Ascend 3.0.8 Update Notes

This document covers the complete player-facing update from Ascend 2.4.4 to 3.0.8.

Attribute balance at 100 points

The values below use Ascend's default configuration, a maximum attribute investment of 100, and an attribute scaling multiplier of 1.0. Optional effects require the named integration. Percentages applied through Minecraft attributes are described as bonuses to the relevant base value.

Main attributes

Attribute	Ascend 2.4.4 at 100 points	Ascend 3.0.8 at 100 points	What changed
Vigor	Did not exist. Fortitude supplied the health role.	+20 maximum health (10 hearts), for 40 health/20 hearts before other modifiers.	Vigor replaces Fortitude as the dedicated health stat. It uses the shared soft-cap curve and does not add armor, knockback resistance, or stamina.
Mind	Did not exist. Intelligence and Charisma supplied mana bonuses.	With Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks: +200 maximum mana and +30% base mana regeneration.	Mana capacity and regeneration have been separated from offensive spellcasting. Mind does not increase spell damage.
Strength	+6 attack damage to every melee attack, +0.20 attack knockback, and +20% thrown-trident damage. Heavy weapon damage required a separate Heavy Scaling investment.	+0.15 attack knockback, 20% armor penetration when using a Strength-scaling weapon, plus the weapon's Strength grade contribution.	The unconditional melee damage bonus was removed. Strength damage now depends on the equipped weapon's grade and scales its base physical damage. Armor penetration directly ignores that percentage of the target's armor value.
Agility	+0.08 movement-speed attribute addition—equivalent to about +80% of the vanilla player's 0.10 base speed—plus +24.5% ranged damage and a 15% chance to reduce an incoming hit to 10% damage. Light weapon damage still required a separate Light Scaling investment.	+25% base movement speed, plus the weapon's Agility grade contribution—for example, +50% base Bow damage from its A grade.	Movement remains controlled but is more noticeable than the original 3.0 balance. Passive random evasion was removed, while ranged/finesse damage now comes from stronger weapon-specific grades.
Intelligence	+200 maximum mana, +30% base mana regeneration, 30% lower anvil cost, approximately 30% lower enchanting-table level offers, +30% beneficial-effect duration, and up to +30% Knowledge gain before integer rounding.	With Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks: +35% base spell power and +15% base cooldown reduction.	Intelligence is now exclusively the offensive spellcasting stat. Mana moved to Mind; potion duration moved to Arcane; anvil, enchanting, and Knowledge bonuses were removed.
Willpower	1.25 health restored every 4 seconds and a nominal 20% cast-time reduction; the old Iron's modifier used the wrong sign, so its cast-time result was not reliable. Ascend also defined 35% Sanity-loss reduction and 30% Tempo-gain helpers, but Mind & Motion 1.4.5 did not call them. Mind & Motion itself supplied +300 maximum Sanity, +50 maximum Tempo, +50 maximum Madness, and +0.10 Madness decay per tick.	With Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks: a correctly applied 20% base cast-time reduction. Mind & Motion's existing capacity bonuses remain: +300 maximum Sanity, +50 maximum Tempo, +50 maximum Madness, and +0.10 Madness decay per tick.	Passive healing and the unused Sanity-loss/Tempo-gain helpers were removed. Willpower increases resource capacity instead of changing Sanity-loss or Tempo-gain rates.
Charisma	30% villager discount, +8 minor-positive villager reputation, and +20% maximum health and damage for nearby owned allies. With Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks: +150 mana, +20% Holy spell power, and +20% summon damage.	30% villager discount, +8 minor-positive villager reputation, and +20% maximum health and damage for nearby owned allies. With Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks: +20% Holy spell power and +20% summon damage.	Trading and support bonuses remain. The unrelated generic mana bonus was removed.
Arcane	Did not exist. Some potion-duration behavior belonged to Intelligence, while Fortitude could reject or cleanse harmful effects.	+30% duration for finite beneficial effects received by the player and +40% duration for finite harmful effects the player applies to enemies.	Arcane is the new status-effect stat. Durations are modified once when an effect is first applied; amplifiers are unchanged and permanent/infinite effects are excluded.

Removed Fortitude and weapon-scaling attributes

Removed attribute	Ascend 2.4.4 at 100 points	Ascend 3.0.8
Fortitude	+18 maximum health (9 hearts), +0.30 knockback resistance, 25% chance to reject a harmful effect, and a 20% cleanse roll every 2 seconds.	Removed. Health moved to Vigor; its defensive effect rejection, cleansing, and knockback resistance were not transferred. All invested points are refunded during migration.
Light Scaling	+35% final damage with held weapons that were not recognized as swords or axes.	Removed. Light and finesse weapons use their configured main-attribute grades, primarily Agility. Invested points are refunded.
Medium Scaling	+35% final sword damage.	Removed. Swords scale directly from Strength and Agility grades. Invested points are refunded.
Heavy Scaling	+35% final axe damage.	Removed. Axes and other heavy weapons scale directly from Strength and Agility grades. Invested points are refunded.
Magic Scaling	+35% final damage for broadly detected magic sources. With Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks it also supplied +35% base spell power and +14% base cooldown reduction.	Removed. Offensive spell power and cooldown reduction moved to Intelligence. Invested points are refunded.

