Strata: Deep Time

Every Minecraft world has a floor. You have stood on it a hundred times, hit it with a diamond pickaxe, and moved on.

This time, it cracks.

Strata puts three older versions of Minecraft underneath the one you are playing.

Break through the bedrock and you fall, not into a cave, not into a new dimension with new blocks, but into 1.8. Then Beta 1.7.3. Then Infdev.

Each layer is a real, playable world generated the way that version generated worlds, textured the way that version looked, and sounding the way that version sounded.

And each layer takes something away from you.

The descent

Dig to the bottom of your world and look for bedrock that is already cracked. It breaks about three times faster than the rest and all of it can be broken, so you can never be locked out.

Ten seconds of diamond pickaxe later, the floor gives way.

You fall a long way. You land, unhurt, somewhere in 1.8.

Four strata, and what each one costs you

Nothing is explained to you in a menu. You find out when you swing twice in a row and both hits land. You find out when your hunger bar is simply not there, and food heals you directly instead, the way it did in 2011.

The descent is one-way, and it loops. Break the floor of the Primordial and you come out in the Present. Digging far enough into the past brings you back to now.

What actually changes

Not a texture pack over modern terrain. Every layer is rebuilt from the version it represents:

• World generation — era-accurate world heights (128 in Beta and Infdev, 256 in 1.8), era-accurate biome palettes, and no structures that did not exist yet. Each stratum gets its own world, derived from your world's seed: the same seed always gives the same four worlds.
• Blocks — 59 block textures pulled from the original versions. No copper in Beta. No granite in Infdev. Cobblestone that looks like 2010 cobblestone.
• Ore distribution — the pre-1.18 distribution, read out of the original jars rather than guessed. 20 coal veins per chunk between Y 0 and 127, one diamond vein below Y 16. The Primordial has no redstone and no lapis at all, they had not been added yet, and its diamond appears in one chunk out of four.
• Mobs — era rosters and era skins. The Primordial has six mobs, and no cows or chickens: they did not exist in June 2010.
• Sound — the footstep and block-breaking sounds of each version, which are genuinely different recordings from today's. Before 1.8 there was no separate "dig" sound at all: breaking a block played the material's footstep.
• Music — the twelve C418 tracks that were in the game then, and nothing else. The Primordial is silent: music was disabled throughout Infdev, and cave ambience did not arrive until Alpha.
• Combat feel — hitting something makes no sound in any stratum. That is not an omission. Attack sounds arrived with 1.9.

Vestiges

The Primordial still has the brick pyramids and the obsidian walls that Infdev generated along its axes, before anyone decided what they were for.

Advancements

Five, one for each arrival and one for the floor itself:

• 1.8 Was Better — fall into the age before the cooldown
• The Golden Age — fall into Beta 1.7.3
• In the Beginning — fall into Infdev
• Full Circle — dig deep enough into the past and come out in the present
• Rock Bottom — stand on the old floor of the world

Requirements

• Minecraft 26.1.2
• Fabric Loader 0.19.2 or later
• Fabric API 0.145.1
• Java 25

Client and server. Works in multiplayer, each player's rules, fog and HUD are resolved for the stratum they are standing in, so two players in two eras see two different games.

Languages

English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian.