Gear Grinder: Extra Hard Create Aeronautics

A Create Aeronautics survival modpack built for players who want a challenge. Mobs hit harder and have more health across every dimension, and they fight smarter too: skeletons keep their distance and retreat when you close in, blazes fire in volleys, witches drink potions mid-fight, ghasts breach through walls. Teaming up is recommended on adventures.

Progression runs through Create. You'll need Enchantment Industry's extended enchantments and nether loot to gear up enough to survive the harder areas, let alone the Ender Dragon, which has been reworked with more health, new attacks, and a tougher fight overall.

No waystones and no TPA, to promote the use of logistics and travel infrastructure. Items stay on the ground when you die, which raises the stakes of dying and the thrill of the challenge.

Core pillars

• Extra hard mode
• Create driven progression with Enchantment Industry and Aeronautics
• Difficulty scaling by dimension, biome, and depth, plus enhanced mob AI
• A reworked Ender Dragon fight
• No waystones, no TPA
• Items drop on death
• Built for small to medium survival groups

End Game Build

• Use Enchantment Industry to gain full netherite armour with Protection V and Life II on each piece.
• Carry golden apples and a totem of undying — totem activates from anywhere in your inventory or backpack.
• Fire Resistance potions are recommended for the Nether and Ender Dragon fight.

Difficulty (hostile mobs only)

Higher difficulty = better loot drops.
KBR = Knockback Resistance

Overworld   │ HP +50%   │ Damage +75%   │ Armour +10% │ Loot +20%
Underground │ HP +12.5% │ Damage +12.5% │ Armour +0%  │ Loot +20% │ KBR +10%
Nether      │ HP +50%   │ Damage +75%   │ Armour +10% │ Loot +35% │ KBR +10%
The End     │ HP +60%   │ Damage +85%   │ Armour +20% │ Loot +50% │ KBR +10%

Underground (below Y:0) : scales the lower you go - Overworld only

Biome modifiers

Mushroom Fields │ HP -50%   │ Damage -50%   │ Armour -50% │ Loot +10%
Desert          │ HP -20%   │ Damage +5%    │ Armour -20% │ Loot +10% │ KBR +10%
Frozen Ocean    │ HP -20%   │ Damage +5%    │ Armour -20% │ Loot +10% │ KBR +10%
Deep Dark       │ HP +12.5% │ Damage +12.5% │ Armour +0%  │ Loot +20% │ KBR +10%

Damage modifiers stack: Base x Depth (overworld) x Biome (overworld)

Enhanced Mob AI

Mobs are smarter and more dangerous across the board.

• Skeletons : shoot from 24-32 blocks, flee when you get close, shoot while retreating
• Wither skeletons : shoot wither arrows instead of fire
• Blazes : fire 2-6 fireballs per volley, faster recharge
• Ghasts : 30% chance to breach-fire through walls
• Witches : throw more potion types at longer range, drink healing potions mid-fight
• Pillagers : improved accuracy and longer range
• Drowned : attack during daytime, leap out of water
• Warden : sonic boom range doubled, darkness and vibration range increased
• Creepers : rare angry creeper variant (3% chance), named and more powerful
• Mobs : can climb ladders, ride other mobs, throw webs, equip shields

Ender Dragon

The Ender Dragon has been overhauled with 500 health (vanilla is 200).

• New attacks including aimed fireballs and a second phase at half health
• Resistance potions strongly recommended
• Direct fireball hits do ~3 hearts in full end game gear
• Dragon breath bombs are extremely dangerous in enclosed spaces - keep moving

Backpacks

End game storage is diamond+.

Leather   │ 18 slots  │ 1 upgrade
Copper    │ 27 slots  │ 1 upgrade
Iron      │ 36 slots  │ 2 upgrades
Gold      │ 45 slots  │ 3 upgrades
Diamond   │ 108 slots │ 5 upgrades  ← requires shulker shells + End
Netherite │ 120 slots │ 7 upgrades  ← smithing table upgrade

Carrying more than 2 backpacks gives slowness.

Recipe Changes

• Copper & andesite jetpacks : removed entirely
• Brass jetpack : mechanical crafting only, requires an elytra
• Diamond backpack : needs diamond blocks + shulker shells + gold backpack
• Netherite backpack : smithing upgrade from diamond using netherite block + template

Time & Sleep

• Day lasts ~30 min, night ~15 min.
• Sleep speed scales with the ratio of players sleeping. All players sleeping skips night in ~1 min.

Recommended Ram:

• If you have 32GB RAM or more in your PC: 14336MB (14GB) Min and Max
• If you have 16GB RAM, Disable Distant Horizons or lower its settings and use: 8129MB (8GB) Min and Max

Launch Parameters:

-XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions -XX:+AlwaysPreTouch -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+UseNUMA -XX:NmethodSweepActivity=1 -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=400M -XX:NonNMethodCodeHeapSize=12M -XX:ProfiledCodeHeapSize=194M -XX:NonProfiledCodeHeapSize=194M -XX:-DontCompileHugeMethods -XX:MaxNodeLimit=240000 -XX:NodeLimitFudgeFactor=8000 -XX:+PerfDisableSharedMem -XX:+UseCriticalJavaThreadPriority -XX:+UseShenandoahGC -XX:ShenandoahGCMode=iu -XX:ShenandoahGuaranteedGCInterval=1000000 -XX:AllocatePrefetchStyle=1