February 28th has been a special day for Caverns & Chasms over the past four years, and 2025 is no exception!

On February 28th, 2021, we unveiled Caverns & Chasms for the first time, showing off early versions of tons of its features that have been since expanded upon, iterated upon, reworked, resprited, removed, and more. After four years of this, we are very proud of how far the mod has come since then and appreciate your support, feedback, and ideas throughout that time!

On February 28th, 2023, we put out a 1.19.2 beta - the first beta for Caverns & Chasms after the Caves & Cliffs update had released. This update introduced tons of new features and reworks based on the new features from 1.17, 1.18, and 1.19, and was a lot more representative of the mod's current state.

On February 29th, 2024, we finally fully released Caverns & Chasms, and it has received some small content updates since, including dyeable Bundles and integration for 1.20's additions, but it's now time for Caverns & Chasms first major content drop…

Caverns & Chasms: Polished Up

Much like the decorative versions of Andesite, Granite, Calcite, and other stone variants, we have taken this update to give Caverns & Chasms the polish it needs! This update is a love letter to Caverns & Chasms and its features, expanding just about every aspect of the mod with tons of new features and polish!

General

Many larger categories of features will be touched on, but there are many features that do not fit under these categories. Here is a nice long list of 'em!

Metal Plated Bricks

Metal Plated Bricks are a new category of decorative blockset made with their respective ingots and Deepslate. They offer a slightly more grounded and realistic palette than their storage block counterparts, along with chiseled variants featuring their alchemical symbols! Two ingots and two deepslate crafts four bricks and they can be made from copper, iron, gold, and silver!

Cave Growths, Moschatel, and False Hope

Cave Growths are a new type of semi-rare plant. They can appear in most places underground, although they prefer the conditions of surface caves or, rarely, the heads of Deepers! They will only generate on stone, but are placeable on anything. There are also a few colorful but rare variants that favor particular climates, but can be found anywhere. Sometimes, a new green flower, the Moschatel, can be found among them.

Additionally, the False Hope is a light-emitting flower that can be found rarely in Caves, giving the illusion of an exit to the surface!

Flint Block

A block crafted from 2x2 flint that has gravity unless attached from above. When it lands, or if another falling block grazes it, it will spark and ignite fires around it, including lighting adjacent TNT.

Copper Horn

We've brought back the copper horn! It looks a touch different, but functions identically to how it did in the Bedrock Edition betas that it was included in before being removed without much explanation. This also includes the two variants of base goat horn that were removed around the same time, as they were needed to craft the respective copper horns.

Rats

You might remember rats from when they were announced, they were put on hold but we'll be finishing them this update! They're tameable but quite feisty, but are still heavily work-in-progress, like many features this update!

Tether Potions, Impact Potions, and Trail Potions

Tether potions now have some siblings! Impact potions are respective to splash potions and will only apply their effect upon breaking, whereas trail potions are respective to lingering and let you… leave a trail. A small visual update for how they look when worn is pending.

Copper Rails, Halt Rails, Spiked Rails, and Slaughter Rails

We're slowly but surely trying to make minecarts a bit more viable. To start with, we've introduced Copper Rails, which are a bit of a work in progress, but are currently just a tier below iron, although, of course, it is extremely cheap and enables getting some infrastructure set up early.

Another addition is the Halt Rail. This cheap, iron-based rail can be powered from both its east and west faces, which respectively will halt minecarts coming from the north or south side. You can power both sides to halt all minecarts. A perfect way to end a railroad or simply enforce a direction.

Spiked Rails have also been changed to damage entities solely outside of the minecart, rather than within. Although mobs do, of course, avoid rails anyway, keen minecart aficionados will be familiar with the fact that isn't always enough. The old spiked rail functionality of hurting entities within minecarts has been moved to the new Slaughter Rail!

Zirconia

Named after real-world faux diamonds, Zirconia is a new prismatic gem found only as loot, or as a drop from Mimes. It can be used to repair any item as though it were the repair material, which can be particularly useful for more expensive tiers. It may also be used to duplicate music discs, although duplicates have a unique texture and mention their lack of authenticity, so originals retain their value as trophy items. Zirconia can be used as a trim material.

Forges

Forges are a brand new structure that are somewhat common throughout the world, anywhere in the cave layer. They resemble large industrial furnaces and have piles of old smelting remnants left inside. Whilst this includes Suspicious Gravel with a variety of new Sherds, Trim Templates, and other goodies, it also has the particularly hazardous combination of TNT and Flint Blocks. One wrong move, and both you and the remaining loot will go out with a bang!

