Variants&Ventures guide for All the Mods 10 2.12

Same as in the All the Mods 10 8.1 guide

Variants&Ventures is a mob mod. It adds new variants of familiar undead mobs that spawn naturally in the biomes that suit them. You can also run into their spawners in dungeons and trial chamber structures, so exploring gets a bit more dangerous.^[1]

The new variants

• Gelid, a frozen zombie found in cold biomes. Its attacks inflict freezing, and it can come from spawners in dungeons under cold biomes and from trial spawners in Trial Chambers.^[1]
• Thicket, a jungle zombie found in jungle biomes. Its attacks inflict poison, and it can come from dungeon spawners under jungle biomes and from trial spawners.^[1]
• Verdant, a jungle skeleton found in jungle biomes. It fires poison-tipped arrows, and it can come from dungeon spawners under jungle biomes and from trial spawners.^[1]
• Murk, a sunken skeleton that lives underwater in warm ocean biomes. You can shear it for live and/or dead corals, and it can come from trial spawners in Trial Chambers.^[1]

The mod also improves the spawning logic for Strays, Husks and Bogged, and adds a chance of monster spawners for each of them.^[1]

Who it's for and how it fits the pack

This one is for you if you want more variety and challenge out in the world rather than a new machine or resource chain. It is built to work with other mods, so the variants will spawn in modded biomes too. Every feature can be switched on or off through the config file or the in-game config.^[1]

The pack ships Variants&Ventures 1.0.26 for NeoForge on Minecraft 1.21.1. It has been in the pack since version 2.25 or earlier.^[2]

Unverified The sources show no quests for this mod and no place for it on the ATM Star path. They also show no pack-specific changes to its config. Treat any pack-specific values as unconfirmed until you check the in-game config.

Same as in the All the Mods 10 2.20 guide

There's nothing to craft to get started with this mod, and no quests to follow. It adds new mob variants that spawn naturally in the world, so your "first steps" are really about knowing what you'll run into and where.^[1]

Each variant spawns naturally in the biomes it belongs to, and you can also run into their spawners in dungeons and trial chamber structures, which adds an extra layer of challenge while you explore.^[1]

What to watch for early on

• Gelid, a frozen zombie variant, inflicts freezing when it attacks and lives in cold biomes. Dungeons under cold biomes can hold Gelid monster spawners, and Gelid trial spawners can appear in Trial Chambers.^[1]
• Thicket, a jungle zombie variant, inflicts poison when it attacks and lives in jungle biomes. Jungle dungeons can hold Thicket monster spawners, and Thicket trial spawners can appear in Trial Chambers.^[1]
• Verdant, a jungle skeleton variant, fires poison-tipped arrows and also lives in jungle biomes. It has the same dungeon and Trial Chamber spawner treatment.^[1]
• Murk, a sunken skeleton variant, lives underwater in warm ocean biomes, and Murk trial spawners can appear in Trial Chambers.^[1]

The vanilla variants get some attention too: Stray, Husk and Bogged all have improved spawning logic here, and each of them can get their own monster spawners.^[1]

If you'd rather not deal with them

Every feature in the mod can be freely enabled or disabled, either through the config file or the in-game config screen, so you can turn off any variant you don't want in your world.^[1]

It's also built to work alongside everything else in a big pack: variants will spawn in modded biomes, and they respond to Fresh Animations if you use it.^[1]

Variants&Ventures has no machines, multiblocks, power or fluid systems at all. It is a pure worldgen and mob mod: its "mechanics" are the new hostile variants, where they spawn naturally, and the spawners that can replace vanilla ones in dungeons and trial chambers. Everything it does is driven by a single config file, and the pack ships that file with every feature switched on.^[1][3]

The variants and what they do

• Gelid, a zombie variant, inflicts freezing when it hits you, and spawns in cold biomes.^[1]
• Thicket, a zombie variant, inflicts poison when it hits you, and spawns in jungle biomes.^[1]
• Verdant, a skeleton variant, fires poison-tipped arrows, and also spawns in jungle biomes.^[1]
• Murk, a skeleton variant, lives underwater in warm ocean biomes, and can be sheared for live and/or dead corals.^[1]

Murk is the only one of the four with a renewable drop loop: shearing it yields live and/or dead corals, so a warm ocean is worth a detour if you need coral for decoration or crafting elsewhere in the pack.^[1]

Natural spawning

Each variant spawns naturally in its relevant biomes rather than being bolted on through a separate structure or dimension, so you meet them by simply exploring. The mod also replaces vanilla's spawning logic for some existing mobs, with improved spawning for strays, husks and bogged.^[1]

The pack enables all of that. enableGelid, enableThicket, enableVerdant and enableMurk are all true, and their matching spawn toggles (enableGelidSpawns, enableThicketSpawns, enableVerdantSpawns, enableMurkSpawns) are true as well. The improved vanilla spawning is on too, via enableBetterHuskSpawns and enableBetterStraySpawns.^[1][3]

Gelid, thicket, verdant, husk and stray each have a spawn chance value, and the pack sets every one of them to 0.8: gelidSpawnChance, thicketSpawnChance, verdantSpawnChance, huskSpawnChance and straySpawnChance. So no variant is rarer than another in this pack; they all share the same setting.^[3]

There is also a minimum Y level per variant. The pack sets gelidMinimumYLevel, thicketMinimumYLevel, verdantMinimumYLevel, huskMinimumYLevel and strayMinimumYLevel all to -64, the bottom of the Overworld, so height never rules a variant out in this pack.^[3]

Unverified The exact maths behind the spawn chance and spawner chance values (whether 0.8 is a flat probability per attempt, a weight, or a multiplier on the vanilla roll) is not documented in the sources available for this pack.

