The Aether Retrospective

Minecraft has had tens of thousands of mods since his Creation in 2009 but somehow out of all of these one stands out as the most beloved and famous a mod that became so beloved and famous that people for over a decade have called for it to be added to the game and even

Thought it was in the game already and this mod is of course the Aether so today let us dive deep to look back at how the Aether was made what makes it so special even today why it is so beloved and its long lasting Legacy and with

That all being said let us begin foreign mod starts on October 29 2010 when Notch officially added the nether to Minecraft this started tons of discussion threads on the Minecraft forums coming up with custom Dimension ideas and most importantly for this story was The Ether The Ether was first proposed on October

31st by Chrome e and was supposed to be the complete opposite of the nether with floating sky islands and a glowstone portal this idea would get a sizable amount of popularity and another form thread would be made on it on November 9th by gray Acumen This Thread would

Change the name of it to the Aether and would compile an idealist of blocks mobs and More in hopes that someone would make it into a mod in the future by December 2010 some modders actually started to work on bringing it to life and made some very early test versions

And sadly all that exists from this era is a single video but after a few more months of discussion and making a full Plan Three modders teamed up and started full work on it in March of 2011. the first one and head of the project was

King B dogs a 15 year old whose previous projects were making a new tier of tools from the Nether and bacon blogs the second one was kadachi Zero a Canadian modder who made Battle Towers which was one of the most popular mods from beta and would later on create clay soldiers

And the last one was Shaka a modder I’ve not found much about other than he made a very famous API back in 2011 and a handful of smaller mods the three of them with the help of numerous other community members worked for the next four months on the mod and the hype was

Unimaginable at the time people cared and talked more about this mod than what they thought were coming in future updates for the game itself and as screenshots and teaser videos came out for it the hype only grew larger a few other modders would also join in to help

Such as flan from Flan’s Mod and 303 who was a mega modder at the time and finally on July 22nd 2011 the mod was released to mass praise and with that we look at what makes it so special foreign stepping out of the portal and into the

Aether itself is a feeling that I’ve never been able to feel in any other mod or really even any other game it feels like something so unreal but it’s real something that feels impossible but it’s there I think when many people don’t describe about the mod but feel it’s

Just how unique the color of the scenery is the sky is just bright enough to feel like you are in something heaven-like the new grasses in Cobblestone are just bright enough to feel new and alive and the trees are just a perfect shade of yellow to match the scenery every item

In Block in this mod is perfectly shaded and colored Everything feels bright enough to not fit in vanilla Minecraft but not too out of place to feel like a mod or another game the mobs themselves also just don’t feel overdone or underdone they are either just adapted

Versions of the vanilla mobs or are custom but don’t feel out of place every mob and as we will get into later boss feels like they belong in Minecraft but only in a dimension like this there’s also the music and sound effects by Amelia Von kriken which perfectly fit

That Almost Heaven Vibe and honestly these songs remind me of Minecraft just as much as their original soundtrack does to close out this section the Aether itself feels and aesthetically is a completely different place from the Overworld in nether but still fits into Minecraft it’s a dimension that feels

Like heaven but isn’t actually as it is full of hostile mobs and progression which leads us to the next part of this video foreign could be played one of two ways one you can just have a normal vanilla world and just go into the Aether with full gear

And food or you can give yourself the glowstone and water needed to go to the Aether and start out there which is what I will be talking about in this video to start this way is the same way with normal Minecraft you get wood but instead from Oak you get it from skyroot

Then you get holy Stone and then you get the equivalent ores ambrosium is the equivalent of coals but you can actually use it to restore Health since it never turns night in the Aether then there’s xanite which is like iron but looks way cooler and then lastly there’s gravitite

Which is like diamond but in between all the mining crafting and exploring is the dungeons there are three dungeons in the mod the first one is the bronze dungeon which has sadly kind of been forgotten by time the temple is kind of a ravine cut into the ground leading to a dungeon

That houses a sliding square that attacks the player this square is the boss and can only be attacked with pickaxes or shovels and after killing it you get the bronze key to unlock the reward chest the next one is the silver dungeon this Temple is a giant partheon

In the sky which is one of the most beautiful builds I’ve ever seen in this game and is forever ingrained in my memory inside is two sections one with a bunch of mobs that look like a chest but actually attack you when you try opening them and the second is the boss battle

Against the Valkyries and their Queen and after defeating all of them you get a silver key to unlock the next reward chest and the last one is the gold dungeon which the temple is housed in the center of a specially shaped island the boss in the middle is a sun god and

Can only be beaten by using its own ice attacks against it probably the most annoying boss in the mod since it can pretty much one hit you and you cannot attack it directly but upon defeating it as you can guess you get the gold key to unlock the next reward chest all of

These dungeons are very unique and challenging in a way that not many other mods are able to accomplish they don’t throw tons of mobs at the player and don’t reward with super op items and the boss fights themselves are very challenging but not completely unfair and causing you to lose your stuff but

What I think is the coolest part of this is the wide variety of unique swords capes armors and more that you can get in the rewards chest it feels really rewarding it makes me want to keep going through more dungeons to collect more items as a whole the regression system

Of the Aether is simple but very repetitive and enjoyable it’s just different enough from normal Minecraft since you have dungeons in the middle of it that keep you going and wanting more and the most interesting part of this is how it really highlights how Minecraft

As a whole was back then and this leads to the next section of the video foreign to start this section I want to say something that is possibly controversial and that is that I don’t think the Aether was ahead of its time other mods from the times such as Adventure Craft

