Explorer Mode Add-on
Experience Minecraft like it was on your first day: Scary, challenging and full of wonder! Disables most crafting recipes for tools and armor. So you have to either find them or trade for them in villages.
About Explorer Mode
Remember the first time you started Minecraft? Being put into an unknown world that was yours to explore. Digging a little hole in the dirt to survive your first night? Being excited when after hours of playtime you found your first diamond? The good old days, when “Survival” mode actually meant you have to struggle?
Compare this feeling to modern Minecraft. You skip your first night by killing some sheep, strip mine at y-level 12 and find your first diamonds after an hour in game and get fully enchanted diamond equipment before a day is up. Making the rest of the game absolutely trivial. You then spend the rest of your time to make it even more trivial by creating huge automated farms taking all challenge out of the game.
Removed Crafting Recipes
This add-on aims to bring the feeling of your first days in Minecraft back. It achieves this goal by disabling most crafting recipes for tools and armor. So you have to either find them or trade for them in villages. This means that you will have to explore the world, gather loot and emeralds and fight for every bit of progression. No longer can you ignore all those different villager trades because all of them are now useful. Llamas and donkeys will become your best friend, when they transport your loot while you travel from village to village looking for that enchanted pickaxe trade. When you delve into abandoned mineshafts or dive for sunken ruins and you find that iron pickaxe or gold ingots to repair your enchanted golden armor you will rejoice!
Enhanced Loot Tables
Explorer mode makes Minecraft that much more challenging and to survive you will need to exploit each and every feature Minecraft has to offer. Explorer mode has your back though! Edited trade and loot tables ensure that you will seldomly find a frustrating villager trade or a completely useless loot chest. Instead even the gold blocks you find in an ocean monument will come very much in hand.
Added Mobs
Explorer mode also adds some new (retextured) mobs to the game, to make exploring more interesting and challenging.
Pygmy Skeleton
In the jungle, instead of normal zombies and skeletons there will now spawn pygmy skeletons that shoot arrows of poison and weakness. They can also drop those arrows if you slay them.
Nether Golem
In the Nether you can now find the mighty Nether Golem, a hostile mob that is very powerful and probably best avoided. If you kill it, you will be rewarded with some nether bricks and a bucket of lava.
Obsidian Golem
Another golem added to the world is the obsidian golem. These huge ancient guardians roam the deepes recesses of the underworld. They are neutral towards the player but if you manage to slay one of those rare entities you will be rewarded with obsidian and a block of diamond.
Hellhound
Another new resident of the nether is the hellhound. These creatures hunt in packs and will drop leather when slain.
Recommended and compatible mods
There are so many awesome creations here on mcpedl that it is hard to choose one add-on over the other. Luckily for you I search for addons that would enhance your game experience when playing Explorer Mode and will make sure, that they are compatible with Explorer Mode and with each other. Just make sure you place Explorer Mode at the top of your load order. All credits go to the original authors and you will still need to download their add-on seperately.
Minecraft Earth Mobs
This add-on adds the three new mobs seen at the Minecraft Earth presentation. They really add to the feeling of wonder and fantasy that you experience when exploring your Minecraft world. When played together with Explorer Mode the new animals can only be bred when fed golden fruit similar to their vanilla cousins.
Parting Words
Explorer mode makes the game much more challenging. You can spend hundreds of hours before facing the Ender dragon or the Wither. There is no “optimal” way to play Minecraft anymore and when playing Explorer Mode you are here for the way not for the destination.
Will you take up the challenge and enter Explorer Mode?
Full list of changes in version 1.1:
- replaced the possibility to find horse armor in dungeon chests with the possibility to find enchanted stone tools
- if you smelt down chain-mail, iron or gold equipment you will now receive an ingot instead of a nugget
- restored the saddle as a possible master trade for the leather worker (turns out you lose a lot of donkeys!)
- restored horse armor to ender city chests
- I figured that a hoe cannot be sold or found enchanted. Therefore, I replaced the iron hoe that the toolsmith sells as an apprentice trade with a diamond hoe. Removed the diamond hoe as an option for the journeyman trade accordingly
- replaced zombies and skeletons in the jungle biome with Pygmy Skeletons that shoot arrows of poison and weakness (and drop them accordingly)
- getting hit by a zombie or baby zombie will now afflict nausea for eight seconds
- added the hostile nether golem to the nether
- added the neutral obsidian golem to the deepest caves
- added compatibility with the Minecraft Earth Add-On
Installation
- Download the mcaddon
- Double-click and Minecraft should open
- Create a new world and enable experimental features
- Choose "Explorer Mode" under behaviour packs
Downloads
Supported Minecraft versions
1.12