Advent of Ascension, often abbreviated to AoA or referred to by its less common full name, Nevermine: Advent of Ascension, is a Game Mod released for Minecraft in 2012.
The mod focuses on directly expanding the Minecraft universe by adding over 20 dimensions and implementing new mechanics and mobs with new gimmicks. The overall gameplay of Minecraft still remains the same, unlike a few other mods this size, but Advent of Ascension begins to breathe some fresh air into it while at the same time multiplying the game's content by several times.
Early on in 2012, developer Xolova assembled a small team and developed the precursor to AoA, DivineRPG. The mod quickly grew to hold six unique, albeit plain dimensions, and later a seventh, designed to be a second world as opposed to the common modded dimension, which merely a supplement to the original vanilla Overworld. Nine months later, Xolova took a break, but later abandoned the mod and his team altogether as he realized that his work was actually flawed beyond repair. Thus begins his long journey developing AoA.
Since then, the mod has grown to massive lengths. Currently, the official record is 21 dimensions, 330 mobs, 27 bosses, and over 600 items, enough to take even DivineRPG up to eleven. The latest version is 3.2.7 which can be acquired here.
A version 2.5 has been in development since the beginning of 2016, however, it was thrown into Development Hell and split into three versions (all yet to be released) due to Xolova falling ill in April. As of January 2017, Xolova has only made one statement regarding this, but it's rather significant: Working on an overhaul mod is incredibly tough, especially in a game where updates force you to restart from scratch. It's much less a matter of profit (as initially believed, though that's still the case) and more of the fact that Minecraft as a game is super unfriendly to mod creators, along with the fact that Xolova has other projects to be doing.
Since 2018, Xolova handed over the source code to current main developer Scimiguy (also known as Tslat). Made apparent with the 3.2 update, Scimiguy's main focus with the mod has been improving and rebalancing its existing content as opposed to adding further onto the mod.
Advent of Ascension contains examples of the following tropes:
- 20 Bear Asses: Pluton's games in Immortallis have you collect gold from constructs and then bring them to a station to deposit them in. Downplayed as not only is that the only place where the trope takes place, but also there are only two games with this premise. The other seven are courtesy of Erebon.
- Action Bomb: Explodots in Lunalus, and just about every Creeponia mob. The Concussion Staff also blasts away any mob within eight blocks of you.
- Animate Inanimate Object: All mobs from Playtopia would have been this.
- After the End: The Vox Ponds. What is presumed to be a nuclear disaster wiped out an Earth-like world, with the sentient robots soon taking over.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Vox Ponds is a dimension set in a nuclear wasteland similar to Earth. Since then, robots have all but taken over, and the only organic life left include a small mutant shopkeeper that appears on demand in abandoned stores, a Walking Wasteland species known as the Toxxulous, and the resident Big Bad Voxxulon. A lesser example is the Exohead which is frequently found locked up, presumably by barbarian Lelyetians in the underside of their namesake dimension.
- All mobs from Immortallis which aren't spiritual in design are mechanical constructs built specifically for the games involved.
- Alien Among Us: The existence of Hosts and Creeponia suggest Creepers are now this.
- Alien Invasion: The formerly implemented Lunar Event, which spawned in several stereotypical types of aliens.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Lottomen have skin colors and faces to match their dimensions. You can also find yellow-skinned Herbalists that sell crops.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Halycons, Dawnlights and Creep Cows, just to name a few.
- Art Evolution: At the beginning, Xolova reused sounds, used blatantly obvious Public Domain Soundtrack for the soundtrack, had simplistic sprites, and also merely imported lots of sprites from Terraria instead. As each version began to come out, though, Xolova switched from 16x16 sprites and imports to 32x32 sprites and developed a new art style separate from DivineRPG. The easiest way to compare this is the original items to Creeponia's items, and compare those to the Shyrelands' items.
- Early Greatblades used to just be that - giant swords. However, in 2.5, Xolova began developing a few with unique art styles, to the point that the Shyrelands' Greatblade, God's Greatblade, is much more detailed than any sword in the mod, and
thus, a sword truly fit for a king. Weapons introduced in 2.5 in general are also slowly taking on a new art direction. - Since Scimiguy became the main developer of the mod and got Ursun and Neo Volt on board as artists, most of the mod's blocks and items have been retextured, either to fit Minecraft's new default textures as of 1.14, or to phase out old textures that had been blatantly edited from Terraria or vanilla Minecraft itself.
- Early Greatblades used to just be that - giant swords. However, in 2.5, Xolova began developing a few with unique art styles, to the point that the Shyrelands' Greatblade, God's Greatblade, is much more detailed than any sword in the mod, and
- Apocalypse How: The disaster that struck the Vox Ponds is a class 6. All sentient life has ended, with the robots taking over. The only natural sentient life form remaining is a single mutant shopkeeper that mysteriously appears on demand.
