Gateways to Eternity is a mod where you open giant portals which pour forth hordes of enemies in a series of waves, each wave stronger than the last. Completion of a wave will yield rewards, and completing the entire gateway will yield a completion bonus.
To get started with Gateways to Eternity, you need to craft yourself a Gate Pearl, which is the item used to summon a Gateway into your world. As an example, the default recipe for the Gateway of Overworldian Nights is shown below. All Gate Pearls will be shown in JEI.
Once you have a Gate Pearl, you can learn everything about the Gateway you're about to summon, from how many waves it has, what entities are part of each wave, and what rewards you'll receive. All of this data is stored on the item's tooltip, as shown below:
The Wave Data shows you a list of all the waves, and can be cycled via scroll wheel. Each wave consists of a set of Enemies, some Modifiers, and Rewards. The enemies are straightforward - those mobs will be spawned during that wave. The modifiers represent the bonuses that will be applied to all wave enemies, and the rewards are what you will receive when the wave is completed.
Completing the Gateway will yield special bonus rewards, on top of the already-collected wave rewards. These rewards are always shown on the Gate Pearl's tooltip.
Some rewards roll a loot table instead of providing a specific item. The loot table rolls will use the summoning player as context, which means that any luck, looting, fortune, or similar that player currently has at the time rewards are dispensed will be used to boost loot drops. So, that in mind, make sure you're holding your looting sword when the wave finishes (and when the gateway closes). Maybe just hold it the whole time, if you can.
Before using a Gate Pearl, there are a few pieces of information you might want to know about how Gateways operate. This section should help you understand how and why Gateways work the way that they do.
Underwriting the operation of a Gateway is a series of rules, which define certain behaviors. The following rules exist:
Any deviations from these rules will be noted on the Gate Pearl.
Some Gateways are Endless, meaning they do not terminate naturally. You can usually identify an Endless Gateway by the name, but you can always identify it by the special Gate Pearl tooltip:
Instead of the usual Wave definition, you will see a Base Wave and one or more Endless Modifiers, which dictate how the Gateway will change over time. These Gateways will get progressively more difficult, but can provide infinitely many rewards if you can keep them open for long enough.
While holding the Gate Pearl, right click on a block to summon a Gateway. A Gateway needs a sizable amount of space to work properly, so don't use it in an enclosed area! Even if you can successfully summon a Gateway, if it fails to spawn an entity as part of a wave, the Gateway will violently shudder in a burst of lightning, so open fields are preferred. A successful Gateway opening looks like this:
To complete a wave, all you have to do is kill all the wave enemies before time runs out. The number of remaining enemies is shown on the boss bar at the top of the screen, alongside the current wave number and the wave timer. If you run out of time, the Gateway will also vanish in a burst of lightning, similar to how it would if it failed to spawn the wave entities.
When you successfully complete a wave, a short cooldown period will occur before the next wave spawns, and the Wave Rewards will be spawned from the Gateway, like this:
Successful completion of the Gateway is the only appropriate method to close it without causing some sort of damage to your world. When you finish the last Wave of a Gateway, the wave rewards will spawn, and once finished, the Gateway will close, spawning the Completion Rewards where it once stood. These rewards come out all at once in a huge eruption of loot and experience, unlike the wave rewards which show up slowly over time.
Hello Modpack Developers! If you're reading this section you're wondering "Can I change the default Gateways?" or "Can I add a new Gateway?" or something of that sort. The answer is a resounding yes! Every aspect of each Gateway is contained in a JSON file, which can be changed through a datapack. The default data files are available on the GitHub Repo, and the JSON Schema is available here.
Through customization, you can setup any kind of Gateway you like. You can fully define every entity that spawns each wave, including specifying NBT data. Everything is at your fingertips.
