Tribulation
Tribulation logo

Tribulation

A comprehensive difficulty overhaul for Minecraft 1.21.1 (Fabric).

Mobs grow stronger as you play longer, venture further, and descend deeper. Every hour survived raises the stakes with scaling stats, tier abilities, and brutal opt-in mechanics.

Download Latest Release Getting Started GitHub

Core Systems

Four interlocking mechanics that bend Minecraft's flat difficulty curve into an escalating gauntlet. Full feature list →

Mob Scaling

21 mob types scale across health, damage, speed, armor, toughness, and follow range — independent rate and cap per stat.

Death Penalties

Lose 2 difficulty levels on death as relief. Shatter Shards drop rarely from scaled mobs and cut your level by 5 when consumed.

Hardcore Hearts

Opt-in permanent max-health loss on death. Restore lost hearts with Heart Fragment items crafted from Shatter Shards.

Soul Inventory

Opt-in inventory destruction on death. Only items enchanted with Soulbound survive — forcing deliberate gear choices.

Four Scaling Axes

Difficulty compounds from four independent sources. Each axis contributes a factor that multiplies mob attributes.

Time (Player Level)

Every hour of playtime advances your level (0–250). The higher your level, the more stats mobs near you gain. This is the primary axis.

Distance from Spawn

Beyond 1000 blocks from world spawn, mobs gain bonus health, damage, armor, and toughness. Caps at +150%. Overworld-only by default.

Height (Y-Level)

Deviation from sea level (Y=62) in either direction adds threat — deep caves and tall peaks alike. Caps at +50%.

Moon Phase

Full-moon nights raise mob threat; the bonus tapers to zero by the new moon. Caps at +10% by default. Overworld nights only — optionally surface-only.

The four factors combine multiplicatively per attribute, then clamp to a global stat cap. See the formula →

Quick Install

Requires Fabric Loader 0.16.10+, Fabric API, and Java 21 on Minecraft 1.21.1.

  1. 1 Install Fabric Loader 0.16.10+ for Minecraft 1.21.1.
  2. 2 Install Fabric API (required dependency).
  3. 3 Drop tribulation-x.x.x.jar into your mods/ folder (server and client).
  4. 4 Launch the game. Config generates at config/tribulation.json on first run.
  5. 5 Adjust settings in the config file or hot-reload with /tribulation reload in-game.

Remove any other mob-scaling mods before installing. New to the mod? Start with the Getting Started guide.