š Hey there,
Great to see you. Whether you're new here or a returning friend - grab your mug and let's dive into this week's topics. āļø
š Single Bean - Reagenchant
Enchanting tables have always been a gamble - throw in some lapis and hope RNGesus smiles on you. But what if you could actually guide the outcome? Enter Reagenchant by LogicTechCorp, a mod that trades blind randomness for deliberate choice.
Reagenchant adds a single new slot to the enchanting interface - the Reagent slot. Drop specific items into it, and you'll dramatically increase the odds of getting their associated enchantments. Blaze Powder nudges you toward Fire Protection or Flame. Redstone steers the roll toward Sharpness or Efficiency. Gold Ingots push the table toward Silk Touch or Protection. No more fishing through fifteen levels of Pure Bad Luck.
Want Fortune III on your pickaxe? Start saving Diamonds. Need Aqua Affinity on your helmet? Grab Prismarine Shards. Hunting for Mending? Hoard Nether Stars. The enchanting table becomes part of your resource economy rather than a coin flip.
š¦ Why Modpack Devs Should Care
Reagenchant comes with flexibility by default. Modpack creators can tweak nearly everything:
Add or remove reagents entirely
Reassign which enchantments each reagent influences
Adjust probability weights for each enchantment pool
Set minimum and maximum enchantment levels per reagent
Define reagent cost (items consumed per enchant)
Links:
Tl;dr: If you've ever rage-quit an enchanting session after rolling Sharpness II on your third try, Reagenchant gives you back control. Randomness stays as spice - not the main course.
š Roaster's Notes: Meet
This week's interview ran hot on the stovetop a bit longer than planned. Truth be told, I've tried to sit down with SirSquidly a few times before now - life caught fire, deadlines slipped, and well, you know the drill. But we finally got the cups filled and the conversation going.
Welcome to the Table
Enderman: SirSquidly, great to have you finally on the record. First things first - what's your favorite kind of coffee? Or do you lean towards tea or something completely different?
SirSquidly: I just have my coffee with sugar. Tea is my go-to though, which I have black.
Design Philosophy
Enderman: You've been featured multiple times in my newsletter already - whether it's Pale Bloom or Mining Forks. When you approach a new mod from scratch, what's your golden design rule? Is there a principle you always try to stick to, whether it's performance, lore integration, or pure gameplay feel?
(002) Still brewing, still thriving
The next issue of your weekly, coffee-flavored newsletter spotlighting Minecraft 1.12 mods, makers, and community news.
(005) The brew between the blocks
The next issue of your weekly, coffee-flavored newsletter spotlighting Minecraft 1.12 mods, makers, and community news.
SirSquidly: I'd say my design principles have been shifting around a lot as I've been practicing them and honing them in, although I've always had a trend towards open-ended utility for features. I want features that appeal to and are used by different players for different purposes, instead of 'This is for combat players. This is for builders".
Features that are more flexible in usage let players experiment and express themselves more, which is core to Minecraft's appeal to me.
The Graveyard of Ideas
Enderman: Not every idea survives the prototyping phase. How do you decide when to turn an idea into a mod? Could you share an example of something you envisioned that didn't make it to release - and what made it fall by the wayside?
SirSquidly: Usually it depends on if I have enough planned for a mod to feel cohesive. I don't like unfocused and disconnected piles of stuff, as it really struggles to get that appeal to it. Even something like Quark has an overall vibe to it, since it's hard to make something good while keeping it undefined.
I write down a ridiculous amount of ideas for features and mods, all of which I keep shelved until I find a path for it, or find how to recycle it. I think I've talked about a Savanna Mod before with some features, since I really feel like that biome needs some love given to it. I never really found any intent behind such a mod concept, so I'm most likely going to recycle some of it into my biome mod Biome Fluff. I don't usually start work on mods I don't intend to make, as I spend a lot of time in ideation. So plenty of concepts, not much actually deeply planned then scrapped.
Pale Bloom Deep Dive
Enderman: Pale Bloom is not just a backport from modern versions, you've really extended the base idea. What was the creative process behind pushing it further? Were there specific mechanics or aesthetics you wanted to explore beyond the original inspiration?
SirSquidly: For Pale Bloom specifically? It was a lot of fumbling. I started that project with zero concrete plan beyond "Do pale garden better", so it was a very experimental process. It started with the Amber Valve, since giving a reason to interact with the main mechanic of the biome was an obvious idea. So now killing naturally generated Creakings had a reward. So I had to make the reward do something.
It was some heart-pale garden related item, so initially I was just thinking in terms of stuff that was 'pale garden versions of normal things', since the mod has that recycled vibe with all the moss and use of the dark oak tree shape. So a lot of the features were made while being disconnected from each other, and was initially leaning into that spooky pale variants vibe.
I plotted out a lot of ideas, tweaked and adjusted them, and that resulted in most of the content of the base mod. I then realized that they were all disconnected and random, and the mod did not feel good. So I pivoted, and re-examined the Garden to find a purpose... and it's called the Garden. Gardens are cultivated land. I had a bunch of random stuff, had some of it using resin, and realized the goal of the mod should be that the player is a Gardener.
