The Nightmare Trials

DISCLAIMER: I made this mod using AI

This mod was always something I wanted to make but I never had the coding or design skills to be able to bring it to life at a high enough quality. This was a passion project that I wanted to make and AI was able to help me bring my vision to life at a much higher quality than I could ever do. I would suggest trying the mod out first before you make any judgements.

I would appreciate any reasonable suggestions and feedback on this mod

This mod is based off of and inspired by the webnovel shadow slave

The Nightmare Trials

Seven nightmares have torn their way into your world. Face their trials, claim their power, and rise from Mortal to Divine.

The Nightmare Trials is a large progression and adventure mod for Minecraft 1.21.1 (Forge). It adds:

• Seven AI-built nightmare dimensions, each with its own blocks, sky, creatures, music and hazards.
• Five elemental aspects to master, each with its own abilities, transformation, domain and aura.
• A seven-rank power path from Mortal to Divine.
• The Dream Realm, where every nightmare is stitched into one endless world crowned with claimable citadels.

Almost every effect, model, texture, sky and sound in the mod is original, made specifically for it (made with AI).

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✦ The Path of Power

You begin as a Mortal. Absorb Soul Shards to awaken one of five Aspects. Then climb the seven ranks by proving yourself in the Nightmare Trials:

Dormant · Awakened · Ascended · Transcended · Supreme · Sacred · Divine

• Abilities: every rank unlocks a new active ability and a new passive.
• Scaling: every ability grows stronger, wider and longer-lasting as you rise.
• Ascending: reaching a new rank plays a full cinematic ascension sequence.
• Path end: at Divine you stand among the most powerful beings in the world.

The Five Aspects

Aspect	Style	Signature abilities
🔥 Inferno	Burning offense, area denial	Flame Lance, Meteor, Firestorm, Supernova
⚡ Tempest	Speed, mobility, chain lightning	Air Dash, Chain Lightning, Hurricane, Wrath of the Sky
🌑 Abyss	Shadow, lifesteal, control	Void Step, Soul Drain, Abyssal Rift, Oblivion
⛰ Bastion	Unbreakable defense, earth-shattering force	Ground Slam, Iron Fortress, Earthquake, Colossus Smash
⚔ Severance	A swordmaster's arsenal of conjured blades	Horizon Cleave, Rain of a Thousand Blades, Heavenfall, World-Cutting Art: Final Horizon

Transformations

From Transcended rank, become your aspect's avatar. Each form has its own flight and movement, signature skill and transformation arts:

• Cinderwing Drake
• Thundercrest Gryphon
• Duskmaw Stalker
• Runebound Behemoth
• Seraph of the Unsheathed

Domains

At Supreme rank, claim a vast Domain where you are sovereign:

• The Unsetting Crucible
• The Unbound Sky
• The Court of Lost Hours
• The Living Mountain
• The Field of Silent Swords

What a domain brings:

• Its own sky: each domain reshapes the sky and fog, raises a towering curtain of light at its border and paints the ground with living art.
• Its crown: a colossal centrepiece hangs overhead, such as a blazing sun, a storm vortex, a black sun with a clock of lost hours, a crown of crystals or a halo of giant swords.
• Powers: each domain has passives, and three Edicts you can command inside it.

Sworn Domains

• Joining: lower-ranked players can swear to a Supreme player's domain and carry a strong blessing based on the owner's aspect.
• Growth: every sworn member makes the domain larger and stronger, and higher-ranked members count for far more.
• Management: owners accept, reject or remove members from the Sworn Domain screen, or with /domain.

Auras & Aura Music

• Auras: every aspect has an animated aura that grows with each rank, from pooling darkness and lapping flames to wings, halos and eclipses.
• Aura music: from Supreme rank, each aspect has its own fully produced cinematic theme that follows you into battle.

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✦ The Seven Nightmares

Each Nightmare Gate opens a rift into a dimension of its own. Every dimension is built from its own custom blocks, with its own animated sky, ambience and weather hazard.