- Bears Are Bad News: Cuddlehugs, boss of Playtopia.
- Blood Knight: Erebon is the god of darkness, and appears to be one himself as you must melee kill mobs to please him. His guardian, Penumbra, is also one, as are the residents of the many dimensions Erebon controls.
- Lelyetians are this for an entire species, but one look at the Exohead's spawning location tells you that even they have standards. But some made a different choice, and now help the player succeed in the paper-thin world.
- Chainsaw Good: The no longer obtainable chainsaw, formerly a drop off of Craexxeus. Depending on the interpretation, the Spark weapons also count, though they resemble portable scroll saws more than chainsaws.
- Clown Car: Hosts, normally harmless spaceships that dispense more Creepers if you're anywhere near them.
- Crapsaccharine World: Playtopia. While development screenshots (and walking around in the 2.5 snapshot test generation) suggest it may not look the part, being a yellow organic cavern with generation similar to the Nether and Crystevia, the mobs are all well-known toys from the past. And they want you dead.
- Candyland is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. However, there aren't any passive mobs in there aside from Spearmint and Peppermint Slugs, as usual, and every other mob there is sentient candy trying to kill you. And then there's the boss Cotton Candor who can be harmed only by a handful of magic staves which correspond to randomly changing colors on the boss himself making him very difficult and annoying to kill.
- Creepy Child: The Twinsy from the unimplemented Dark Moon event.
- Creepy Doll: The Dolly, also from the Dark Moon.
- Dark Is Not Evil:
- The Primordials that inhabit Dustopia. Everything else, on the other hand, is committed to draining what little light you can find in the dimension, including the place itself.
- In update 3.5, Night Watchers (tall, slender figures that are pure black, save for a single glowing eye) were moved to the Vox Ponds, one of the most hostile dimensions... and made passive.
- Dark World:
- Crystevia to the Nether. Both generate mostly the same, down to structures, but Crystevia produces water where there would be lava, while the Nether is filled with lava. Crystevia is also rather dim in comparison to the Nether, and its mobs are decidedly more evil than the Nether's mobs; they're constructs built specifically with one purpose: to kill you.
- One of Xolova's dimension ideas that was never realized was the Blackwood, which would've been this to the Overworld - changes to blocks in the Overworld would be reflected in the Blackwood, and vice versa. According to Xol, the dimension progression would've converged here in the mid-game before branching out into a new set of dimensions, akin to Terraria's Hardmode.
- Demonic Spiders: Tricksters spawn underground in the Overworld, and every so often they turn invisible and spawn a clone in their place. If left alone for long enough, it can be hard to even find the original and kill it. However, that's not all: the clones also unavoidably explode when killed, which will likely be highly dangerous for players mining at the beginning of the game with little gear to either reduce incoming damage or fight back.
- Duct Tape for Everything: Rosite ingots prior to version 3.2, and Magic Mending Compounds/Repair Dust repair anything that takes damage from the mod.
- Early-Bird Cameo: You can find Eternal wood and leaves from Labricon in 2.4, even though that update was planned for 2.6. And of course, you can build an indigenous tree out of it.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Oh, my. There isn't a single biome that can't reduce early-game players to shreds in no time. In fact, the official complementary mod pack for AoA, Departed, even outright states this in the opening pages of a small book that you receive at the beginning of every world, basically saying that it's no longer possible to survive at night without a base in the beginning, and also gives a list of once peaceful biomes to avoid.
- To give you an idea of how bad the situation is, the only passive mobs added are Non Player Characters, Halycons, and Creep Cows. That's it. As of 3.2, a few mobs such as the Elkanynes, Coratees, and Candyland slugs also gained passive status, but passive mobs are still largely a minority among the mobs Advent adds in.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The Exohead's spawning location suggest that even the Lelyetians decided they were too strong. Take note that they're complete and utter barbarians and Blood Knights who otherwise do not discern their targets.
- Forced Level-Grinding: You have to level up the Hunternote and Runationnote skills to progress throughout the mod fluidly, as many items crucial to progression can only be obtained at high levels in either skill. In addition, many dungeons throughout the mod spawn Hunter mobs, forcing you to level up to achieve each dimension's endgame. There's also the Ancient Cavern note with four bosses that each require a skill level of 70 in a skill related to that boss's god (Infusion for Coniferon, Hunter for Penumbra, Runation for Horon, and Foraging for Goldorth).
- Flunky Boss: Exaggerated. Penumbra, one of the Ancient Cavern bosses, spawns a ton of different minions from other dimensions. However, he can't summon any if you don't get hit by him, and his projectiles can be easily dodged or simply blocked with a shield.
