Astralbound 0.9.7

Astralbound 0.9.7 is the DIMENSIONS update.

This release massively expands the number and variety of worlds available to explore while preserving the core Astralbound philosophy:

A beautiful fantasy sandbox where the next portal might lead somewhere completely unexpected.

The pack has grown from 172 to 187 managed CurseForge entries, with 16 new additions, 1 removal, and 2 existing mods updated.

And yes.

There are now a frankly irresponsible number of dimensions.

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🌌 DIMENSIONS. MORE DIMENSIONS.

Astralbound 0.9.7 dramatically expands dimensional exploration with multiple completely new realms, dungeon worlds, mythological environments, ruined civilizations, custom-generated dimensions, and entire multi-dimension progression systems.

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🌴 Tropicraft

Tropicraft has officially joined Astralbound.

This enormous tropical dimension adds lush islands, beaches, rainforests, tropical creatures, underwater exploration, unique resources, villages, and an entirely different atmosphere from the normal Overworld.

Even better:

Astralbound's Weather2 configuration already supports Tropicraft.

That means Weather2 storms, wind, and potentially tropical cyclones can operate inside the Tropicraft dimension.

Paradise is no longer necessarily peaceful.

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🐝 The Bumblezone

Astralbound now contains an enormous dimension built inside a colossal supernatural beehive.

The Bumblezone introduces expansive honeycomb environments, strange biomes, giant crystalline formations, structures, unique creatures, specialized equipment, progression systems, and the Bee Queen.

Resourceful Lib was already present in Astralbound and satisfies Bumblezone's required dependency.

Better Advancements remains optional and was not added.

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🦴 Dimensions of Alex's Caves

The bizarre ecosystems of Alex's Caves can now be explored as dedicated dimensions.

Separate dimensional versions exist for environments such as:

Abyssal Chasm

Candy Cavity

Forlorn Hollows

Magnetic Caves

Primordial Caves

Toxic Caves

This provides another way to experience Alex's Caves content without relying entirely on extremely rare Overworld cave discovery.

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🏚️ The Lost Cities

Astralbound now has access to a dedicated Lost Cities dimension.

The normal Astralbound Overworld remains separate.

Instead, players can travel into an alternate ruined civilization filled with enormous abandoned cities, decaying infrastructure, highways, buildings, and remnants of a dead world.

The current Lost Cities profile is configured independently from the Overworld.

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♾️ RFTools Dimensions

This update introduces something significantly more dangerous to our dimension count:

the ability to create dimensions ourselves.

RFTools Dimensions allows players to construct custom worlds using dimensional characteristics and generated world properties.

The complete required ecosystem is installed:

RFTools Dimensions

RFTools Base

McJtyLib

Astralbound therefore no longer has merely a large number of dimensions.

It now has the potential for an effectively open-ended number of dimensions.

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😈 DivineRPG

DivineRPG has entered Astralbound.

This is an enormous RPG expansion containing multiple dimensions, bosses, creatures, weapons, armor sets, ores, materials, and its own progression ecosystem.

Most importantly for our purposes:

it adds eight major dimensions.

Astralbound does not currently include DivineRPG's known incompatible Starlight optimization mod.

This is one of the largest individual content expansions ever added to the pack.

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🏛️ Lands of Icaria

Astralbound now includes the mythological world of Icaria.

This dimension draws heavily from classical Greek and Egyptian-inspired fantasy, bringing its own landscapes, creatures, structures, resources, and progression.

It gives Astralbound a new ancient Mediterranean-style mythological environment unlike the existing fantasy dimensions.

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🌠 Astral Dimension

It was probably inevitable.

A modpack called Astralbound now actually contains the Astral Dimension.

The mod includes the Astral realm along with progression into the darker dimension known as The Setback.

Expect strange landscapes, unique biomes, structures, creatures, bosses, void corruption, and another major dimensional progression path.

The name alone practically required us to install it.

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❄️ The Boreal

Astralbound gains another experimental realm through The Boreal.

The Boreal introduces a cold, mysterious dimension supported by Complementary Core and GeckoLib.

This is one of the newest dimensional additions in the pack and will remain under observation during normal gameplay testing.

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🏰 Dimensional Dungeons

Astralbound's enormous dungeon ecosystem now extends beyond the Overworld.

Dimensional Dungeons provides a dedicated adventure dimension containing effectively expandable dungeon content without further overcrowding normal world generation.

This gives players a separate place to pursue dungeon exploration when they actually want it.

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💀 Call from the Depths — Sculk Dimension

The Deep Dark just became considerably deeper.

Call from the Depths introduces a dedicated Sculk dimension with its own biomes, structures, creatures, equipment, progression, and major bosses.