Realm	Rank	Hazard
🌿 Verdant Wilds	I	Lifebloom: the living ground heals you, unless something is drinking it
❄ Glacial Expanse	II	Bitter Cold: stay near light or wear leather, or freeze
☁ Skyreach Isles	III	Floating islands above a sea of cloud
💎 Amethyst Hollow	IV	A world of singing crystal caverns
☀ Sunscorched Dunes	V	Endless dunes under a merciless sun
🔥 Crimson Inferno	VI	Smoke, heat haze and rivers of fire
🌌 Shattered Void	VII	The broken edge of reality, under a living galaxy

What you'll find there:

• Over 70 original creatures across the realms, from Sporelings and Ember Imps to Choirglass Widows and Prismtongue Harlequins.
• Tyrants and Terrors: every realm has its Tyrant (Frost Colossus, Dune Pharaoh, Infernal Tyrant…) and Terror (Rootmaw Behemoth, Whiteout Mammoth, Singularity Seraph…).
• Titans: colossal guardians that rule each realm.
• Ranks: creatures carry ranks of their own, so a Divine Bloomfang is not to be taken lightly.

The Nightmare Trials

Each rank is earned through a multi-chapter Trial:

• The Verdant Rite
• The Long Winter
• The Skyborne Ascent
• The Crystal Choir
• The Sun Pilgrimage
• The Blood Tithe
• The Unmaking

Every chapter has its own objectives, tracked by an ornate trial bar themed to its realm.

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✦ The Dream Realm

Craft a Dream Bed and sleep in it to cross into the Dream Realm, an eighth dimension where all seven nightmares are woven into one world.

The realm:

• Regions: enormous regions of each nightmare, each with sub-biomes, blend into one another across natural borders.
• Skies: each region keeps its own sky, cross-fading as you travel between them.
• Danger: every creature can appear here at any rank, including Tyrants, Terrors and Titans.

Citadels

Every region holds one vast Citadel, generated with the world. Each is unique to its nightmare and built from its own custom blocks:

• 🌿 The Worldroot Sanctum: a five-tier temple-mountain crowned by a colossal worldtree.
• ❄ The Rimeheart Bastion: a star-shaped fortress around a 175-block ice spire.
• ☁ The Stormcrown Aerie: a floating island citadel bridged to six satellite towers.
• 💎 The Choir Cathedral: a vast geode dome burst open by crystal spires.
• ☀ The Sunthrone: a great pyramid with a summit temple, colonnades and obelisks.
• 🔥 The Crucible Keep: a battered fortress behind a lava moat, crowned by a burning crucible.
• 🌌 The Eventide Spire: a twisting spire over a shattered floating platform.

Claiming a citadel

Claim a citadel at its Dream Shrine to:

• Make it your home in the Dream Realm.
• Keep monsters out: natural mob spawns are blocked across a wide area that grows with your rank.
• Raise your domain over it: this needs Supreme rank.
• Choose who may bind there: let anyone set it as their return point, or only your sworn domain.

Getting home: a shrine is how you wake from the Dream. Use /citadel to find the nearest citadel of any nightmare.

Dream Portals & Anchors

• Dream Portals (Supreme+): raise a pair of enormous rift-gates, one in the Dream Realm and one in the overworld, that anyone can walk through.
• Personal Anchors (Transcended+): choose exactly where you arrive when you dream and where you wake.
• Placing them: hold the keybind to preview the placement, release to place.

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✦ Memories & Echoes

• Memories: legendary weapons that drop from the nightmares' creatures. Each has its own art, abilities and rank, and is bound to its wielder.
• Echoes: creatures you defeat may leave an Echo, a captured soul you can summon to fight beside you, with its own stats and commands.
• Trading: gift or trade memories and echoes with other players, in any combination: memory for echo, echo for memory, or a gift for nothing (/collection, /gift, /trade).

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✦ Presentation

• Main menu: a custom main menu with its own live-rendered nightmare rift and an original soundtrack.
• Screens: animated, illustrated backgrounds for the Soul, Memory and Echo screens.
• HUD: a redesigned HUD, themed to your aspect.
• Boss bars: boss and trial bars themed to each realm.
• Codex: an in-game library covering every creature, realm, trial and ability.
• Sound: fully original sound design for abilities, creatures and dimensions.

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✦ Configuration

• Balance config: almost every number in the mod lives in jaredsmod-balance.toml, including damage, cooldowns, domain sizes, citadel protection, spawn rates and more.
• Settings in game: aura visuals, aura music, domain atmosphere and cinematic camera can each be toggled.

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✦ Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1
• Forge 52.1 or newer

Multiplayer is supported. Install the mod on both the server and client.