Mod Overview

This mod is heavily inspired by the book series He who Fights with Monsters by Shirtaloon and Travis Deverell.

This mod aims to change the progression of the game making places like the Nether and the End as well as some other mod's generated structures more challenging.

You start off unranked and obtain 4 skills by finding and consuming Skill Stones. After obtaining any of the 6 skill stones you consume these to gain 1 skill up to 4 skills. After gaining 4 skills you will automatically obtain Rank 1. Each rank grants you more health, melee damage, spell power, reduces hunger depletion and grants you new abilities.

After gaining a skill you must level each skill up by fighting in combat. Each skill used in combat will grant xp towards leveling that skill. Non combat related spells also level while used in combat even if they are not used to attack an enemy (healing or utility spells. These spells must be used after attacking an enemy which triggers combat. Once in combat all spells gain xp when they are used. Each enemy has a cap of how much xp can be gained for spells so you cannot attack the same enemy forever to infinitely level your skills. Each skill must level from level 0 to 4. After all 4 skills reach level 4 you will be able to Rank up to the next rank. You complete this cycle until Rank 5.

Enemies also have ranks and gain the same benefits per rank as the player. Overworld has rank 1-2 enemies, Nether ranks 3-4 and End 4-5 with rank 5 being fairly rare. If using mods like Apotheosis the invader bosses have a change to spawn one rank higher than that dimension excluding the End since rank 5 is the highest.

Each rank will be slower to progress than the last and attacking enemies at your rank will be the easiest fights to progress your skills where attacking higher ranks will grant faster xp but at greater risk. ( this is the balancing that needs to be tested) Attacking lower than your rank grants basically no skill xp.

The goal is to gear up, rank up and take on all dimensions.

Rank Coins

Every rank has its own coin, from Rank 1 to Rank 5. Ranked enemies drop coins at the same rank as that enemy. Coins can also be found in lootable chests.

Nine coins of one rank craft into one coin of the next rank (9 Rank 1 coins craft into 1 Rank 2 coin and so on up to rank 5), and one coin breaks back down into nine of the previous rank. (1 Rank 2 coin will craft into 9 Rank 1 coins

Eating a coin

Hold a coin and use it like food. You can eat one even with a full hunger bar. You need to be at least rank 1 to consume coins, so unranked players can't eat coins at all.

Each coin restores hunger and mana.

Coin	Hunger	Mana
Rank 1	5	40
Rank 2	6	80
Rank 3	7	120
Rank 4	8	160
Rank 5	Fills the bar	200

After eating any coin, there is a 30 second cooldown before you can eat another.

A coin of your own rank or lower

Completely safe. You get the food and the mana and nothing else. A low coin is a weaker snack for a high-ranked player, but it never hurts.

A coin of a higher rank

Reaching above your rank is a gamble.

For one minute, your spell power becomes that of the coin's rank. It is set to that rank, not added to your own, so a Rank 1 player who eats a Rank 4 coin casts with Rank 4 spell power. A timer above your skill list counts the minute down, and flashes red for the last ten seconds.

When the minute ends, you pay for it. The cost depends on how far above you the coin was:

The coin was…	The cost
1 rank above you	Nausea and Slowness for 1 minute
2 ranks above you	Health drops to half a heart. Nausea and Slowness for 2 minutes
3 ranks above you	Health drops to half a heart. Stronger Nausea and Slowness, plus Weakness and Mining Fatigue, for 3 minutes
4 ranks above you	The same as 3 ranks, for 4 minutes

You can't eat another coin above your rank until you sleep through a night or rank up. Coins at or below your rank are still fine. Dying ends everything: the power, the cost and the lock.

The delay before the cost arrives is your window. Use the power to finish a fight you shouldn't be able to win, or run from one you can't.

For server owners and pack makers

• /ranked_adventurer clearcoin [player] ends the borrowed power and removes the debuffs.
• Everything is under [rank_coins] in the config: drop rates, mana per rank, the cooldown, the length of the power and the length of the debuffs. Setting the drop chances to 0 turns coin drops off.

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The Cloud House

The Cloud House is a private island in its own dimension: an open sky, a 32x32 square of grass, and nothing else. Nothing hostile spawns there, beds work, and you can build whatever you like.

Getting there

You need a vial. There are two.

