HexCraft

Civilization has collapses into folklore...

The old world still exists...and its ruins remain.

But nature, disease, forgotten rituals, and things that should have stayed buried have reclaimed what humanity left behind.

HexCraft is a hardcore survival experience where every expedition demands preparation, every wound has consequences, and every mile traveled carries the possibility of discovering something that should have remained forgotten.

🌒 Survival Is the Core System

Gameplay stays close to vanilla at the start—movement, tools, and exploration feel familiar—but survival systems are expanded. Players must manage:

• Thirst
• Temperature
• Sanity
• Limb damage and injury
• Nutrition and weight

📖 Progression

Your story begins with nothing.

Survive the wilderness. Manage thirst, temperature, sanity, hunger, bleeding, and catastrophic injury while scavenging the remains of a forgotten civilization. Loot tech, modern gear, and handcrafted lore books detailing what happened to the world.

Establish a safe settlement. Earn the trust of villages, complete quests, recruit companions, explore dangerous ruins, and uncover fragments of lost knowledge.

Master engineering. Build machines, automate production, and construct the vehicles needed to cross vast distances.

Venture into reclaimed dimensions. Gather the twelve Forgotten Eyes and uncover the path to the End. No waystones and easy fast travel included...find ancient echo keys and utilize the ancient city's portals as fast travel gateways...just like the ancients...

Face horrors buried beneath the world, embrace curses and transformations, and decide what parts of your humanity are worth preserving.

The farther you travel, the stranger the world becomes.

🗺️ The World Pushes Back

Villages and settlements are persistent systems, not loot hubs. Stealing affects NPC behavior over time. Many containers are locked and require lockpicking. Reputation and aggression have consequences.

Bandits stalk the roads, armed survivors roam between settlements, and desperate humans carve out lives beyond the safety of villages. Some will trade, some will fight, and your own actions can determine which side of that line recognizes you as one of their own.

🦴 Fear and Hunger

Death is not your only enemy.

Severe wounds can cripple or sever individual limbs, leaving you crawling, unable to wield tools, or desperately searching for medical supplies like bandages and medical kits. Survival itself also carries consequences: consistently eating beyond fullness can cause you to gain weight, gradually changing your body and making survival increasingly difficult. Bandages, medicine, and careful management of your own body become just as important as any weapon - with the ultimate body restoration being granted by enchanted golden apples.

⚙️ Engineering the Impossible

There are no vanilla boats. No convenient vehicles. No effortless answer to oceans, mountains, or an enormous wilderness.

Movement must be engineered.

Discover physics ore deep beneath the earth and turn it into steam-powered ships, enormous airships, mechanical elevators, railways, factories, and eventually entire mobile bases.

🌌 Reclaimed Dimensions

The Nether and End are no longer transitional spaces. Both dimensions have been transformed into vast, hostile worlds of their own, filled with new biomes, structures, creatures, resources, and secrets worth seeking out. Progression now demands more than simply passing through: explore deeper, survive unfamiliar threats, uncover what these dimensions are hiding, and earn your way forward.

The End is no longer a boss rush. Access requires 12 unique Forgotten Eyes. Once you access the End, find your way to an End Gateway OR follow compass North to reach the Dragon. Progression is gated and intentional

🪄 Ritual Magic, Alchemy & Transformation

Magic is not a progression of increasingly powerful spells. It is ritualistic, deliberate, and often irreversible. Every choice shapes the kind of practitioner you become, rewarding preparation, knowledge, and sacrifice over raw magical power.

Walk the path of the witch, mastering alchemy, herbalism, and intricate rituals or embrace forbidden alchemy, corruptive blood rituals, and grotesque experimentation. Brew potions that do everything from transfigure your friends into animals to induce spirit walking. Craft a Summoning Altar and with flesh and bone summon spirits and demons. Twist animals and villagers into monstrous servants, cultivate horrific creations, and pursue power that exacts a terrible price.

🩸 Blood and Curses

Not all magic is controlled.
Some paths lead to transformation—states that blur the line between ability and affliction.

Vampires and werewolves roam the land...join their ranks, and your new abilities are paired with restrictions, dependencies, and vulnerabilities.

🍎 An Apple A Day...

The world did not fall to war, dragons, or demons...it fell to infection.

