head first onto the crowd, its whole length pouring into the impact. Mana 580 (+115), cooldown 190 s, power 20 (+6).

Crimson Threads (Blood) — Blood rises around you into a beating heart thirty-four blocks overhead, and it puts a thread into every hostile within forty blocks. For eight seconds it drinks on every beat — harder for every other thread it holds — and pours 35% of what it drinks back into you. Then every thread snaps, tearing out of what it was in, and the heart comes down into you: absorption scaled to what it drank, strength, regeneration, and a shockwave that throws everything near you back. The only ultimate in the set built to keep its caster alive. Mana 580 (+115), cooldown 180 s, power 20 (+6).

Dimension Cut (Ender) — A hairline of light traces itself a hundred blocks across your aim, and then it is cut: a stroke of white light runs the length of it faster than the eye, and everything on the line is cleaved through armour. The cut opens into a tear in the world, black and full of stars, that drags everything near it back onto the line for three seconds — and snaps shut as a second cut. Mana 560 (+110), cooldown 170 s, power 22 (+6).

Full Bloom (Nature) — Vines of light twist out of the ground into a stem forty-six blocks tall and open into a flower of light. For nine seconds it sheds pollen over a field fifty blocks across: hostiles are poisoned, slowed and worn down, with a wave of pollen every two seconds, while you and your allies are healed. Then its heart bursts and the petals drift away. Mana 560 (+110), cooldown 180 s, power 20 (+6).

Made of energy

The creatures and shapes in the new spells are not sculptures. The phoenix is streaming flame holding the shape of a bird, the dragon is a bolt of lightning from head to tail, the heart of Crimson Threads is blood holding itself together — soft-edged, moving, never a hard outline.

Ice Age, Crimson Threads and Dimension Cut also darken the sky while they last — a polar night, a blood dusk, a violet stillness — so their light reads in broad daylight, and the sky clears again when they end.

Damage rebalance

Every ultimate was measured the same way — total damage at level one to one target standing in the middle — and the outliers brought back into line. Broad area spells now sit around 100–150 at level one, single-target specialists around 200–250.

All other spells are unchanged. The server-wide damageMultiplier in the config still scales everything at once.

Shader packs

Every new spell has been checked with a shader pack (Oculus) as well as without one. Where a pack takes something away — packs draw their own sky, so the darkened skies above cannot appear under one — the spell falls back to a version built for daylight rather than breaking.

Also in this release

• Fourteen new advancements and seven new damage types, each with its own death message.
• Dimension Cut's damage type is tagged minecraft:bypasses_armor.
• Fixed: The Colosseum could kill its own caster. Its health cost was dealt as damage, so anything that modifies damage — a ring that doubles damage taken, or effects that scale damage with spell power — also inflated the price, and with enough of them a fifth of your health became more than all of it. The cost is now taken straight off the health bar: exactly 20% of maximum health, absorption first, never your last half-heart, and untouched by any modifier. Thanks to the player who reported it.
• Fixed: the Thousand Blades tooltip said the blades were shared between the ten nearest targets; it is sixteen.
• English and Korean text for everything new.

Updating

Drop the new jar in and delete the old one, from any earlier version. No registry names changed and nothing needs a new world. If you play with a shader pack, nothing needs configuring.