This mod does NOT add new dungeons, world generation, or equipment. Instead, it breathes new life into vanilla mechanics, allowing you to diversify your experience in almost any existing modpack.

Origin & Philosophy

Originally, this mod was a private project designed solely for me and my friends. After playing through countless modpacks, we grew tired of the repetitive nature of certain gameplay loops and the lack of balance in others. That frustration sparked an idea, which eventually evolved into this mod. Over time, it grew into a collection of synergistic tweaks across various mechanics.

We eventually realized that we likely weren't the only ones craving this kind of experience—and so, this public release was born.

For the public version, the code has undergone significant optimization and refactoring compared to the private build. While this means overall performance and stability should be much better, new random issues may have slipped through the cracks. If you encounter any bugs, please leave a comment or report them. I will do my best to update and maintain the mod whenever possible.

Features Overview

Here is an overview of the main features. Most of them can be tweaked or completely disabled, so you can tailor the experience to exactly what you want.

1. Mobility

Traverse vast plains with a regular sprint that is now as fast as vanilla sprint-jumping. No more need to bounce around without reason (though sprint-jumping remains unchanged for your convenience and muscle memory).

Efficiently scale high mountains and nimbly navigate dungeons and caves with the new Dash mechanic. It allows you to boost yourself in the direction you are looking by pressing a hotkey (double-tap Space by default) at the cost of hunger.

2. Survival

Starting health is doubled (40 HP / 20 Hearts), but natural regeneration is disabled. Use Glistering Melons, Golden Apples, Golden Carrots, and a healthy night's sleep to regenerate. Now, gold and your health are much more valuable resources.

Base hunger depletion is reduced by 3x, but nightly regeneration and excessive dashing can still leave you starving. Golden food recipes have been tweaked, allowing you to craft them on the fly without a crafting table and without burning through all your resources too quickly.

3. Survival Spirit

To discourage players from resetting health and hunger through death and respawn, a new system has been added. You will receive accumulating bonuses based on your time alive. These include increased:

Experience gain
Mining speed
Mob loot
Bonus temporary health (Absorption) for your next life

You can view your current bonuses via a new icon in your inventory.

4. Armor Rebalance

Current systems, especially in heavily modded environments, often make the player nearly invincible in the endgame, granting 96-99% damage resistance (armor, enchantments, effects, etc.). After reaching this point, the game often feels "finished" as the sense of challenge and excitement vanishes. This mod attempts to address this issue from several angles.

Armor Weight

Heavy armor now slows the player down. The mod automatically analyzes all armor and determines its weight based on its stats. The heavier your armor, the more you are slowed (this slowdown affects jump and dash power as well).

This turns linear grinding and the chase for higher numbers into a conscious choice of playstyle. Do you want to be a lightweight scout or a slow, heavy juggernaut? Or perhaps something in between? Now, it's all in your hands.

The weight of each armor piece is displayed in its tooltip.
Your total slowdown is displayed when hovering over the icon in your inventory.

Important Note: Perks, abilities, and talents that do not directly modify the stats of the armor item itself will not affect its weight. This means you won't be punished for choosing a "+50% Armor Toughness" talent in a skill tree from other mods or receiving a temporary defense buff.

Enchantments

In both vanilla Minecraft and heavily modded environments, protective enchantments have too much impact. While your damage from Sharpness and mining speed from Efficiency increase by 1.5x - 2.5x, incoming damage reduced by protective enchantments drops by 3x - 5x (sometimes even more). This often turns the endgame into a tanking slugfest.

Therefore, the linear scaling of damage resistance from enchantments has been replaced with a more balanced curve. Combined with increased base health, this makes enchantments less overpowered. Now, if you want to run and explore without diving into enchanting too early, you can. Conversely, if you want to fully immerse yourself in enchanting, you will still feel a tangible benefit.

For the Number Crunchers

Armor Slowdown

Vanilla Diamond Set: Slows by ~20%.
Netherite Set: Slows by ~25%.
Heavy Modded Armor: (e.g., 34 Armor, 24 Toughness) defaults to ~42% slowdown.
Super Heavy Armor: (50+ Armor & Toughness) defaults to ~60% slowdown.

Armor without Toughness or Knockback Resistance (or with very low values) is considered "Light" by default and does not slow you down.

Weight Calculation Formula:

Weight = (Armor * 2.0) + (Toughness * 1.0) + (Knockback Resistance * 10.0) - 5.0

(Note: By default, the Armor value is only included in the calculation if the item has Toughness or Knockback Resistance, preventing basic armors like Leather or Iron from being too heavy).

Slowdown Percentage Formula:

Slowdown% = MIN( (TotalWeight / (TotalWeight + WeightDivisor)), MaxSlowdown ) * 100

Default values: WeightDivisor = 110.0, MaxSlowdown = 0.8 (80%).

Every value in this formula can be tweaked in the config.

Protective Enchantment Rebalance

To maintain compatibility with mods like Apotheosis, this mod does not change the resistance formula per protection point, but rather changes the number of protection points granted by enchantments. (See the Minecraft Wiki for info on Enchantment Protection Factors).

Full Protection IV: Grants ~40% damage reduction instead of 64%.
Protection IX: Grants ~66% damage reduction instead of 87%.

This also affects other protective enchantments (Projectile/Blast/Fire Protection, Feather Falling, etc.).

The Result: You can wear enchanted Iron Armor with 0% slowdown and 76%-86% total damage resistance (previously 86%-95%), or Netherite Armor with 25% slowdown and 88%-93% total damage resistance (previously 93%-97%). Or any other combination with optimal weight and protection for you.

This might look like just a few percentage points, but in practice, it significantly increases the damage received in the endgame. Instead of losing 1 heart from a powerful boss attack, you might lose 2.5 - 3 hearts.

Configuration

The config file contains over 50 configurable parameters. So go ahead! Try it out and create your own unique experience!

ITM's Dashing Hardcore