New soft-cap model

All eight current attributes use one reusable, configurable diminishing-return curve. With the defaults, investment is weighted as follows:

• Points 1–20: 1.00 effective value per point.
• Points 21–40: 0.75 per point.
• Points 41–60: 0.50 per point.
• Points 61–80: 0.25 per point.
• Points 81–100: 0.10 per point.

At the default 100-point attribute cap, this equals 52 effective points and is normalized to the configured maximum bonus. The soft-cap positions, segment gains, maximum investment, and global attribute multiplier are configurable.

Weapon scaling overhaul

Weapons no longer use Light, Medium, Heavy, or Magic Scaling player stats. Each weapon instead has grades for the main attributes. The registry currently supports Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, Charisma, and Arcane, allowing integrations and datapacks to add non-physical scaling later without changing damage-event code.

At 100 points, one attribute contributes the following percentage of the weapon's relevant base damage:

Grade	NONE	E	D	C	B	A	S
Default maximum contribution	0%	10%	20%	30%	40%	50%	60%

Contributions from multiple attributes are added. For example, a Diamond Sword with Strength C and Agility B gains 30% base weapon damage at 100 Strength, 40% at 100 Agility, or 70% when both are 100. The bonus targets weapon damage instead of multiplying the entire final Minecraft damage pipeline.

Vanilla weapon defaults

Weapon	Strength	Agility	Combined bonus with both stats at 100
Wooden Sword	D	D	+40%
Stone Sword	D	C	+50%
Iron Sword	C	C	+60%
Golden Sword	E	B	+50%
Diamond Sword	C	B	+70%
Netherite Sword	B	B	+80%
Wooden Axe	C	E	+40%
Stone Axe	B	E	+50%
Iron Axe	B	D	+60%
Golden Axe	D	C	+50%
Diamond Axe	A	D	+70%
Netherite Axe	A	C	+80%
Wooden Pickaxe	D	E	+30%
Stone Pickaxe	C	E	+40%
Iron Pickaxe	C	E	+40%
Golden Pickaxe	E	D	+30%
Diamond Pickaxe	B	E	+50%
Netherite Pickaxe	B	E	+50%
Wooden Shovel	D	E	+30%
Stone Shovel	D	E	+30%
Iron Shovel	C	E	+40%
Golden Shovel	E	D	+30%
Diamond Shovel	C	E	+40%
Netherite Shovel	C	E	+40%
Wooden Hoe	E	D	+30%
Stone Hoe	E	C	+40%
Iron Hoe	E	B	+50%
Golden Hoe	E	B	+50%
Diamond Hoe	D	B	+60%
Netherite Hoe	D	A	+70%
Bow	NONE	A	+50%
Crossbow	D	B	+60%
Trident	C	B	+70%
Mace	A	D	+70%

The Mace entry is registered only when the running Minecraft version provides that item. Snowballs, eggs, fishing rods, wind charges, and fireworks do not receive conventional scaling. Vanilla defaults are exposed through data/ascend/weapon_scaling/vanilla.json and can be overridden by datapacks. Grade coefficients are configurable.

Armor penetration API

Armor penetration reduces the target's armor value before Minecraft's armor-and-toughness calculation: 10% penetration treats 20 armor as 18 armor for that hit. The default global cap is 30% and is configurable through armorPenetrationCap.

Every eligible player hit posts net.fretux.ascend.api.event.ArmorPenetrationEvent on the Forge event bus. Integrations can add or replace the penetration amount, change the per-hit cap, or call disableCap(). Even with the configurable cap disabled, effective penetration is bounded to 100% because an attack cannot ignore more armor than the target has.

@SubscribeEvent
public static void modifyArmorPenetration(ArmorPenetrationEvent event) {
    event.addArmorPenetration(0.10); // Add ten percentage points.
    event.disableCap();              // Optional: bypass Ascend's configured cap for this hit.
}

Save migration

• Player data now has a persistent format version.
• The migration runs server-side once per player, including players who first join after the server was updated.
• Fortitude, Light Scaling, Medium Scaling, Heavy Scaling, and Magic Scaling investments are added together and refunded completely into unspent attribute points.
• Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, and Charisma investments are preserved.
• Vigor, Mind, and Arcane begin at their normal default value; Fortitude is not converted into either Vigor or Arcane.
• Ascend Level, Ascend XP, Knowledge, respec data, Moonseye Tome state, and unrelated persistent data are preserved.
• Missing legacy keys safely count as zero, and the new data version prevents duplicate refunds.
• The active server's configurable maximum Ascend level overrides stale cap snapshots in player saves.