Gardener sounds lame though, magic gardeners are basically just Druids. And Druid is a really good fantasy to lean into.
I reworked and rebalanced the mod around being a Druid, focusing it a lot more on the plants and resin flow stuff, like finalizing the Pollenhead as a convertor, adding the gardengrafted tools, and getting most of the polish for my public beta test.
As for that, I barely heard much. I felt like it was... missing something, and a good friend Norfried actually helped point that out. I realized that without a firm goal for most of the development, I had been really restrained with my features, and wasn't really pushing it in any neat or exciting ways. I didn't consider the player experience, so having a lot of stuff and a stated goal wasn't really good enough.
So I reworked the mod and intentionally went crazier with it. Incense Thorns were a last minute addition for player utility, Pale Moss Cloaks were entirely reworked to use the 'slots' system so you get that gardening/cultivating vibe with player customization, and all the recipes were extended out with features like Pale Oak Hollows and Weird Roots so the player would be forced to invest in planting to experience all the features.
So uhhh sorry for the very long answer, Pale Bloom specifically was just a very chaotic mod to develop, and it really hammered in the importance of focused development and a willingness to really push the focus as much as possible. I've considered it one of the most useful mods I've developed in terms of experience, and I think that shows a bit better in projects since.
World Gen Dreams
Enderman: I've been following your Biome Fluff teasers, also mentioned them in issue #008. What sparked the motivation for that project? How are you planning to differentiate it from staples like Biomes O' Plenty or Travers? Are you aiming for atmospheric immersion, functional variety, or both?
(008) Stirring the cup
The next issue of your weekly, coffee-flavored newsletter spotlighting Minecraft 1.12 mods, makers, and community news.
SirSquidly: So me and some other developers have a private test server, where we test our projects, get feedback from each other, and also just play survival modded Minecraft. We were starting the second iteration of this server, so me and Smileycorp were looking through mods for the modpack. We wanted a different biome mod since we used BoP last time, and Jesus! there are not a lot of options for 1.12. We didn't want a world overhaul or something super massive, just something to spice up vanilla's world a bit. Most things were either "Massive mod with endless config to rifle through" or "MCreator red trees and Forest #2".
I then realized:
Hey, I got a lot of concepts for biome content with no cohesion, what if I make a mod where the point is that it's a bunch of random biome stuff?
So Biome Fluff was born.
As for what makes it distinct, I'd say it's just the fact I am not trying to keep it as biomes only. Biomes O' Plenty has a history of adding and cutting content, earlier versions had a lot more function behind its stuff, but the mod is trying to be a biome pack first and foremost. Biome Fluff is just whatever stuff is kind of related to biomes. It doesn't need to worry about keeping to biomes exclusively, it can add an entire Salt blockset and Jerky, and that's perfectly in theme, the theme is fluff. I also just have different environments and vibes I'd like to explore in my own biomes, since I have my own tastes and my own inspirations. I think that's kinda obvious in the last biome I showed off, the Tundras. Tundras are in BoP and Fluff, but I focused a lot on making the biome unique not just in the overall vibe, but with it's own micro-variety. A lot of biomes are kinda leaning into micro VS macro variety, so exploration is always distinct.
Beyond the Mods
Enderman: Before I let you go - anything else you're working on that deserves a tease? Where can folks find you online and do you have any channels for financial support if people want to keep the coffee flowing for your next brew?
SirSquidly: If anyone is interested in reaching out, you can join my discord server or talk to me wherever you see me, I'm pretty bad at using normal social media.
Expect probably an update to Pale Bloom pretty soon, maybe Biome Fluff or an Oceanic Expanse update. Also projects I work on with my other developer friends, like Deeper Depths or Smiley's upcoming Mounts mod, there's some cool stuff added in mounts especially.
Also thank you for having me, I've been keeping up with the newsletter and love getting a clean slice of everything that's happening in this little corner of the internet. I hope you have a good day.
š¬ Counter Talk
New Aether Biomes?
Following up on the True Adventure! spotlight from roughly two months ago, k2k has been sharing screenshots of even more new Aether content - new mob models are taking shape, plus even more additional biomes.
Oh The Biomes You'll Go - Non-MCreator
Still on the biome front, WinDanesz has started sharing progress of what appears to be an Oh The Biomes You'll Go backport. The original was created with MCreator, now this rewrite is plain Java - no external tools used. An alpha is already available on CurseForge for those eager to test it out.
- Coming Up
Quick reminder on last month's mention: I'm scheduled as a guest on the Just Enough Opinions Podcast. Stream goes live October 4th (next Sunday) on Twitch, then hits YouTube afterward. Expect some 1.12 chatter, Coalition things, and my unfiltered takes on the state of legacy modding.
š§½ Cleaning the Tables
Alright folks, that's the brew for this week. Thanks for sipping along. āļø
Got a mod you think should get the Single Bean spotlight?
Hit reply or DM me on the Atmosphere.
Stay caffeinated,
~ Enderman