That said, I promise I have not abandoned ship, been eaten by a creeper, or disappeared into an unmarked cave system.

While I’ve been quieter publicly, I’ve still been working on code behind the scenes. I know code progress is not always super obvious from the outside, especially when it’s backend stuff, bug fixes, cleanup, and all the boring-but-important goblin work that keeps things from catching fire. But progress is being made, even if it’s not always loud and flashy.

I’ve also been working on Owners United, which is a continuation of MC Connect, one of the oldest staffing Discords for Minecraft server staff and owners. The goal is to keep that spirit going while giving it a stronger home for today’s Minecraft community — a place for owners, staff, and developers to connect, ask questions, share resources, support each other, and hopefully make running servers feel a little less like trying to organize villagers during a raid.

On top of that, I’ve been helping get ready for upcoming in-person Pride events through our other family company, Jack of All Arts, which has also been taking a lot of time, planning, and energy.

So basically: life has been throwing a whole boss fight at me, but I’m still here, still working, still coding, still planning things, and still slowly crawling out from under the giant pile of tasks.

Thank you all for your patience, support, and understanding while I catch up. I appreciate it more than you know.

More updates are coming soon — assuming I do not get defeated by my inbox first.

Hey everyone,

First off, we apologize for the delay in getting this update out. Life hit pretty hard over the last couple of weeks, and between my son’s birthday, my own birthday, and everything else happening at once, things got a little chaotic.

That said, we are finally here with a major Shadows of Aethro modpack update, and this one includes a lot of fixes, improvements, balance changes, and new content.

Major Mod Updates

A large number of mods have been updated in this release, with several focusing on world generation, compatibility, bug fixes, structures, and gameplay improvements.

Athena
Improved loading compatibility with other mods that try to inject into the top of reload listeners.

BCLib: Remastered
Updated.

BetterEnd: Remastered and BetterNether: Remastered
Received a batch of updates focused on world generation improvements and bug fixes.

Cobblemon: Simple Pokecenter
Loot tables have been changed.

Cobblemon Raid Dens
Some fixes have been added.

Cobblemon: Mega Showdown
Max Mushrooms, arch sites, and Wishing Weald are now less rare. Some battle UI fixes were also included.

Cobblemon: Poke Labs
Received behind-the-scenes updates involving structure NBT.

Cobblemore Lib
Updated.

NPC System Improvements

Our Easy NPC system has been updated, making it easier for us to create more NPCs around the world.

So yes, expect even more NPCs to annoy, assist, confuse, or possibly judge you silently while you adventure.

Eternal Starlight Updates

Eternal Starlight received a pretty large update with new content, balance changes, and fixes.

Highlights include:

• Nocturnal Millet — a new crop related to the ether.
• Oblivion effect — allows players to pass through walls.
• Shining Mushrooms have been added.
• Etheric Eye — a new item that can teleport the user to the world surface.
• Several new decorative natural blocks have been added.
• More biomes have been introduced.
• Abyssal Fire can now cook meat from mob drops.
• Tangled now drops Soul Dew.
• Frozen Tube and Permafrost Spit can now freeze lava into obsidian.
• Dagger of Hunger can no longer bypass invulnerability time.
• Additional fixes were also included.

Fixes and Quality-of-Life Updates

Field Guide
Received fixes related to scanning.

Immersive Overlays
Received several fixes.

Lootr
Updated with fixes.

Simple Storage
Fixed an issue where every mod block was breaking without dropping an item.

Waystones
Fixed an issue where distance was displaying incorrectly in the waystone selection menu.

Final Notes

This is a pretty big maintenance and content update, especially for world generation, Cobblemon-related systems, Eternal Starlight, storage, and travel.

As always, thank you all for your patience and for continuing to be part of Shadows of Aethro. Updates may sometimes get delayed, but we are still here, still working, and still trying to make the server better every step of the way.

It is available on curseforge now.

New Mods Arrive in Shadows of Aethro Today!

Adventurers, treasure hunters, mail goblins, dimension jumpers, and everyone who sees a mysterious item and immediately asks “but what does it do?” — today’s Shadows of Aethro update is bringing in several new mods to make exploration, loot hunting, player interaction, and general quality-of-life even better.

This update adds Artifacts, Artifacts Merging, Eternal Starlight, Envelope, Jade, and Jade Addons.

Artifacts

Exploration is getting a lot more rewarding. Artifacts adds powerful, unique items that cannot be crafted and are instead found out in the world. That means dungeons, structures, and dangerous little “I probably should not be here” locations now have even more reasons to be explored.

These artifacts can give players special abilities and useful bonuses, making them exciting finds for anyone who enjoys adventuring, looting, and chasing rare treasures.

Artifacts Merging

Found duplicate artifacts? Got one sitting in a chest that no one wants? Artifacts Merging gives those extras a new purpose.

Players can combine two artifacts together to receive a new random artifact instead. It is a nice way to recycle unwanted or duplicate finds instead of letting them collect dust forever in the “I might use this someday” chest.

Basically: artifact blender.

Eternal Starlight

A new dimension is joining the world of Shadows of Aethro. Eternal Starlight adds a magical and mysterious starlight dimension filled with new places to discover and explore.

Expect strange sights, new adventures, and that wonderful Minecraft feeling where everything looks beautiful right before something probably tries to ruin your day.

This should give explorers another major destination to uncover as the world continues to grow.

Envelope

For everyone who has ever wanted to send items, letters, or packages without sprinting across half the server like a medieval delivery gremlin, Envelope is here.

