Video Game / The Aether

The Aether is a very large Game Mod for Minecraft, being considered the biggest and best before more mods of a similar variety took its place. It takes the un-included sky dimension and expands it into something worthy of its own game, and acts as an opposite to the Nether. Whereas the Nether is pockets of sky surrounded entirely by rock, the Aether is just the opposite — pieces of land surrounded entirely by sky, with no water ocean. The mod was created by a collaboration of Kingbdogz, Flan, Kodaichi, Shockah and 303.

What makes The Aether a huge mod is not just its added terrain generator (there are plenty of terrain generator mods out there). It's also an entirely different geology, with its own unique rocks, its own unique soils, etc. And it has a different ecosystem as well, with original mobs (animal creatures) that spawn only in the Aether. And there are three tiers of dungeon (Bronze, Silver, and Gold), each with a boss battle.

The Aether is currently in version 1.04_01, and works on Minecraft version 1.0.0. However, the download link is down, and must be found elsewhere

The development team is currently working on a radically improved version of the mod that will be functional with SMP. An Alpha version is available here. You can see their progress on the Aether Facebook page.

In August 9, 2014, the Aether mod went through a Continuity Reboot of sorts, returning as the Aether II: Genesis of the Void. It was intended as a continuation of the Aether, adding and retooling several new and existing items as well as an expansive lore detailing the story behind the Aether's existence.

Around January 14th, 2018, in an attempt to revisit the feel of the original Aether, The Aether Legacy mod was launched, porting the original Aether from its final update in 1.2.5. to Minecraft version 1.12.2 with multiplayer finally becoming an option.

• In mid-2023, the Aether Legacy mod was unexpectedly updated with a version for Minecraft version 1.19.4, and is currently in beta testing. Watch this space.

The tropes on this page are specific to The Aether. For tropes that pertain to Minecraft in general, see that page.

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Tropes:

• All There in the Manual: The Aether mod includes three new items — three books comprising three volumes of the Book of Lore. These are in-game guidebooks that tell you the purpose of items you find. Volume 1 pertains to the Minecraft Overworld and items that already exist there. Volume 2 pertains to the Nether. And volume 3 pertains to items original to the Aether. These books need not be found — depending on which dimension you are currently in, pressing B on the keyboard will automatically add the relevant Book of Lore volume to your inventory.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Sheepuffs, unlike surface sheep, come in a lovely variety of pastel colors. Besides the normal white and normal grey, there's also pink, lime green, cyan, light blue and purple.
• Blood Knight: The Valkyries, who seem to be happy to fight you.
• Boss Room: Each of the three Aether dungeon bosses reside in one. The Slider sits on a pedestal at the end of its dungeon. The Valkyrie Queen lives in a grand throne room. The Sun Spirit dwells in the center of a golden floating island. Each comes with its own Ghost Butler who seals the door and makes the blocks within unbreakable until either you or the boss is killed.
• Bullet Seed: Aechor plants fire projectiles at you.
• Bullying a Dragon: Continuously poking and prodding a Sun Spirit will eventually anger him after exhausting his patience with the player, resulting in him attacking.
• Chest Monster: Much of the time if you find a mysterious treasure chest in a Dungeon, it will be this. The popular Aether Mod introduces Mimics to the game, chests in boss dungeons - mixed with "normal", loot-filled chests - coming to life and attempting to bite the player when opening is attempted. It gets up and walks toward you. You can beat it off with your sword until it dies, sometimes dropping empty chests as a reward. A rule of thumb is that if there are two chests in a dungeon pedestal, it's 100% two mimics. Amusingly, if you open them both they will immediately attack each other, leaving the player to finish the winner off.
• Darkness Equals Death:
  • Inverted. Unlike on the surface world where the greatest danger is in the dark and the night, the Aether's regular dangers are out and about in broad daylight. There are actually fewer monsters in the dark, and none spawn inside man-made caves. (Far fewer natural caves exist in the Aether.) It's usually a good assumption that if you're completely underground, you're safe from monsters. The Bronze, Silver and Gold Dungeons have dangers of their own, but their light levels have nothing to do with this.
  • Played straight in the upcoming Aether 2. Zephyrs that spawn at night are basically miniature Ghasts, and more is coming, so who knows what else is in store...
• Double Jump: Tame saddled moas can be ridden, but their flight capabilities are limited to triple jumps (for blue moas), quadruple jumps (for white moas) or octuple jumps (for black moas) before they must land.
• Dual-World Gameplay: The mod introduces The Aether. It's a world made of floating islands and clouds. If you fall, it brings you back to the normal world. If you don't have a parachute, the fall will most likely kill you.
• Expy: Giant moa can be saddled and ridden around the sky, like chocobo. Also, like chocobo, they come in different colors indicative of their abilities. The rarest color (and by far the most capable) is black.
• Endless Daytime: As long as the Sun Spirit lives, the sun will never set on the Aether, as he is quite happy to inform you.
• End of an Age: After you kill the Sun Spirit, the Aether gains a day / night cycle, ending its eternal daylight.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Pig Slayer kills pigs. The Slider Boss slides into the player to damage them.
• Feathered Fiend: Cockatrices look like a different color of moa, but are hostile and fire poison darts at you.

