Luminal

Luminal 1.21 — What's New

✨ A brand-new final dimension: The Beginning

The biggest addition. Beyond the End now lies The Beginning — a complete, hand-built dimension with its own alien identity. (If the regular pack is in beta, this dimension is in like pre-pre-alpha — I know the terrain is a little janky, but it's a good start.)

It's a mash-up of Deeper and Darker's sculk biomes with Alex's Caves' dinosaur and radioactive cave content, plus some other tidbits.

☁️ The Aether, also rebuilt

I really liked Ancient Aether's terrain, but they didn't have a 1.21 version (I think), so instead I updated the whole dimension with custom terrain in a similar style — much larger islands and mountains, more structures, and aetherite that's a lot easier to spot. I feel like with floating-island dimensions it's better to put ores in geodes to make spotting and progressing a little easier, but I'm not set on this change, so try it and tell me what you think.

🌊 The Overworld went deep

• The Abyssal Chasm is now a bedrock-deep flooded pit — a true descent, with depth-graded Subnautica-style underwater light that turns navy-black at the bottom. (The lighting is still experimental — I plan on updating it more with testing.)
• Oceans are huge — biomes scaled to feel like actual seas, with rebuilt coasts and shipwreck-free ocean structures that actually sit right. I really wanted to give a substantial ocean update, and big seas give players reasons to interact with Create: Aeronautics content like airships, boats, and submarines, so I'm all for it.
• We also reworked the land into beta/modern hybrid terrain with our custom datapack, plus integrations with high-quality biome mods from teams like Abnormals — hope you like it.

🌌 The End that fights back

• Nullscape terrain blended with Better End biomes — the void feels like a place now.
• 8 End bosses that come after the Ender Dragon — defeat them to progress to The Beginning, giving the pack a true boss progression.

🗺️ Progression, rebuilt end to end

• A nine-tab advancement tree guides the whole arc: Overworld → Nether → Aether → End → The Beginning.
• End Remastered is on: the dragon needs eyes hunted across every dimension, each with custom art.
• After the dragon: sigils, animated boss trophies that gate the way forward, then vestiges, then the final ritual.
• A new top tier: Wardenite — its ore is unmineable until you crack it open with a nuclear blast. The full gear ladder now runs netherite → aetherite → enderite → wardenite, every step a real upgrade.
• Boss loot bags: every player in the fight gets their own drops. No more loot-stealing.
• The Heart System: dying costs you a piece of max health instead of your inventory. Hunt heart containers by breaking spawners or slaying bosses. (Inspired by the Matcha datapack — I didn't like a lot of that guy's features tbh, but that one was cool, so I had to steal it.)

⚔️ A curated boss roster

Every dimension has its own bosses now — around 33 in total... and a secret final boss. (ngl the final boss is untested and I buffed all his stats... hopefully he's not too OP :))))

🎮 It plays better, everywhere

• Full controller support with a first-launch onboarding wizard — sofa-ready, split-screen friendly.
• Custom menus, a retro-terminal loading screen, and per-dimension loading tips so travel time teaches you something.
• Sidestep dodge replaces the old dodge mod; the stamina bar is gone entirely — movement is free.
• Dynamic music that follows what you're doing, plus battle themes for every boss.
• Create: Aeronautics — build working airships (and submarines for those abyssal oceans).
• The Player Compass: wear a recovery compass and warp to teammates straight from the map.
• Vertical slabs. Yes, everywhere.

🚀 And it runs better

The whole pack was re-tuned for the new engine: Sodium + Iris replace the old render stack, Voxy draws distant terrain to the horizon, and modern chunk-gen tech keeps world creation fast. Default settings target ordinary 8GB laptops (im being optimistic here this hasnt been tested, yet...) — the pretty settings are one toggle away, not mandatory. I feel like this is probably one of the most optimized packs out there right now, but I'll know for sure after we test. MAJOR BUGS EXPECTED. Theres also a lot more things this changelog didnt cover, so go explore and give feedback.

Old worlds from the 1.20 build are not compatible — sorry, dudes.