And better than wolves were way more ahead of their time so much so that only in the last three years the modding and vanilla communities have catched up on the other hand the Aether is a timepiece from Minecraft in 2011. and I think that’s what makes it so fondly

Remembered and fresh today it really only has three dungeons four tiers of tools and an armor a few custom mobs and a bunch of smaller blocks and collectible items as world generation is also not a really complex instead it’s beautifully simplistic and lastly there’s not really tons of systems

Attached to it like modern Minecraft’s enchanting and trading it’s just do what you want to do and get what you want to get and I think because of this the Aether stands out and remains easy to get into and remember unlike other mods such as the between lands which is full

Of additions and systems that you have to remember and keep track of but as we will see in the next section the future versions of the Aether itself also had this problem foreign has had a really Rocky history and saw a few updates in 2011 and 2012 that added

New blocks and items however in 2012 development started to really drop off since all of the modders left to work on their own projects except for King B dogs King B dogs himself was now entering University which meant that he would not have much time to work on the

Mod and the mod actually kind of seemed to be endangered however work did resume in 2013 with a new set of modders and artists joining King B dogs and finally on June 9 2013 the Aether II Genesis of the Void was released the Aether II has the same overall gameplay and feel as

The first one but has new tree types new clouds a few new mobs and the bronze dungeon being redone entirely as a whole there really isn’t too much to say about the Aether II it got a lot of attention upon its release but the hype died by

2014 since Minecraft modding as a whole was now focused on quick to get into mod showcase type mods but the ather2 itself is kind of mid all of the stuff it added was cool but didn’t really add anything to how the Aether was supposed to feel

In fact I think the new tree and cloud types actually take away from it as it just feels like there’s too much going on in the scenery the dungeons were also changed now requiring you to go through a menu to enter and no longer having keys which makes them a lot more bland

Overall the Aether II isn’t a terrible mod it’s just kind of unnecessary and takes away from the original following this the mod fills it out for another few years KB dogs himself left the project after 2014 to go to focus on real life and the project was given in

The hands of a few modders most famous of which being Oscar and Hugo Payne in 2017 the original Mod was seen in Revival since it was now nostalgic enough and so still beloved that it was being put in nearly every mod pack at that time a year later in 2018 Aether

Legacy was released which was a mod pack that just added all the original aether-like Mods together and updated them for 1.12 and then there was Highlands the aether2 highlands was a sequel to the Aether II and took a completely different direction from what came before it removed nearly all of the

Mobs from before it scrapped the entire world generation from before and it removed the glowstone portal to to replace it with some Stone totem type thing and you know how I mentioned earlier that there were mods that became forgotten because they added a bunch of systems well that exact thing happened

To this mod this mod for some reason has NPC dialogue a trading system and was supposed to have so much more like look at all of the stuff they planned that being said the eighth or two Highlands is and will probably remain unfinished so take what I say next as kind of a

Half review of The Mod as a whole and I hate saying this the eighth or two Highlands is a really bad mod it removes pretty much everything that made the Aether good and instead replaces it with a bunch of Mobs and items that are way too over designed like this doesn’t look

Like it fits in Minecraft I don’t know what to tell you but I’m sorry the new world generation is terrible it is so unimaginably boring and just so overly filled with Mobs and structures to make it feel alive and I gotta be honest with you guys and I don’t know if it’s just

Me but I don’t play Minecraft to chat with NPCs instead I just want to fight in the dungeons which are not even in the mod yet and most importantly the eighth or two Highlands just misses the entire point of the Aether being a dimension chin not being an entire new

Game and I think this really comes down to something that I’ve not really mentioned in this video and that is the attempt to create a lore around the Aether the reason why I haven’t mentioned it is because it really should not matter when compared to the gameplay

The Aether one and two did have some lore to them and for those who are interested in that type of thing it was great there was uniqueness to it but for those including me who are really not interested in any of that it comes off like the eighth or two Highlands was

Only focused on just being a lore-centric mod so as a result the mod flopped overall and the mod team luckily changed focus by 2021. since 2021 they’ve worked to Port the original Mod to 1.19 with quality of life changes to fit the newest versions which I just

Have to say that I’m very excited for and I’m happy to see that they are doing this and for those wondering what happened at King B dogs he now works at Mojang so there’s a possibility guys but if you do need something to play in the meantime that is Aether like please go

Check out Paradise Lost it is a really incredible mod that feels like what the Aether could have been if it kept with its original style but kept updating to the newest versions sadly it does remained on fish and kind of empty so beware but this leads us to the last

Section of this video The Legacy and final opinion of the aether mod the aether mod is by far the most famous mod in Minecraft’s history and because of that it has changed Minecraft modding forever following the release of the Aether there were tons of new dimension mods most famous of which being Tropic

Craft and the Twilight Forest which deserves its own retrospective video outside of Dimension mods it’s art style and approach to dungeons led to the creation of tons of smaller mods and texture packs which still come out to this day the Aether is still one of the

Best mods ever made for the game and mine and many other players opinions it was made by a community at a time when Minecraft was a much smaller and simpler game and the result is that it has such a unique style progression and depth that is both simplistic but replayable

Endlessly and lastly Mojang can you please please add this to the game we have been waiting 12 years for it you teased us with the April fools update this year but come on please please anyways before closing out this video I do want to announce that I will be

Streaming the weekend this video is out and possibly the next weekend after so keep your eyes out for that and well that is all let me know in the comments what you guys remember and think about this mod and if you are new to the channel and want more videos like this

Please like And subscribe and if you already are please like and share have a good day and goodbye foreign