Tweaks

We've made some smaller changes to various existing features in this update:

• Minecarts with TMT have been added!
• Many blocks, items, and features in the mod now have unique sounds! This is still a work in progress, so there are some conspicuous absences, especially with the new features
• Necromium armor has been reworked to provide slowness to enemies rather than weakness
• Leather horse armor now stops horses sinking into powder snow, gold horse armor grants a small speed boost, and horse armor buffs are properly stated in the item descriptions
• Fragile stone makes ores encased within it fall down upon breaking. No more ugly floating veins!
• Fragile stone is now craftable with stone and gravel
• Rocky dirt now has a chance to drop flint in addition to dirt
• The cheaper lodestone recipe from vanilla snapshots has been backported
• Deepers and peepers now drop more gunpowder
• Deepers are now affected by pickaxe enchantments
• Peepers properly fear cats, and their pupils will dilate upon noticing one
• Charged deepers drop one mob head like charged creepers do, plus a random chance to drop any others. Charged peepers drop all heads.
• Mimes no longer render their cape when wearing elytra, and have a special elytra texture
• Peeper heads now rotate smoothly when powered by redstone

Spinel

We have fleshed out Spinel this update by introducing some features aimed squarely at gearing up and mitigating grinding a little bit!

Dismantling Table

With the recent additions of smithing templates for armor trims and Netherite/Necromium, sometimes you regret the modifications you make to your armor! Dismantling Tables will allow you to undo your past armor upgrades, receiving your smithing templates & materials back for the small cost of some Spinel!

Additionally includes an off-by-default tweak to the smithing table where you may not trim a piece of armor that has already been trimmed; we recommend enabling this so that when experimenting with your look, you don't accidentally waste a trim.

Bejeweled Anvil

Another Spinel-related workstation is the Bejeweled Anvil! Bejeweled Anvils cost no XP to use, however, they are very fragile and are destroyed immediately after use! They work great alongside Zirconia for repairing some of your more expensive gear. To craft them, surround an Anvil with Spinel in the crafting table for two Bejeweled Anvils.

Atoning Table

The Atoning Table is a more cursed version of enchanting tables. Enchanting tools at the Atoning Table costs durability instead of experience. The three levels correspond to risk and reward - choosing a riskier option will net you better enchantments but cost you more durability! Atoning costs both Spinel and Lapis. Atoning Tables have a custom UI, as well as an entirely new alphabet that is used for the text in the GUI and the letters surrounding the table!

Turquoise

A shiny new gem used for being a braggart. Although it has an ore, it doesn't generate by conventional means, and is found more in loot, like Zirconia. It has a tiny chance to drop from copper ore. Turquoise has no functional value, and exists purely for social reasons, and to show everyone what a snob you are. It's a bit of a work in progress right now, but it will be a scarce resource, albeit renewable in unreliable ways.

Subtle Potions

A perhaps less pretentious use for turquoise is to brew it into a potion. No more bubble particles! This makes it really good for Invisibility!

Monocle

Combine turquoise with a spyglass and you can show the world what a connoisseur you are! The monocle can be used like a spyglass or worn like a helmet - either way you'll have a very unsubtle overlay and all who bear witness will know how exquisite your tastes are!

Caviar

Have a salmon bucket lying around? No? Well you'd better get one quick should you want the world to know you're a true connoisseur. Caviar can be eaten any time to provide exactly zero nutritional value, but it sure makes you look cool! Should you not feel like making the effort to use it like that, you can always display your fine palate by placing it down.

Tin

We are excited to reveal: Tin! Planned for a long time, it is perhaps the material we have been anticipating adding the most. This new ore generates above Deepslate, but below sea level in certain parts of the world, so you'll have to venture out a bit from spawn to start finding it. But don't worry, the closest Tin regions can be found only a thousand or so blocks from spawn. Once you find Tin, you can mine it using a Diamond Pickaxe or higher. This, combined with it only generating in some places, makes it more of an end game material rather than something you get immediately.

Tin has a lot of cool things you can craft with it, much of it already in the Beta (and mentioned below) and more planned for the full update. However, Tin itself also has some interesting properties. It is not magical at all, although it has an affinity for Redstone components, which generally involve winding up or responding to different levels of power.