The virus consumed the old world, leaving only ruins and the undead that wander them. Those infected do not truly die, their minds remain trapped inside bodies they no longer control. Medicine, bandages, and medkits can slow bleeding, mend shattered bones, and restore ruined limbs, but some injuries demand far more.

Golden Apples are among the rarest medicines remaining. They can purge infection, restore catastrophic injuries, and revive recently fallen companions when fed to their corpse (if anything's left of it). Enchanted Golden Apples possess even greater restorative power, capable of returning flesh and blood to those reduced to skeletal existence.

☠️ Death Is Not the End

In this world, you don't simply respawn after death. When you die, your soul leaves your body and becomes a wandering spirit.

In this form, you can bend the will of lesser beings and weaker beasts. If you can manage to find and possess one of the inert skeletal corpses littering the world, you can continue your journey in a skeletal form with all of its advantages and drawbacks...or ascend high into the sky to be reincarnated far elsewhere in the world.

However, be advised that death leaves scars. Die in the Nether and your soul becomes corrupted. Die in The End and you will be permanently warped — a fate not even an Enchanted Golden Apple can reverse.

🦠 Sculk Is No Longer Contained

Sculk is no longer confined to the Ancient Cities. It can spread through caves and underground ecosystems, bringing corrupted creatures and strange new forms of life with it.

The Warden is no longer the only thing you need to fear. Watchers, Arbiters, and infected mobs now lurk throughout the infected underground, while sculk growths continue spreading into places they were never meant to reach.

But the infection isn't purely destructive. Those willing to descend into the infection may find more than death waiting below. Master the sculk and its strange technology, and the Ancient Cities become more than ruins — their long-dormant gateways can be awakened, allowing fast travel between ancient city portal frames scattered across the world, and their echo shards, when utilized appropriately, may grant special abilities.

What was once sealed beneath the world is beginning to return........

🎶 The Sift

All over the world, you might find breaches into another world, one the sculk crossed long ago and never fully left. Its stain is still in the stone: pale, layered Siftslate, veined with growth that is almost alive.

Ichor runs through the canyons, gold and warm. It heals whatever it touches. It is the only thing down there that feels like mercy, and no one can say what it is bleeding from.

Overgrown willows lean over the Rifts, which open and close like breathing. Rain falls in colors it shouldn't. Small, strange things carry pieces of souls up from the deep, one at a time, toward a surface that doesn't remember them.

And somewhere in the dark, the Singer keeps singing.

It isn't a warning. It sounds like a key. Eight notes, played in the right order, and the door in the Ancient City opens....

🎮 Controller Support

Full gamepad support makes this modpack perfect for gaming on your TV. Open multiple instances, connect a gamepad, and play with a friend!

Click here for a list of useful default controls. You can always customize them to your liking.

TAB — Radial Menu

E — Open Inventory

R (When in Inventory) — Show Uses for Item (In Inventory)

T (When in Inventory) — Show Recipe (In Inventory)

T — Chat

Left Shift — Sneak / Descend While Flying / Context Actions / Create Ponder

Left Shift + Right Click — Carry Small Mobs/Small Blocks

Left Ctrl — Sprint

Space — Jump / Wing Flap / Flight Mobility

Left Click — Attack / Mine / Cannon Fire

Right Click — Use Item / Interact / Ability Usage

F — Swap Offhand Item

Q — Drop Item

X — Sit / Lay

Shift + X — Crawl

Shift + Space — Flight Descent / Hover Control depending on form or species

R — Primary Power Ability (used for supernatural powers, breath attacks, relic abilities, magic skills, etc.)

G — Secondary Ability / Mobility Skill

V — Transformation Ability / Shift Form / Whisper

B — Leap Ability (Werewolves)

Z — Open Cyberware Menu

F2 — Screenshot

F3 — Debug Menu

F5 — Toggle Perspective

F11 — Fullscreen Toggle

R is intentionally used as the universal “Power Key” throughout the pack for consistency

🤝 Community, Cooperation & Multiplayer: HexCraft is designed for shared risk:

• Piggyback your friends
• Positional voice chat and radios
• Rescue-focused mechanics
• The Essential mod, allows quick and easy multiplayer - No server setup required.