YUNG's Better Dungeons in All the Mods 10

YUNG's Better Dungeons is a worldgen mod that redesigns Minecraft's vanilla dungeons from the ground up. On top of that, it adds three brand new dungeons for you to find: Catacombs, Fortresses of the Undead, and Spider Caves.^[1]

This pack ships version 1.21.1-NeoForge-5.1.4 of the mod. It has been in the pack since All the Mods 10 1.0 or earlier, so it's a long-standing part of the world generation.^[2]

Works with other worldgen mods

The mod is designed to be compatible with every worldgen mod. The project page specifically names YUNG's Better Mineshafts, YUNG's Better Strongholds, YUNG's Extras, YUNG's Bridges and Repurposed Structures.^[1]

Nether dungeons

The project page says that the 1.19.2 release introduced small Nether dungeons scattered through the Nether. It describes them as an extra opt-in feature that you have to enable manually in the mod's config. That note was written for 1.19.2, and I haven't confirmed here how it applies to this pack's version, so check the mod's config in your instance before counting on those Nether dungeons.^[1][2]

Same as in the All the Mods 10 8.1 guide

Good news: you don't need to craft anything to get started with this mod. YUNG's Better Dungeons redesigns Minecraft's dungeons and adds three new ones: Catacombs, Fortresses of the Undead, and Spider Caves. Your first step is simply to go exploring.^[1]

What to do first

1. Look for an upgraded Monster Room. It is the mod's take on the small dungeon, and finding one unlocks an advancement.^[1][3]
2. Go hunting for the three new dungeon types: a Catacomb, a Fortress of the Undead and a Spider Cave. Each has its own advancement.^[1][3]
3. Once you have seen them all, you complete the advancement for exploring all of the Better Dungeons.^[3]

Advancement checklist

The mod's advancements work as a handy checklist, with one for each kind of dungeon.^[3]

• Small dungeon: find an upgraded Monster Room.^[3]
• Zombie dungeon: set foot in a Catacomb.^[3]
• Skeleton dungeon: enter a Fortress of the Undead.^[3]
• Spider dungeon: discover a Spider Cave.^[3]
• All dungeons: explore all of the Better Dungeons.^[3]

Things the config can change

The mod has a config that controls a few things you may notice. One option stops vanilla dungeons from spawning, and its tooltip recommends turning them off because the Small Dungeons are very similar in design. Others set the minimum and maximum number of guaranteed chests in a small dungeon and the maximum number of banners. You can also toggle mob heads, decorative Nether blocks such as soul sand, and ore blocks in the corners of small dungeons.^[3]

Small Nether dungeons are described as an opt-in feature that has to be enabled in the config. If they are on, blazes from them can have a chance to drop blaze rods and wither skeletons can drop wither skeleton skulls, and each of those has its own toggle.^[1][3]

Unverified The sources here do not show which of these options this pack changed from the mod's defaults, including whether vanilla dungeons are removed or small Nether dungeons are enabled. Check the mod's config file in the pack. They also show no crafting recipes or quest chapter for this mod.

Here's the honest answer for this one: YUNG's Better Dungeons has no machines, multiblocks, power, fluids or item automation. Nothing in the sources describes any of that. It's a worldgen mod, and its "mechanics" are the rules that decide which dungeons generate, where, and how they get decorated.^[1][4]

The dungeon structures

The mod groups its structures under one tag. These are the entries:^[4]

• small_dungeon, the upgraded Monster Room^[3][4]
• spider_dungeon, the Spider Cave^[3][4]
• skeleton_dungeon, the Fortress of the Undead^[3][4]
• zombie_dungeon, the Catacomb^[3][4]
• small_nether_dungeon, the small Nether dungeons^[1][4]

Each of the first four has its own advancement, and there is one for exploring all of the Better Dungeons.^[3]

Vanilla dungeons get replaced

A biome modifier in the mod removes the vanilla monster_room and monster_room_deep features from the underground structures step, in biomes tagged for the small dungeon. The mod's own tooltip for the matching option says it is recommended to remove them, since the Small Dungeons are very similar in design.^[3][5]

Where they generate

The small, spider, skeleton and zombie dungeons all use the same biome list in the files shown. It covers mountains, badlands, hills, taiga, jungle and forest biomes, plus stony shore, mushroom fields, ice spikes, frozen peaks, desert, savanna, plains, snowy taiga, snowy slopes, jagged peaks, swamp, dripstone caves and lush caves. Several entries from other mods' tags are marked as optional, so they only apply when those tags exist.^[6][7][8][9]

