Ascension of Ages

**REMEMBER TO BACK UP YOUR WORLDS BEFORE UPDATING, UPDATE BY VERSION. DO NOT UPDATE MODS MANUALLY.**

**Content and mobs**

- **Neo Vitae**: blood-based magic mod added as the pack's required magic spine, so Renaissance-to-Gilded progression now levels through its altars and rites instead of Forbidden & Arcanus.
- **Hybrid Aquatic**: adds new sea creatures, blocks, and improved rivers, swamps, and oceans, giving the water ages real underwater content.
- **Create: Aquatic Ambitions**: Create addon with new bulk-processing and ocean recipes, extending Create automation into aquatic gear.
- **Creatures and Beasts**: vanilla-style mob mod that fills overworld and End biomes with new creatures.
- **Critters and Companions**: vanilla-style mod adding overworld animals and tamable companions for ambient life.
- **Arcane Lanterns**: lanterns you imbue with catalysts for different effects, adding functional decorative lighting.
- **Natural Waters**: brings Bedrock-style per-biome water colors to Java for better-looking water without a shader.
- **MineColonies Compatibility**: official addon that lets colonists use items and blocks from other installed mods, wiring colonies into the wider pack.
- **MineColonies Tweaks**: addon adding custom citizen tools and extra colony configuration options.
- **Arcane Lanterns**: Neat QoL mod with lanterns that give bonuses such as crop growth enhancements, etc.,

**Quest book**

- **AStages FTB Quests addon**: integrates AStages with FTB Quests so quests can read and grant progression stages directly.
- **FTB Quests Optimizer**: performance fix that reduces lag from the large quest book.
- **Major fixes to questbook**: Correcting false prose, quest descriptions, giving clearer instructions on progression and finding bosses, and what's required of you. Also updates to some quests, such as removals of redundant ones, replacing the brass create questline to the Renaissance. Currently, I am working through every chapter with deep research to ensure everything is proper and correct. Apologies for frustrations caused by this.
- Visual overhaul: Complete visual overhaul to FTBQuests, WIP. New theming will begin indicating required progression visually; gold indicates required, purple are optional/side quests, red is boss fights. Shapes also indicate category of quest such as tech, and more will come soon. This is very small so far and mainly in the Create questline.
- More fixes and updates that are smaller.
**Performance and quality of life**

- **FastBoot**: caches startup data to cut game loading time.
- **Create BetterFPS**: improves frame rate around Create contraptions.
- **Chunky**: pre-generates chunks so exploration and server load are smoother.
- **Sodium Extra**: adds video options Sodium leaves out, like fog, particle, and detail toggles.
- **Recipe Essentials**: speeds up recipe matching and adds recipe-book sorting and caching.
- **Structure Essentials**: speeds up structure search and locate, and lets the pack tune structure spacing.
- **Client Tweaks**: bundle of optional client-side quality-of-life tweaks.
- **Distraction-Free Recipes**: auto-hides the EMI recipe viewer until you search, keeping the screen clear.
- **Config Updates**: Re-enabled Health Bars, Jade's chest features (looking in to see items), and force loading Obscure Tooltip's Resource Pack so you'll have a more visually enhanced inventory. If this does not load, load Visual Tooltips from your resource pack page. Xali's Enchanted Books should also be force loaded now.

**Mods Removed**
- Civilis: caused CPU drain and fps lag
- CraftTweaker: unused, redundant.
- Item Obliterator: unused, caused a crash
- Borderless Window: redundant

PERFORMANCE UPDATES:
- Solved a ModernFix crash with astages, expect an additional 1-2 gb of ram performance now. Also updates for Sodium, ImmediatelyFast, ServerCore mob cap fixes, and other backend updates.

- Updated about 80 mods total, expect differences and improvements to your worlds and QoL. The next update will be massive in scope; I'm bringing in numerous new mods, removing old ones, replacing oil progression with TFMG, and several new mechanics mods that will change gameplay impactfully. However, this will add many new immersive and different mechanics to the pack that encourage progression.