(006) Still pondering...

🔎 Single Bean - Traces of the Fallen

Another adventure-focused find this week comes from @foreck.bsky.social. Winner of the 2025 1.12 Modding Coalition Modjam1, this one sits right in that sweet spot of curiosity-driven gameplay.

Traces of the Fallen backdoors adventure into vanilla worldgen with a suite of wildly different blocks from eras past. It's less about progression and more about discovery - go in blind, poke around the overworld, and see what happens when you start looting everything you see.

The mod drops cargo carts, crates of potions, abandoned tents, stashes hidden in bushes, human remains, stone circles, and the like across most biomes on the surface. Looting these traces opens up a chance to obtain common resources and even exclusive items... unless. Sometimes the more you unearth, the riskier it gets. Part of the core experience is figuring out what each interaction triggers as you explore.

Links:

GitHub (source and issue tracker)

CurseForge (Download)

Tl;dr: If your modpack needs exploration hooks that reward curiosity while adding subtle tension, Traces of the Fallen plants itself naturally in the world. The block variety offers narrative texture while the risk/reward system keeps players thinking twice before grabbing that next crate.

📝 Roaster's Notes - 🧊 Cold Brew Edition

This week's roast hit a snag in the sourcing phase. Despite some outreach across the usual channels, I wasn't able to lock in an interviewee before press time. Happens sometimes-good developers are deep in the grind, and not everyone's got time for Q&A mid-circadian-rhythm-collapse2.

So here's the deal:

If you're a modder, asset artist, pack builder, or just someone cooking up cool stuff in 1.12 land and you'd like to chat for an upcoming issue-drop me a message. Seriously. The more voices in this ecosystem, the better the brew. ☕

Also worth flagging: If this turns into a recurring thing, expect Roaster's Notes to shift into something else (think: curated nitpicks, dev diary snippets, or community deep dives). We'll circle back to interviews whenever someone actually responds to me, which, spoiler alert, takes way longer than I'd like. That's time better spent polishing the rest of this newsletter anyway.

💬 Counter Talk

OpenEngineering dev-12

@strubium.bsky.social pushed an update to OpenEngineering, his community-friendly rewrite of Immersive Engineering that we covered in an earlier issue3. This one's pure polish - proper recipes, OreDict integration, and general groundwork laid for the multiblock features coming down the line.

Look Ma, I'm on TV! - October 4th

Full disclosure: I'm way more comfortable writing English than speaking it. Years of grinding code comments and mod descriptions beat out any conversation practice I got along the way. But when @justenoughopinions.bsky.social reached out, I figured - sure, if I get the chance to put 1.12 on the table somewhere I might as well take the chance.

Just Enough Opinions Podcast (@justenoughopinions.bsky.social)'s Atmosphere Profile

Stream goes live October 4th on Twitch, then hits YouTube after. Expect 1.12 in general, some Coalition chatter, and whatever else they prep. Warning: no autotune, just my natural accent and unfiltered takes. Prepare for the usual chaos and have an extra coffee ready.