Progression and configuration

• Ascend continues to use one shared Ascend XP value. There is no per-attribute XP.
• Gameplay activities award Ascend XP, Ascend XP raises the Ascend Level, and levels grant configurable unspent attribute points.
• The normal maximum Ascend level is 20, configurable from 1 to 100.
• Maximum investment remains configurable and defaults to 100 per attribute.
• Added settings for soft caps, all new attribute effects, Arcane's two duration categories, and every scaling-grade coefficient.
• Obsolete keys in an existing Forge config are tolerated rather than causing a startup failure.

Interface and usability

• Rebuilt the Ascend Stats screen around the eight current attributes in a wider two-column layout.
• Added clearer cards, color-coded accents, more spacing, readable values, upgrade availability, a progression panel, Knowledge, unspent points, and an Ascend XP bar.
• Removed the redundant “Ascend Stats” subtitle and fixed clipped Strength and Agility text.
• Replaced technical or ambiguous descriptions with direct player-facing language.
• Removed every legacy attribute from the screen, commands, tooltips, storage, networking, and gameplay calculations.
• Added weapon scaling-grade tooltips.
• Invalid attribute names used through commands are now rejected instead of silently doing nothing.

Compatibility and reliability

• Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks remains optional. Its classes are isolated behind a guarded compatibility layer, and Ascend works without the mod installed.
• Mind & Motion remains optional. Ascend uses its public Sanity capability for existing shrine actions and leaves Sanity, Insanity, Madness, and Tempo ownership to Mind & Motion.
• Willpower's maximum Sanity and Tempo bonuses are supplied by Mind & Motion's existing Ascend integration; Ascend no longer duplicates or modifies Sanity-loss and Tempo-gain behavior.
• Player stats synchronize on login, death cloning, respawn, and dimension changes.
• Vigor health modifiers are safely replaced across upgrades and player lifecycle events.
• Arcane modifies eligible effects only at initial application, preventing repeated per-tick duration growth.
• Added automated coverage for soft caps, balance constants, optional Mind & Motion capability calls, save migration, duplicate-refund prevention, new-player behavior, and server-configured level caps.

• Switched Iron's Spellbooks 3.16.2 to its current Curse Maven artifact because the legacy API-classifier coordinate is no longer published.
• Removed obsolete Caelus and Curios API-classifier dependencies and compile against their current full artifacts.
• Updated Forge to 47.4.22, Iron's Spellbooks to 3.16.2, GeckoLib to 4.8.4, Curios to 5.14.1, and Caelus to 3.2.0. Updated Mind & Motion and the Skill Engine development runtime addon to 1.4.5.
• Centralized the Mind & Motion and Skill Engine versions in gradle.properties.
• Persisted fortitude max-health modifiers so saved current health above the vanilla 20 HP limit is retained when players rejoin.
• Restored full modified health again on the first server tick after login or death respawn to prevent later lifecycle initialization from reverting it to 20 HP.

Added

• Advancements

Fixed

• Fixed rejoining players with fortitude bonus health being left at the vanilla 20 HP after their increased maximum health was restored.
• Applied server-side stat modifiers before the initial login synchronization so the client immediately receives the correct attributes and health state.
• Fixed spending a point on fortitude so the player's current health increases by the newly gained maximum health instead of leaving the added hearts empty.
• Updated the Mind Motion dependency to version 1.4.2.

• Fixed death respawns so players with fortitude bonus health respawn at their full modified maximum health instead of the vanilla 10 hearts.
• Fixed stat resets and refunds so removed bonuses immediately clamp current health back down to the recalculated maximum.
• Fixed player tick progression logic so fortitude, agility, willpower, and charisma timing is tracked per player instead of through shared server-wide counters.
• Hardened player stat synchronization against accidental non-server-player calls.
• Fixed player clone capability cleanup after copying Ascend stats to the respawned player.
• Removed an unused attack-speed lookup from weapon XP handling.

• Rebalanced Ascend stat formulas across combat, defense, enchantment, potion, and spell-related scaling.
• Simplified and retuned parts of the stat effect implementation, including melee and magic scaling behavior.
• Fixed the stats screen so custom configured max Ascend levels display correctly instead of staying at 20/20.
• Synced max Ascend and attribute caps through player stat data so the client GUI respects the server-authoritative config.

• Added ranged weapon scaling so projectile attacks can benefit from Ascend stat scaling.
• Extended weapon magic scaling to handle projectiles more directly and correctly.
• Updated the Mind Motion dependency version again.
• Enhanced intelligence, willpower, and charisma bonuses with broader gameplay effects.
• Added intelligence-based anvil support.
• Improved charisma trade handling and merchant compatibility behavior.
• Hardened PlayerStats persistence and validation to clamp invalid saved values and respect config-driven limits.
• Included small infrastructure and polish updates across packet registration, worldgen wiring, Moonseye Tome behavior, and player event handling.

• Fixed bug where if a higher max level was set in the config it wouldn't show in the menu.
• Fixed global attribute scaling in the config not applying to Iron's Spells and Spellbooks attributes.
• Fixed a bug where you could get negative xp by going over the integer limit.

• Fixed a bug where ascend would crash if Iron's spellbooks wasn't loaded