Notable threats include:

Agony Soul

Injured Marble Guardian

Deep Darkest Spawn

Astralbound now contains several distinct interpretations of the Sculk and Deep Dark ecosystem through Call from the Depths, Deeper & Darker, and Sculk Horde.

Each serves a different purpose rather than replacing the others.

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🌊 New Ocean Horrors

Myths of The Sea

Sea Myths has been removed after testing revealed that its enormous creatures rotated far too rapidly for their scale, creating extremely unrealistic visual behavior.

It has been replaced by Myths of The Sea.

This new ocean expansion adds rare mythological creatures including:

Leviathan

Kraken

Bake Kujira

Abaia

Bunyip

Hippocampus

The monsters are substantially more likely to appear during storms and nighttime, making them especially appropriate for Astralbound's increasingly dangerous weather system.

CERBON's API has been added as the required supporting dependency.

GeckoLib was already present.

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🌪️ Weather2 — Severe Weather Frequency Increased

Astralbound's destructive Weather2 configuration remains intact, but severe weather should now actually be encountered more often during normal gameplay.

The previous configuration produced extremely destructive tornadoes once they formed, but natural severe-weather opportunities remained uncommon enough that extended testing could occur without seeing a single tornado.

0.9.7 increases weather occurrence moderately without turning the world into nonstop disaster.

High-wind waterspouts are now more likely.

Lightning occurs more frequently.

Ocean storms are more common.

Global deadly-storm opportunities occur more frequently.

Land-based severe-weather opportunities occur more frequently.

Ordinary rainstorms are somewhat more common.

Sandstorms occur somewhat more frequently.

Snowstorms occur somewhat more frequently.

Low-wind and high-wind weather events occur more frequently.

The increase is deliberately moderate.

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🌪️ Tornado Destruction Remains Extreme

The actual destructive power of tornadoes has not been reduced.

Tornadoes still have aggressive terrain-grabbing behavior.

Dirt, grass, sand, logs, vegetation, and other vulnerable blocks can be torn from the landscape.

Maximum flying block entities remain at 600.

Maximum blocks grabbed per tick remains at 20.

Maximum storm radius remains at 450 blocks.

Players, mobs, animals, and villagers can still be grabbed.

Flying debris can still cause damage.

F0 through F5 progression remains aggressive.

C0 through C5 tropical cyclone progression remains enabled.

The objective remains simple:

Tornadoes should be rare enough to remain memorable and powerful enough to be terrifying when they finally arrive.

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🌴 Weather2 + Tropicraft

Weather2 was already configured to recognize:

tropicraft:tropicraft

for storms, weather, and wind effects.

Now that Tropicraft is actually installed, this integration becomes relevant.

Astralbound may now experience dangerous tropical weather inside what would otherwise be a peaceful tropical paradise.

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☄️ Catastrophes Remain Player-Controlled

Astralbound continues to distinguish between:

having world-ending disasters available

and

forcing world-ending disasters onto every new character.

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🍄 Infnexus

Automatic infection apocalypse remains disabled.

The Nexus must be deliberately initiated rather than automatically starting shortly after world creation.

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💀 Sculk Horde

Automatic Ancient Node activation remains disabled.

The Sculk apocalypse remains progression-driven.

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🌩️ Wither Storm

Cracker's Wither Storm remains installed.

Automatic Wither Storm spawning remains disabled.

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☢️ NukeCoreCraft

The intentionally ridiculous destructive configuration remains unchanged.

Nuke blast radius:

500 blocks

Nuke destruction throughput:

5,000 blocks per tick

Black-hole pull radius:

900 blocks

Black-hole destruction throughput:

3,500 blocks per pull cycle

Maximum floating blocks:

40,000

Astralbound continues to assume that anybody firing one of these devices understands what they are doing.

Probably.

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☄️ Meteor Systems

Astralbound's meteor configuration remains intentionally destructive while avoiding immediate fresh-world bombardment.

Skyfall retains its increased meteor frequency and impact strength.

Meteor shower start timing remains approximately:

2–4 hours

Lightweight particle handling remains enabled.

Immediate Fire remains disabled.

Meteor impacts can destroy the landscape without automatically converting every crater into an instant wildfire.

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🌈 AstraLex Remains the Default Shader

AstraLex remains Astralbound's intended default visual experience.

Shaders remain enabled by default.

The larger shader wardrobe continues to include:

AstraLex

Complementary Unbound

Complementary Reimagined

Bliss

Insanity

Sildur's Vibrant

Players can freely change shaders, but AstraLex is now the official default appearance of Astralbound.

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🌀 Portal & Travel Cleanup

Astralbound's portal ecosystem continues to become more focused.

Ars Nouveau: Two-Way Portals has been removed.

Its leftover configuration has also been removed.