- Fun with Acronyms: C.R.E.E.P, the boss of Creeponia, has his name stand for "Creepy Raging Entity of Extreme Power."
- Game-Breaking Bug: Lots, unfortunately. Some examples:
- In Immortalis, a preset dimension where you play lethal arena-based puzzles and games for the (consensual) pleasure of gods Erebon and Pluton, anything that spawns Creepers will have them blow up and permanently destroy the rooms in the dimension, due to a coding error that makes the blocks have absurdly low blast resistance despite being Made of Indestructium. In addition, the Reef Staff, which encases you in a small temporary chamber made from reef blocks, will replace the blocks there as well. The only known fix is to go into Minecraft's files and delete all data for Immortalis in your world (deleting a DIM (dimension data) file forces the world to regenerate the DIM file's assigned dimension from scratch.)
- Smashing a Skill Crystal is supposed to add EXP to the lowest-leveled skill under level 15. However, a bug once made it level the highest-leveled skill. Thus, if you could wear any armor set in the Mastery collection (made wearable by maxing out the particular skill the armor is named for), you could no longer train with Skill Crystals.
- In the 2.5 snapshot, ores (or fossils, if you will) and structures don't generate outside of the original Precasian Forest biome in Precasia (in versions before 2.5, the Precasian Forest is just the base dimension, as there are no biomes in those versions.) Looking for Rune Shrines to make some Poison Runes, or the Kaiyu Temple? Good luck.
- Prior to 3.2 with the Greckon and Runandor portals in Mysterium. Entering the Greckon portal would permanently cause the portal back in Mysterium that was supposed to lead back to the Overworld instead lead back to Greckon, essentially trapping the player in some sort of limbo that could only be escaped by dying.
- Also, at one point in the mod's history, firing a Skydriver Bow's arrow over the void in the Haven would cause the game's AI to freeze, until the game was restarted.
- In a few versions of the mod post-3.2, portals could generate in new dimensions without the portal blocks in the frames needed to go back to the Overworld. The portals would generate first, then natural terrain generation within the dimension you travelled to could cause all of the portal blocks that teleport the player back to the Overworld to disappear. However, this was fixed.
- Goddamned Bats: Arguably any ranged mob that makes no sound when it fires at you. Just imagine taking a stroll through a new dimension, only to suddenly start taking damage for some reason...
- Flyes in Lelyetia. Their hitbox extends so abnormally far that, if one sneaks up on you, it can take you a second to even find where it's hitting you from. Also, they can fly, so it's easy to get knocked off of high-up structures by them if you're not on high alert at all times.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Stabbing any non-boss mob with a Spark weapon "drains [their] soul" as per the flavor text for a One-Hit KO.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Most endgame weapons are this since AoA is not developed with the intent of creating one.
- Infinity +1 Sword: Since AoA lacks a Final Boss or any sort of endgame, it's hard to determine any actual use of this trope in the mod (and thus any potential candidates have been relegated to Infinity -1 Sword.) However, prior to 3.2, we had the Beamer, a red-and-blue Wave-Motion Gun that spewed out an energy shower when you turn it on, and reduced most mobs to nothing in seconds. Although Xolova personally considers the Odious from the same archetype to be better, the Beamer had higher DPS and was more suited towards mages and rangers who prefer to stay away from the front lines (especially in Greckon, where lots of mobs punish you for coming too close.) Back then, acquiring it legitimately required Hunter level 95, and you had a 1% chance that could not be boosted to drop from Crusilisks in Dustopia.
- The Mecha Skellox also counts since you need to be level 93 in Creation (related to the summoning of minions) to summon it to your side.
- Light Is Not Good: The Shyrelands. A kingdom-like dimension with an alien atmosphere full of mobs trying to kill you, as to be expected., and they are all pretty much based off of light, especially the Omnilight and Axiolight.
- While Luxon himself isn't evil, he controls a lot of light-themed dimensions.
- The Maze: Labricon, a dimension split up into three levels named Darkin, Leveled, and Eternal. The giant Fragment Temples that you need to enter in five different dimensions to grind for shattered pieces of the realmstone for it count as well.
- Made of Indestructium: Destructors in Vox Ponds are completely unkillable by normal means, though fortunately they can only become aggressive towards you if an Alarmo alerts them of your presence.
- Meaningful Name:
- Luxon, one of the gods, is an obvious one, with "lux" meaning light. He likes to control dimensions that are filled with light, though control over the Everland is split between him and Selyan, possibly because the Everland is a compromise between their two interests: Luxon plays a part because it's eternal sunrise in the Everland, and Selyan also lends control because the place is covered in thick although not-so-visually-pleasing foliage.