• Fluffy Cloud Heaven: Of sorts. The cold aerclouds are white, fluffy, and can be walked upon as solid platforms.
• Game Mod: A very popular one in the community.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: So many examples. The Slider, every Labyrinth mob with eyes, the Tempests, the Sun Spirit...
• Green Hill Zone: It's very green and beautiful, and very dangerous if you are poorly prepared.
• Griefer: Testing with the Slider using spawn eggs shows that (at least in Genesis of the Void), it will break through every block except for the ones that make up its dungeon, INCLUDING BEDROCK. Take that, Enderdragon and Wither!
• Humans Are Insects: The Sun Spirit's opinion of the player. The Valkyries disagree, if only to grant some minimal value to the player's life.
• Implacable Man: Make no mistake, should you manage to break a Slider out of his chamber, he will hunt you the hell down until one of you is dead. He can not be run from as standard Minecraft monsters can.
• Jerkass: While the Valkyrie General is fairly sophisticated, her minions are not so much. They will taunt you outright and get mad at you if you win.
• Kill It with Fire: What the Sun Spirit tries to do to you once you prove to be an annoyance.
• Kill It with Ice: In order to kill the Sun Spirit, you must punch its own ice balls back at it.
• Level Grinding: While the Aether's current incarnation does not implement experience levels, the Aether shares an element Minecraft has in general, where an accumulation of rare and precious equipment gives you an advantage that helps you succeed. But you have to go through a lot of grinding-like work to get there — you usually need to clear more than one Bronze Dungeon to be able to clear a Silver Dungeon, and you usually need to clear more than one Silver Dungeon to be able to clear a Gold Dungeon. Bronze Dungeons are thankfully more abundant than the other two, but often hidden inside the earthy interior of the floating landmasses.
• Light Is Not Good: Downplayed with the Valkyries, who are more-so Blood Knights who aren't necessarily evil.
• Logical Weakness:
  • The Slider of the Bronze Dungeon is a giant block of stone. You can only harm it with a pickaxe.
  • Phoenix Armor is made of flames. Obviously, it wouldn't be a good idea to enter water while wearing them, or would it? Entering water with them equipped will slowly drain the armor bar of the phoenix set before changing the entire set to one of obsidian, which is many times stronger.
• Nature Spirit: The Sun Spirit, a neutral mob, is the boss of the Gold Dungeon. He's the reason the Aether's sun's position is frozen eternally at high noon.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After you defeat the Sun Spirit, it brings an end to the Aether's eternal daylight, and ushers in normal day/night cycles. While this does not mean new dangerous mobs at night, there is a significantly greater danger of falling off land's edge because you couldn't see well enough in the dark.
• Ominous Floating Castle: Both the Silver Dungeons and the Gold Dungeons fit into this trope. The Silver Dungeon is basically a giant Parthenon-like building floating in the sky shrouded by white aerclouds. The Gold Dungeon is a roughly orb-shaped piece of land crowned with golden oaks, with the fiery Sun Spirit visible inside through the entranceway. This trope is subverted in that neither of these dungeons or their bosses are necessarily evil (or good, for that matter), but they are dangerous places, and if you challenge them, there's a very real possibility you will meet a violent death.
• Pegasus: Though there are no actual horses (flying or otherwise), the Aether has flying cows and phygs (flying pigs), both of which have wings. There are also sheepuffs and aerbunnies which float around light as a feather, but do not actually have wings. Aerwhales and zephyrs also do not have wings, but do genuinely fly.
• Physical God: The Sun Spirits view themselves as such. Justified as they are the embodiment of the Aether's eternal daylight, as they are quick to inform the player of when bothered.