Projectiles shot at blocks made of Tin will ricochet off of them. This even includes stuff like Potions, Snowballs and Llama Spit! Additionally, placing a block made of Tin next to another block will make the opposite side of that block deflective too. There are some substantial use cases like extending the range of ender pearls, along with potential for lots of silly minigames!

Tin Monolith

You may notice that deposits of Tin ore have a peculiar arrow shape… follow the arrows and you'll eventually encounter a massive Tin Monolith! Inside its crust of cobblestone, the monolith is filled with Cassiterite and enough Tin ore to last a long time. Mining here may soon become a risky prospect, so watch out!

Cassiterite

Found exclusively within the Tin Monolith, it's a black stone that's blacker than Blackstone! It has a fairly expansive decorative blockset, as well as its own Tin Ore variant. Cassiterite has a weaker version of tin's ricocheting property.

Float Glass

A glassier (less visible) glass made from tin and amethyst, with Tin's ricocheting property! Float Glass can also be also be crafted into Panes!

Dimmer

A buzzy Tin light source that must be activated with a Redstone signal to stay on. Instead of powering up and down instantly like other Redstone lights, its brightness will change slowly and smoothly. The brightness that it reaches when powered is approximate to the signal strength. It can also be temporarily turned on by hand. The Dimmer creates a Comparator output approximate to its brightness, increasing and decreasing smoothly with the Dimmer. Potentially a useful alternative to traditional ways of delaying Redstone signals.

Hold Button and Hold Plate

Hold Buttons and Plates are the Tin variants of Buttons and Pressure Plates. Hold Buttons can be held down by holding right-click for any amount of time, only producing a short Redstone pulse once you let go. Similarly, Hold Plates will only produce a Redstone pulse once you step off of them.

Hoop

A tin component that detects when an item or projectile goes through it, releasing a redstone signal approximate to the velocity. Fun for minigames, especially as projectiles that miss will bounce off of the sides! You can make the hoop smaller with a Tuning Fork. Some more is planned for it.

Bouncer

An interesting block crafted by adding some Slime Balls and Redstone Dust to a Block of Tin. It deflects projectiles even more powerfully than regular Tin blocks. It will also emit a short Redstone signal proportional to how close to the middle the projectile hit, just like Target blocks! And funkily enough, jumping from the top of a Bouncer block will bounce you higher than normal.

Storage Duct

Storage ducts are new storage blocks crafted with Tin Blocks and Ingots. While each duct only has 9 item slots, multiple ducts can be linked together into one unified container whose contents can be viewed and scrolled through all at once! Any number of Storage Ducts can be linked together, allowing you to have as many slots as you want.

In addition to their use in item storage, they can also prove useful in item transportation. Hoppers can collect items from any part of a duct pipeline, meaning that you can insert items into one end of the duct and then extract them instantly from the other end. As ducts can be built vertically, this can also be used to move items upwards with ease. And who knows, the block's mechanics may end up having many uses we haven't even thought about.

Splurter and Scatterer

These funny faces are upgrades to the dropper and dispenser respectively. They have a range respective to the signal strength and output more of their inventories at once. The splurter will drop its entire inventory on activation, whereas the scatterer will only empty one item per slot, as it's able to shoot projectiles like a dispenser. The scatterer also shoots its contents respective to the slot, so an arrow in the top left slot would be shot at that angle.

Resistor and Refractor

Two new Redstone components whose recipes incorporate Tin. The Redstone Resistor is the inverse of the Repeater; instead of strengthening the incoming signal, they weaken it by an amount that can be modified by moving the slider on its side. It's crafted identically to Repeaters, expect instead of Stone it uses Tin Ingots. Its design is meant to resemble a Faraday cage. While Comparators do have similiar capabilities, the Resistor has a useful compactness to it and are less useful for calculations.

The Redstone Refractor is a component crafted with Tin Ingots, Redstone Torches and a block of Amethyst. When powered by Redstone, it redirects the received signal randomly to one of its three outputs. The weight of each output can be modified by moving the corresponding torch. The weights range between 0-3, with a higher weight meaning that the signal has a higher change of exiting through that output. If the weight is set to 0, the Refractor will never choose that output.

Conclusion

While this is the majority of the update, there are more unannounced features, especially for Tin! The scope of the update will pertain mostly to polishing up what we've added, but there's still plenty you haven't seen to be excited about!

After this update releases, we still have a lot of plans in the pipeline, including more world generation, like cave biomes and structures!

Thanks for all the support over the years! Caverns & Chasms: Polished Up is available now as a 1.20.1 beta for patrons & supporters in our discord server!

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