	Cloud House Vial	Cloud Palace Vial
How you get it	Crafted	Crafted from a Cloud House Vial, or rarely found in chests
Charge	Holds 3 trips, then needs recharging	Never needs charge
If you die	Drops like any other item	Soulbound: it comes back to you

Use either vial on the ground and a portal opens in front of you. Step through to reach your island. The portal needs clear space and solid ground, and if it can't open you're told why and nothing is spent.

The portal closes when you come home, after ten minutes, or when you open a new one. Vials are never used up, and they always lead to your own island, so losing one costs you only the vial.

Cloud House Vial

An early-game craft: 2 white wool, an ender pearl, 2 feathers, a glass bottle and an amethyst shard.

A bar under the icon shows the charge, and the tooltip tells you how many trips are left. To recharge it, put the vial in any crafting grid with rank coins. Charge follows the 9-to-1 coin exchange:

Coin	Charge
Rank 1	1
Rank 2	9
Rank 3	81
Rank 4	729
Rank 5	6,561

The vial holds 36 and each trip costs 12. So 36 Rank 1 coins or 4 Rank 2 coins fill an empty one, and any higher coin refills it with plenty to spare.

Only add the coins it needs. A craft that includes a coin the vial didn't need won't go through. Only the last coin can overshoot.

Cloud Palace Vial

The late-game upgrade: a Cloud House Vial (at any charge), 2 shulker shells, a nether star, 2 dragon's breath and a Rank 5 coin.

It never needs recharging. It can also turn up, rarely, in chests in the Nether, the End and other modded dimensions. Never in the overworld, and never from mobs. The End has a better chance per chest than the Nether.

Your island

• Only the portal and the three grass blocks you arrive on can't be broken. Everything else is ordinary grass, so dig, build and bridge outward as far as you want.
• You arrive level with the portal's opening, one block above the grass. Lay a floor flush with the bottom of the portal and you can walk straight in and out.
• If you fall off the edge, the clouds catch you and set you back where you arrived, with no damage.
• Every player has their own island, thousands of blocks from the next, so you will never run into another player's.
• It's always noon on your island. You can still sleep there whenever it's night back in the overworld, and a night slept in the Cloud House passes for the whole server.

Visitors

Anyone who steps into your portal arrives on your island. They can look around, but they can't touch anything: no breaking or placing blocks, and no opening chests or beds. When they leave, they return to where they came from.

Your island covers everything closer to it than to anyone else's, which by default is 2,500 blocks in every direction.

Building with friends

Want help building? Any player can share their own island:

• /cloudhouse trust <player> lets them build, break and use anything on your island, exactly as you can.
• /cloudhouse untrust <player> takes that back. It works even if they're offline.
• /cloudhouse trusted lists everyone you've trusted.

Coming home

Walk back through the portal on your island. You return to exactly where you left, even if the portal you came through has since closed. If that spot has become blocked, you're set down at the nearest safe place instead, or at world spawn as a last resort.

For server owners and pack makers

• Op-only commands: /cloudhouse enter [player], /cloudhouse leave, /cloudhouse closeportal and /cloudhouse rebuild. The trust commands work for every player.
• Settings are under [cloud_house] in the config: island size, distance between islands, ground height, how far below the island a fall is caught, whether sleeping skips the night, vial capacity, cost per trip, charge per coin, how long a portal stays open, and the chest find chances.
• Both vial recipes are plain data files, so a pack can change them freely.

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Confluences

Your four skills together produce a passive. Which one you get is decided by how those skills are spread across the six types, so it cannot be chosen directly -- it is the consequence of four permanent decisions.

No matter what skills you choose, you will get a confluence

Types of Confluences

Your four skills	You gain	Strength
Four of the same skill stone	That type's confluence	Greater
Three of the same skill stone	That type's confluence	Standard
Two skills from two different skill stones	That pairing's confluence	Standard
Two skills from one stone type, plus two others	The doubled type paired with your first other	Lesser
Four different skill stones	The pairing of your first two	Lesser

Lesser is half the values below. Greater is one and a half times, and is the only strength that grants a confluence's signature effect.

Press K at any time to see yours, with its numbers at your current rank.

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The six pure confluences

Committing three or four skills to one type. Values at rank 5.