• Physical Heaven: You can enter the Aether 'dimension' through a portal. Doesn't seem like it fits this trope, right? If you fall from it, you end up in the overworld. Even if it is technically another dimension in the game engine, it's right above your head. Except it isn't when you actually build up there. For clarification, due to the world being locked at a set number of blocks high, The Aether had to become a new dimension in order to build around that block limit. It is heavily implied that it is actually just above the top of that height limit because when you fall from it you drop into the top of the main dimension at the same distance from the entrance as where you fell.
• Poison Mushroom: Since 1.03, much of the Aether land is covered with scattered Christmas presents. (A reference to the update being released on Christmas Day, December 25, 2011.) Some of these presents can be broken to yield experience orbs, or things like gingerbread men. But sometimes they yield lit TNT, which soon explodes and blasts a crater in the ground. If there are other presents close by, and any of them are disguised TNT, they will also light, triggering an irritating land-scarring chain reaction.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Averted with the Bronze Dungeon Slider, who simply slides at you to kill you. The Silver Dungeon's Valkyrie Queen tells you to attack when ready, while the Sun Spirit tells you that your death will be slow and painful before initiating the battle.
• Punny Name: The name of the Aether is a play on words of the Nether, spelt the same except for one letter. But they do describe concepts of opposite quality — the Nether is what is underneath the land, and the Aether is (in Greek Mythology) the air breathed by the Olympian gods above.
• Rank Inflation: The dungeons are namely Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Scrapped content reveals that there was also originally a plan to make a Platinum Dungeon.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: The Valkyrie Queen is the top Valkyrie in the Silver Dungeons, and is the strongest of them all.
• Red Is Violent: Downplayed. The Sun Spirit is perfectly content to sit there and do nothing. It's the player's actions that provoke it into battle.
• Scenery Porn: Minecraft is already known for its Scenery Porn. But special mention needs to be made of how good the Aether's textures and terrain generator have made it look.
• Scratch Damage: Valkyrie Pickaxes in the Aether 2 are by far the worst type possible for fighting the Slider with.
• Set Bonus: For pretty much every set in the Aether.
  • Zanite gives more defense the lower its durability.
  • Gravitite gives the player a jump boost.
  • Neptune gives the player water breathing, removes the swimming fog, and quick movement in water.
  • Valkyrie gives limited flight.
  • Phoenix gives protection against fire.
  • Obsidian gives high defense.
• Snowball Fight: While zephyrs are a hostile mob, their only weapon are snowballs. Snowballs themselves are harmless, but considering this is a World in the Sky, there's a very real danger their impact will knock you off land's edge.
• Space Whale: Aerwhales fly through the sky.
• Technicolor Toxin: Poison is color-coded purple.
• Turns Red: The Slider does this when you beat him enough, with his central eyes turning red. He also gains speed and damage, making it a surprise for a new player to the Aether.
• Valkyries: The Silver Dungeons are safe havens for them in the sky. The mod also adds Valkyrie tools, which have much greater reach than normal.

• Worthy Opponent: The Valkyrie Queen will decline to even fight you until you have defeated at least ten of her valkyries and shown her their medals as proof. She also compliments you on your fighting skills should you succeed, stating that, "You are truly a mighty warrior" upon being defeated.
• You Can't Go Home Again: If you're riding a flying animal mount and fall off the world down to the normal world surface, you may not be killed, but your animal mount will never be able to return to their Aether home again, because you won't be able to take them back through the Aether portal with you.

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