Small Nether dungeons are different. Their tag points at the Nether biomes.^[10]

The Fortress of the Undead uses a random spread placement with a spacing of 46 and a separation of 23.^[11]

How dungeons get decorated

Dungeon pieces are run through processor lists as they generate. The skeleton dungeon list runs these processors: head, nether block, skeleton mob spawner, ruined stone bricks, candle and skeleton dungeon leg. It then applies block swap rules. Stone bricks have a 0.20 chance to become mossy stone bricks and a 0.30 chance to become cracked stone bricks, and cobblestone has a 0.5 chance to become mossy cobblestone.^[12]

The small dungeon loot pile list uses the head, nether block and small dungeon ore processors. It swaps mossy cobblestone to cobblestone with a 0.25 chance, stone bricks to mossy with a 0.50 chance, and stone bricks to cracked with a 0.20 chance.^[13]

The zombie dungeon cubby list uses the head, nether block, flower pot, candle, cubby, zombie mob spawner and zombie tombstone spawner processors.^[14]

Options the mod exposes

The mod's own option tooltips describe these switches:^[3]

• enableHeads decides whether dungeons can place skeleton skulls and other mob heads.^[3]
• enableNetherBlocks controls rare decorative Nether blocks such as soul sand, soul campfires and soul lanterns. The tooltip says they are purely decorative, with nothing progression-breaking like Ancient Debris.^[3]
• removeVanillaDungeons decides whether vanilla dungeons are prevented from spawning.^[3]
• The small dungeon options set minimum and maximum guaranteed chest counts, a maximum banner count, and whether ore blocks can rarely appear in the corners. With ore props off, those blocks become air.^[3]
• The small Nether dungeon options cover whether they spawn at all, a banner maximum, whether blazes can drop blaze rods, and whether wither skeletons can drop wither skeleton skulls.^[3]
• The zombie dungeon option for maximum surface staircase length sets the longest distance checked when generating a surface entrance staircase. The tooltip warns that making it too large may cause problems.^[3]

Unverified This mod's config values are not shown in the sources here, and no config files for it are included. That covers whether small Nether dungeons are enabled, chest counts, banner limits and the staircase length, so check the mod's config in your instance.

This mod adds dungeon structures to the world, so progression here is about where you explore and which chests you open. The sources I have show the structures and their loot, so that is what this section covers.^[4]

The five dungeon types

The mod groups five structures together: the small dungeon, the spider dungeon, the skeleton dungeon, the zombie dungeon and the small nether dungeon. The small nether dungeon is the one built for the Nether.^[4]

• Small nether dungeon: it can generate in any biome in the Nether biome tag, so it's the one to look for when you're down there.^[10]
• Skeleton dungeon: it has a very wide biome list. That includes mountains, hills, badlands, taiga, jungle, forest, desert, savanna, plains, swamp, and even dripstone caves and lush caves.^[6]

What the chests give you

Loot depends on which chest you open, and the chests differ a lot in value. The loot piles in the small dungeon are the weakest. They only roll cobweb, dirt and cobblestone, each with the same weight. It's mostly junk, so don't expect an upgrade there.^[15]

The middle chest of the skeleton dungeon is better. It can give charcoal, coal, torches, sticks and a Diamond. All of those entries have the same weight, so the diamond is as likely to come up as any of the others on each roll.^[16]

The zombie dungeon's tombstone chest is the one to look out for. Bones are the most common result, followed by bone meal. An Emerald and a Diamond are rarer, and a Diamond Sword is the rarest entry. The sword comes with one random enchantment from smite, sweeping edge or fire aspect.^[17]

Unverified The spider dungeon's egg room chest, the other zombie and skeleton dungeon chests, and the biome lists for the small, spider and zombie dungeons live in the mod's own data files (loot tables and biome tags). The sources here do not show their contents, so don't assume they match the chests above.

All the Mods 10 8.2 ships YUNG's Better Dungeons 1.21.1-NeoForge-5.1.4. The mod was first included in All the Mods 10 1.0 or earlier. The changes below come from the mod's own changelogs.^[2]

Changes by mod version

• 5.1.0: The port to 1.21.1. It fixed Small Nether Dungeons ignoring the config and always spawning, and it updated the structure NBT files.^[18]
• 5.1.2: Lowered the minimum version requirements, so the mod works on both 1.21 and 1.21.1.^[19]
• 5.1.3: Fixed an issue where feature mixins could cause worldgen deadlocks.^[20]
• 5.1.4 (the version in this pack): Fixed rare crashes when structures intersect because processors applied mismatched NBT. It also added a Brazilian Portuguese translation.^[21]