Darkest Before Dawn
Adds darker nights, realistic fire making, and torches that go out. Remember, it's always darkest before the dawn.
Screenshots
About this Mod
A mod that adds realistic fire-making and torches. Just remember, the night is always darkest before the dawn.
Requires Primal Lib 1.1.57.
Darkest Before Dawn adds more realism and difficulty around making fire, light, and torches. It will take a significant amount of time before you finally get a furnace, so you'll need to rely on campfires for a while. Torches will burn out, so make sure you have protection at night and watch out for monsters in your base! Ultimately you'll want to rely on more permanent forms of light like glowstone, redstone lamps, or burning netherrack.
NOTE: Darkest Before Dawn is incomplete and likely has bugs. I'm releasing an early version to gauge interest and gather feedback.
Darkest Before Dawn has the following features:
- Torches don't last forever. They go out after a while. You can't put lit torches in your inventory, and you can only place torches on soft blocks like dirt and grass.
- Torches have more realistic recipes. You must have spruce resin, pitch, or animal fat as a fuel source. Spruce resin generates from stripped spruce trees, pitch comes from campfire ash, and animal fat comes from animals you have killed. You use pine cones, birch bark, cattails, and frayed sugar cane to hold the fuel, and attack that to a stick.
- Your first light source will be a campfire. You make it by rubbing sticks together to get a glowing ember, putting the ember on some tinder, and blowing on it. Add some sticks and logs and you will have a campfire. Check the wiki for detailed instructions.
- Furnaces are made with clay bricks, which must be hardened in your campfire. It will take a long time to make your first furnace.
- When it's dark, it's really dark. The world gets darker based on sunlight, moonlight, the weather, and your distance underground. You won't be able to explore caves without a light source.
- Darkest Before Dawn is highly configurable, so you can tweak it in the config settings.
See the wiki for more details.
Check out the Gallery tab for some screenshots!
Available Versions
How to Install Darkest Before Dawn on Your Server
Order Server
Order a Minecraft Java server with at least 3 GB RAM (4 GB recommended).
Set forge Loader
In the panel under "Egg", select the forge loader and matching Minecraft version (1.12.2).
Install Mod
Open the mod browser in the dashboard and search for "Darkest Before Dawn". Click "Install" – done! Alternatively, upload the .jar via SFTP to the /mods folder.
Compatibility
Mod Loaders
Minecraft Versions
1.12.2
Server-side
✓ RequiredRecommended RAM
4 GB(min. 3 GB)Frequently Asked Questions
Darkest Before Dawn server crashes on startup – what to do?
Most common cause: wrong forge version or insufficient RAM. Check the server log (latest.log) for "OutOfMemoryError" or "Mixin" errors. With Mado Hosting: ensure at least 3 GB RAM is allocated and the loader matches the mod version (1.12.2). You can switch loaders with one click in the panel.
Is Darkest Before Dawn compatible with forge?
Darkest Before Dawn officially supports forge for Minecraft 1.12.2. The Mado dashboard automatically detects incompatible loader combinations.
Server lagging with Darkest Before Dawn – how to optimize performance?
Recommended RAM: 4 GB (per 8 players). Use /spark profiler to check if Darkest Before Dawn consumes the most tick time. Common fixes: reduce server view-distance to 8-10, install "performant" or "starlight" as supplementary mods on Forge. With Mado Hosting, your server runs on NVMe SSDs with dedicated CPU cores for minimal latency.
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Rent Modded Server
Install Darkest Before Dawn with just one click on your server.