Old Universal Portals configuration residue has also been cleaned up.

The intended travel ecosystem remains:

Wormhole

Practical player-built linked portals

Stargate Journey

Ancient and cosmic dimensional transportation

Dimensional Doors

Dangerous and surreal rift travel

Waystones

Convenient fast travel

Ad Astra

Physical planetary and space exploration

RFTools Dimensions

Constructed and generated dimensional travel

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🌌 Stargate Journey

Stargate Journey remains fully integrated.

Its seven special Sparse Structures exemptions remain intact so Astralbound's structure-spacing system does not interfere with Stargate generation.

Stargate structures remain protected from the global Sparse Structures multiplier.

Structure Essentials remains otherwise unchanged.

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🧙 Character Creation Remains Intact

Astralbound continues using its separate race and class architecture.

Race / Species

Origins RPG

Origin Selection Interface

Alternate Origin GUI

Class / Profession

Gods & Heroes RPG Classes

Standard Origins Forge remains intentionally absent.

Origins: Classes remains intentionally absent.

Players continue choosing a race and profession independently.

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🎒 Curios Layout Remains Intact

Astralbound retains its custom 18-position Curios configuration.

Ring: 4

Necklace: 2

Charm: 2

Bracelet: 2

Belt: 1

Back: 1

Hands: 2

Body: 1

Head: 1

Curio: 2

Exactly one Back slot remains configured.

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⚡ Rendering & Performance Foundation

Astralbound's established rendering and optimization stack remains intact.

Embeddium 0.3.31

Oculus 1.8.0

Chloride

Radium Reforged 0.12.4

ImmediatelyFast

ModernFix

FerriteCore

EntityCulling

All The Leaks

Structure Layout Optimizer

Structure Essentials

Canary remains intentionally absent.

ImmediatelyFast retains the compatibility-oriented map-atlas adjustment while keeping unrelated optimizations enabled.

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🪄 Existing Mod Updates

Ars 'n Spells

Ars 'n Spells has been updated to a newer 1.20.1 Forge release.

The update contains fixes and improvements involving mana behavior, spell integration, scroll reliability, and compatibility within the Ars Nouveau / Iron's Spells ecosystem.

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Goety

Goety has also received a newer maintenance release.

The update primarily includes smaller fixes and behavioral corrections while preserving Astralbound's existing occult and necromancy ecosystem.

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🚫 Removed Content

Sea Myths

Removed after testing.

Reason:

The enormous Sea Eater model rotated far too rapidly for its physical scale, causing huge portions of the creature to whip across the horizon unrealistically.

Myths of The Sea replaces it.

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Ars Nouveau: Two-Way Portals

Removed.

Wormhole remains the preferred practical portal system.

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Previously Retired Systems

Elemental Portals remains absent.

Universal Portals remains absent.

Soul's Black Holes remains absent.

Canary remains absent.

Standard Origins Forge remains absent.

Origins: Classes remains absent.

Strictly Origins remains absent.

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📊 Build Information

Astralbound 0.9.7

Minecraft:

1.20.1

Forge:

47.4.10

Recommended RAM:

8 GB

Managed CurseForge entries:

187

Previous release:

172

New additions:

16

Removed managed entries:

1

Existing managed mods updated:

2

Duplicate project IDs:

None

Duplicate file IDs:

None

Manual override JARs:

None

Bundled saves:

None

Bundled logs:

None

Bundled crash reports:

None

Bundled JourneyMap world data:

None

usercache.json:

Not included

servers.dat:

Not included

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🌠 Astralbound 0.9.7

Astralbound was already a world of magic, catastrophic weather, apocalyptic infections, black holes, nukes, cosmic exploration, strange creatures, powerful bosses, fantasy races, enormous structures, and increasingly questionable decisions.

0.9.7 dramatically expands one of the project's defining pillars:

GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Walk through an Aether portal.

Descend into the Twilight Forest.

Explore Atlantis.

Enter the Otherside.

Fall into the Deep Void.

Step through a Stargate onto another world.

Travel through Dimensional Doors.

Launch into space with Ad Astra.

Visit Tropicraft.

Enter the Bumblezone.

Explore the strange worlds of Alex's Caves.

Travel into a dead Lost Cities civilization.

Fight through Dimensional Dungeons.

Descend into the Sculk Dimension.

Explore Icaria.

Enter the Astral Dimension.

Venture into the Boreal.

Progress through DivineRPG's enormous dimensional ecosystem.

Or decide that even all of those dimensions aren't enough...

...and use RFTools Dimensions to start making new ones yourself.

Astralbound 0.9.7 continues pursuing the same fundamental design goal:

Add weirdness aggressively.

Tune frequency conservatively.

And apparently:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MANY DIMENSIONS.