Envelope adds letters, packages, and pigeons that can deliver things across the world. This gives players a fun new way to send mail, trade items, leave messages, or just dramatically mail someone something because walking is clearly beneath you now.

It should fit especially well with towns, shops, player settlements, and community trading.

Jade

Jade is a helpful information display mod that shows details about what you are looking at in-game. Blocks, entities, storage, machines, and other interactive things can become much easier to understand at a glance. It is basically the “what am I staring at?” mod, which is honestly a public service in a modded Minecraft server. Jade is described as an information HUD mod and a modern Hwyla/Waila-style tool.

This should make the server easier to navigate, especially for newer players or anyone trying to figure out what a modded block, machine, creature, or mysterious object actually is.

Jade Addons

Jade Addons expands Jade with additional support for more mods and extra information displays. That means Jade can show better details for supported modded systems instead of leaving players guessing, squinting, or asking “is this important?” every five minutes. CurseForge describes Jade Addons as additional mod support for Jade on Fabric.

It is a smaller addition, but a very useful one for making modded gameplay feel smoother and less confusing.

What This Means for Players

More reasons to explore.
Artifacts give players new treasures to hunt for in the world.

Better use for duplicate loot.
Artifacts Merging lets unwanted artifacts become something new.

A new dimension to discover.
Eternal Starlight adds another magical place for players to explore.

Player mail and package delivery.
Envelope gives players new ways to send letters, packages, and items.

Better in-game information.
Jade and Jade Addons help players understand what they are looking at without needing to alt-tab, guess, or panic.

More chaos, naturally.
Because this is Shadows of Aethro, and somehow the pigeons are probably still going to be more responsible than half of us.

This update will be going live today for Shadows of Aethro.

As always, please report any crashes, strange behavior, missing recipes, weird dimension issues, pigeon-related crimes, confusing tooltips, or artifacts that seem a little too cursed through the usual support channels.

Happy exploring, happy looting, and please be kind to the pigeons. They are working very hard.

Nothing too wild this time around, adventurers — just a nice round of mod updates to keep Shadows of Aethro running smoother, cleaner, and slightly more dangerous in all the right places.

This update focuses mostly on fixes, stability improvements, and a few quality-of-life tweaks for mods we already use. No brand-new mods are being added with this one, so your backpacks are safe from surprise chaos today.

What’s Changing?

Dungeons and Villages: Deeper and Darker
The mobs from Deeper and Darker have gotten stronger, so be a little more careful when wandering into the dark. The darkness has apparently been hitting the gym.

BetterEnd
BetterEnd received fixes for the End Stone Smelter along with several general bug fixes. The End should be a bit less grumpy now.

BetterNether
BetterNether received fixes related to its resources, helping keep the Nether experience a little smoother while still remaining entirely rude and on fire.

WorldWeaver
WorldWeaver received additional fixes for world generation, which should help improve how things generate as players continue exploring.

FieldGuide
FieldGuide was updated to help fix crashing issues. Less crashing is always the best kind of update.

Lootr
Lootr received some minor bug fixes. Nothing flashy, just a little cleanup behind the treasure chests.

Sign Plates
Sign Plates now supports tinting sign plates with dyes and making them glow with glow ink sacs. Time to make your signs dramatically prettier than they probably need to be.

Release Timing

This update is planned to release tomorrow, May 3rd, 2026.

As always, thank you for playing Shadows of Aethro and helping us keep the world moving forward. Keep your gear repaired, watch your step in the deep places, and maybe do not pick a fight with anything that looks newly buffed.

We have made a new update to the Cobblemon shop vendor in Shadows of Aethro!

This update focuses on two main areas: adding Type Gems to the shop and cleaning up Poké Ball pricing so prices better reflect usefulness, rarity, and power.

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💎 New Items: Type Gems

All Cobblemon Type Gems have now been added to the shop.

Type Gems are rare battle items that boost a matching move type, so they are being priced as premium items rather than cheap everyday supplies.

New Type Gems added:

• Normal Gem
• Fire Gem
• Water Gem
• Electric Gem
• Grass Gem
• Ice Gem
• Fighting Gem
• Poison Gem
• Ground Gem
• Flying Gem
• Psychic Gem
• Bug Gem
• Rock Gem
• Ghost Gem
• Dragon Gem
• Dark Gem
• Steel Gem
• Fairy Gem

Pricing:

Most Type Gems are priced at 45,000.

Dragon, Dark, Steel, and Fairy Gems are priced at 50,000.

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⚾ Poké Ball Price Adjustments

Poké Ball prices have also been readjusted across the shop.

Previously, a lot of specialty balls were grouped together at the same price, even when some were stronger, weaker, rarer, or more situational than others. This update gives the shop a cleaner progression and makes each purchase feel a little more intentional.

What changed:

• Basic Poké Balls and simple variants are now more affordable.
• Great Balls and Ultra Balls now have a more sensible price progression.
• Specialty balls such as Quick, Dusk, Timer, Repeat, Net, Dive, and Nest Balls are priced around their stronger conditional uses.
• Safari, Sport, Park, Luxury, Beast, Master, and Ancient Origin Balls remain premium purchases.
• Ancient ball variants have been adjusted to better match their modern equivalents.

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🛒 Why We Made This Change

The goal is to make the shop feel better for both newer and established players.

• Basic catching supplies should be easier to buy.

• Stronger Poké Balls should still feel valuable.

• Rare battle items should still feel rare.

Overall, this should make the Cobblemon shop feel more balanced, less random, and more useful as players progress through Shadows of Aethro.

As always, prices may be adjusted again if needed once we see how everything feels in actual play.

Thanks for continuing to help us improve Shadows of Aethro!