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Traces of the Fallen is an adventure and worldgen mod about finding a suite of wildly different blocks from the past. Be it a cargo wagon abandoned little time ago, or stone circles from eras past.
Winner of the 2025 1.12 Modding Coalition Modjam.
Part of the core experience of the mod is going in blind and exploring the overworld in search for these blocks and finding out what happens when looting or interacting with all of them. A simple overview of the mod's main mechanics can be found here:
Cargo carts, crates of potions, abandoned tents, stashes hidden in bushes, human remains, stone circles, and the like generate on the surface of the world on most biomes.
Looting these traces is a no brainer, a chance to obtain common resources and even some exclusive items... unless. Sometimes, the more is unearthed, the riskier it gets.
Since players might find some mechanics confusing, and modpack developers might seethe over obstusely obscurse and hermetic documentation, all details can be found below:
A broken-down wagon (or sledge in snowy biomes) full of supplies. Includes rare paintings and some basic unique items
An abandoned and valuable crate with potions and potion-making resources
Comes in a few variants; the most valuable ones have a unique totem or ward that can be dropped, but be careful, there's a reason they are abandoned (see Mechanics).
A long-forgotten crate and looted chest hidden by a large bush that contains stolen and lost miscellaneous loot, like that of dungeons.
The remnants of some poor soul who died clinging to a crate. It can be looted with no remorse or buried with a shovel. It can drop some uniquely valuable loot like the Rune of Skimming. Be careful with getting too greedy. The more remains you desacrate, the more dangerous it could get... (see Mechanics).
A simple grave marker that appear by burying a lost corpse. Offer flowers to respect the dead.
An ancient stone circle, indestructible. It can be activated with a Rune of Skimming.
Haunting is an invisible karma or moral system consistent in an internal haunting counter that increases with certain actions:
When a player's Haunting increases, it becomes more likely that the next time they mine a corpse or grave, a Especter will appear to attack the player. When the haunting level becomes sufficiently high, especters can spawn nearby the player at random.
Haunting level can be roughly estimated by interacting with an Armillary or looking at the Lost in the Forest painting, both obtained from lost cargo.
A player can atenuate their own haunting by burying exposed corpses with a shovel and placing flowers on their grave markers.
Bliss is a new effect that provides regeneration and luck buffs. It can be obtained by performing certain actions
Approaching or harvesting certain blocks can result in ambushes:
Nearing abandoned tents, there is a chance that a goblin might appear and attack you.
Unearthing remains/graves have an increased chance to spawn a specter according to Haunting level
When using a Goblin Totem, it will emit a soundwave and work on both the main and off hand, while consuming durability. Goblins can be commanded with the totem; that is, when there is three or less... Any more, and goblins might be more inclined to overthrowing you.
<3 Goblins: Will fight for the player and actively follow them.
4-5 Goblins: Will act neutral towards the player
>6 Goblins: Will just ignore the totem and attack the player for it. They might fight over who gets to keep the precious item.
Makes skeleons ignore you! But it constantly increases your Haunting (see Mechanics) while losing durability.
Use in snowy biomes to get a buff. Or obtain leather from it.
Repairs some duration of your off-hand-held item.
Preserved food. Offers lots of saturation.
Reading them gives Bliss for 30 seconds and provides decent XP.
Tells the moonphase and day number in-world. Has a useful secondary use related to the mod.
Increased radius and effectiveness!
Half a stack of string.
Showcases the player who places the painting. Has a useful secondary use related to the mod.
Showcases the player who places the painting.
Command Goblins! See Mechanics
Will phase through blocks to damage the player. Upon attacking, it will phase out and approach from another angle to attack.
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Goblins can wear helmets and pick up items. They are quite weak, but will squirm around the player. When attacked, they will circle around the player to try backstabbing them.
Design principle of this mod for nerds
The mod seeks to add mostly single block sites, as opposed to structures, but these blocks shouldn't just be a 16x16 cube. Instead, they attempt to have unique models composed of three large-medium-small elements, or a single larger block. This makes the blocks feel more like complex clutter or constructs in a more organic way that helps with environmental storytelling and making the world feel inhabited, ancient, messy, and dangerous.
Another guiding principle in the functionality of the blocks comes from originally retrofitting the theme for the 2025 1.12 Coalition Modjam, whose theme was "The more you have, the worse it gets." This limitation made us play with our abandoned concept in a way to make it more dynamic and reactive to players, adding stacking or immediate consequences to looting/activating blocks. As such, we got ideas like "the more you loot, the more likely something bad can happens." Now, in order to not punish the player for engaging with the mod's systems, we took two approaches: means to reduce the chances of bad stuff happening, and, in case you choose to commit to looting with no remorse, potential rewards for the challenges.
The mod tries to use a diegetic approach. No explicit indicators or numbers; instead, there are visual cues of your level of risk in regard to the (in the future) different accumulations of threat level.
Code-wise, everything was programmed by windanesz, who also provided extensive feedback and extra ideas along the development of the mod, including the idea to flesh out the core idea in full.
Texture-wise, all assets were made by hand by Foreck using Blockbench and Paint.Net, who also made the original concept of the mod and expanded on it with more concepts, items, and loot blocks.
This mod was made for the 2025 1.12 Coalition Mod Jam
Join the 1.12 Coalition Discord!
Additional Credits
SFX from Pixabay:
guillotine, bone_pile by Floraphonic
porcelain by bbrocer (Freesound)
stone chest by u_i15wxund59
SFX from OpenGameArt:
goblin sounds by ArtisticDude