- Pluton is derived from a prefix referring to the wealthy (e.g, "plutocracy.") He controls mining-related dimensions and is pleased when you scoop up treasure using your Foraging and Logging skills like a maniac. He also hosts the games inside Immortallis with Erebon, and there's two stages where you have to kill robotic creatures to retrieve their gold and dump it in a shrine. His godhood of treasure also likely relates to greed, since his guardian Goldorth is a king who clearly looks like a glutton.
- Mini-Mecha: You can summon a robotic Skellox as the Creation skill's resident Infinity +1 Sword.
- Mirroring Factions: Talking to the Zal reveal that despite being complete and utter Starfish Aliens to the point they consider the player one, they have a society much like the family stereotypes shown on US television in Real Life during the 50's and 60's. You can even find a kid selling "lunarade".
- No Fair Cheating:
- Using any weapon from an outside mod that does over 12.5 hearts of damage would instead cap at 12.5 hearts versus any mobs native to AoA. This number was around the range of the stronger side of blades that can be found.
- Like Shoplift and Die below, this is likely a case of Author Appeal due to an incident during DivineRPG's development that was part of the reasons Xolova abandoned it.note
- Between versions 3.0 and 3.2, Elytra would degrade significantly faster than normal in AoA dimensions, likely to discourage cheesing the dimensions by flying over them rather than fighting your way through them.
- Using any weapon from an outside mod that does over 12.5 hearts of damage would instead cap at 12.5 hearts versus any mobs native to AoA. This number was around the range of the stronger side of blades that can be found.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: They belong to a home domain called Ethereus. And there's a Big Bad named Daemon there. Ghosts of actual other mobs, though, only appear leaking out into the world on certain nights.
- In Immortalis, at one point Erebon directs you to slay 25 ghosts for him. It's pretty obvious the ghosts in this mod can be kept under basic lock and key.
- Powered Armor: Elecanyte Armor, complete with energy barrier.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Many Leitmotifs for the bosses in the mod used blatantly obvious public domain music or music cleared for non-profit reuse. This was before boss themes were replaced by Scimiguy in version 3.2.
- Shoplift and Die: In the 2.5 snapshot, if you use a mod that gives you creative flight in survival to fly during any boss fight, the god Krasaun will poison you and provide this quote:
- Likely a case of Author Appeal, as Xolova hates mods that do this.
- Shown Their Work: Limonite is labelled by Forge's ore dictionary (a system that labels metals so that different mods with the same metal can have each mod's invdividual ingot swapped out for each other in recipes) such that it's compatible with some technological mods as a substitute for iron with no extra coding involved. Limonite just so happens to exist in Real Life as a yellow material that functions as a high-yield iron ore.
- Spiritual Successor: Intended to be one to Xolova's previous project DivineRPG, which he canned due to realizing that it was packed with Game Breakers, glitches, and other nasties. Could also be a direct sequel as the mod is labelled "Nevermine 2" on the official forum thread, though it's still debatable.
- Starfish Aliens: Zal, the friendly villagers of Lunalus. They also regard the player in this way. This only applies physically, though. Their society is actually a lot like a stereotypical western family from the mid-20th century in regards to overall behavior. Of course, a lot of mobs from the other dimensions are like this, too.
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True Neutral: The four primary gods. They have no particular alignment towards the player (not even Erebon, who appears to be a Blood Knight and favors dimensions made of pure evil), and anything negative that comes out of them is usually your fault. Please them, however, and you'll be rewarded.- Krasaun, however, is a little more suspicious because although he wasn't heard of past exactly one weapon and a buff acquired by filling up the tribute bars for each god halfway through before nightfall prior to 2.5, he's slowly starting to come out into the light... And apparently he has a direct pipeline to someone, though it's not clear who. Also, his endgame apparently is to lead the player to Labricon, for reasons unknown.
- Water Level: L'Borean. Although it doesn't make your character have to swim, it's still supposed to be completely underwater and is full of lakes that make mobs there heal to full health quickly. Its boss, Dracyon, converts any terrain that you attempt to battle him on into this as well by summoning puddles out of thin air to heal.
- As of update 3.5, L'Borean is completely submerged, and its mobs got a makeover in 3.5 to better suit their new environment. Think you can be safe by just swimming up to the top of the world for air? Think again, because there's a blockade of Barriers directly above the water that prevent you from surfacing. Good luck...
- Wave-Motion Gun: There's an archetype of gun in which you right-click once to release a torrent of energy that shreds anything you aim it at until you run out of energy points or turn the gun off.
- Wave-Motion Tuning Fork: The Reefer, which can be obtained in L'Borean, although its projectiles are affected by gravity.
