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

Overview


Loader	Fabric
Minecraft	1.20.1
Status	0.1.0-alpha
Recommended	Patchouli (in-game Epoch Survival Guide on first join)

In one playthrough you will:

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

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

Early survival

Harvest rework

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

Hunger and the first nights

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

Shelter and sleep

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

State	What it means
EXPOSED	Open sky / weak cover — slowness, mining fatigue, extra exhaustion; prolonged exposure adds weakness
PARTIAL	Some cover — lighter penalties
INDOORS	Roof + walls — safe from exposure debuffs

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

Time, nights, and scaling

Epoch days

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

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

Mob visual scale can increase with difficulty (configurable).

Weapon progression

Custom tiers

Full tool and armor sets for:

Tier	Material	Notes
Copper	Copper ingots	First Epoch weapons; gates iron crafts
Steel	`epoch:steel_ingot`	Mid-game upgrade
Scarlet	`epoch:scarlet_crystal` from scarlet ore	High-tier overworld/endgame bridge
Stellar	`epoch:stellar_fragment` from Ender Dragon (3–5 drops)	Top tier; exotic craft sources

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

Crafting milestones

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

World danger

Biome danger (1–100)

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

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

Per-world danger map

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

Safe spawn

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

Mob behavior tiers

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

Biome bosses

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

Visuals

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

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

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

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

Dependencies

Required	Optional
Fabric Loader 0.15.11+	Patchouli (guide book)
Fabric API
Java 17+

Alpha notice

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

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