Spawners in dungeons and trial chambers

The second half of the mod is structure integration. Gelid, thicket and verdant can each appear as monster spawners in dungeons under their matching biomes, so a dungeon under a cold biome may hold a gelid spawner and one under a jungle may hold thicket or verdant. All four variants, murk included, can also show up as trial spawners in trial chambers. Strays and husks can get monster spawners of their own, and bogged spawners are possible as well.^[1]

The pack leaves all of this on: enableGelidSpawners, enableThicketSpawners, enableVerdantSpawners, enableHuskSpawners and enableStraySpawners are true. The spawner chances are all set to 0.8, in gelidSpawnerChance, thicketSpawnerChance, verdantSpawnerChance, huskSpawnerChance and straySpawnerChance.^[1][3]

Automation and compatibility

There is nothing mod-specific to automate here, so the variants behave like any other hostile mob for your mob farms and spawner setups. The mod is designed to be fully compatible with other mods and to work out of the box: the variants will spawn in modded biomes, and they respond to resource packs like Fresh Animations.^[1]

Two things in this pack are turned off. enableKeyframeAnimationsForZombieAndItsVariants and enableKeyframeAnimationsForSkeletonAndItsVariants are both false, so zombies, skeletons and their variants keep their standard animations instead of the mod's keyframe ones. checkForNewUpdates is left true.^[3]

Everything for this mod lives in a single file, config/variantsandventures.json, and it is all simple on/off switches and numbers. The pack ships it with every variant and every spawner type turned on, so out of the box you get the full experience: new zombie and skeleton variants spawning in their biomes, plus their spawners in dungeons and trial chambers.^[1][3]

Turning variants on and off

Each variant has a master switch, and the pack sets all of them to true: enableGelid, enableThicket, enableVerdant and enableMurk. If a particular variant is ruining your day, flipping its switch to false is the blunt fix.^[3]

Natural spawning is controlled separately from the variant itself, and again the pack enables all of it: enableGelidSpawns, enableThicketSpawns, enableVerdantSpawns and enableMurkSpawns. The mod's improved vanilla spawning logic is on too, through enableBetterHuskSpawns and enableBetterStraySpawns.^[1][3]

Spawners in dungeons and trial chambers

The pack leaves spawner generation enabled for every variant that has it: enableGelidSpawners, enableThicketSpawners, enableVerdantSpawners, plus enableHuskSpawners and enableStraySpawners. That is why a cold-biome dungeon can greet you with a gelid spawner instead of a plain zombie one.^[1][3]

The chance values are the ones worth knowing. Every spawn chance and every spawner chance in the pack is set to 0.8: gelidSpawnChance, thicketSpawnChance, verdantSpawnChance, huskSpawnChance and straySpawnChance, and likewise gelidSpawnerChance, thicketSpawnerChance, verdantSpawnerChance, huskSpawnerChance and straySpawnerChance. Lower a number if you want the vanilla mob to show up more often instead.^[3]

Y level limits

Each variant also has a minimum Y level, and the pack sets all of them to -64: gelidMinimumYLevel, thicketMinimumYLevel, verdantMinimumYLevel, huskMinimumYLevel and strayMinimumYLevel. In practice that is the bottom of the world, so there is no depth limit holding these mobs back. Raise a value if you only want a variant near the surface.^[3]

Animations and updates

Finally, checkForNewUpdates is left on at true. It is harmless, but turn it off if you prefer no update checks on startup.^[3]

Unverified The sources do not list the mod's own defaults, so it cannot be confirmed which of these values the pack changed and which match stock Variants&Ventures. The values above are exactly what this pack ships.

All the Mods 10 2.12 ships Variants&Ventures 1.0.6. The mod was first included in All the Mods 10 1.7 or earlier, so it has been in the pack for a long while.^[4]

The pack changelogs have no entries for this mod, so there is nothing pack-specific to report. The notes below come from the mod's own 1.0.6 changelog.^[4]

Variants&Ventures 1.0.6

• Experimental animations are now disabled by default.^[5]
• Compatibility between minor Minecraft versions was improved.^[5]
• Spawn eggs were fixed.^[5]
• Russian (ru_ru) translations were added, thanks to mpustovoi.^[5]
• Vietnamese (vi_vn) translations were updated, thanks to godkyo98.^[5]

The changelog describes mod defaults only. It doesn't say whether the pack changes any of them.^[5]