Cisco's RPG Combat and Equipment: Apotheosis, Affixes, and Dodge

How combat works now

Better Combat — a mod that turns vanilla's single-button swing into animated combos — rewrites this pack's combat feel from the ground up. Every weapon now has its own range, its own swing angle, and its own combo chain. Pressing the same key repeatedly plays different animations in sequence, and the chain resets if you go idle for 3× the attack cooldown.

Three behaviors read straight from the pack's config directly affect your habits:

• Vanilla Sweeping is disabled, replaced by Better Combat's own sweep system. Damage drops based on how many enemies a single swing hits; the drop-off stops after 4 extra targets and caps at 50%. The Sweeping Edge enchantment gives back half of that penalty.
• You slow down while attacking. Your movement speed drops to 50% for the duration of the swing animation. If you want to hit-and-run, you have to finish the swing before you sprint away.
• You can't hit through walls. Target searching accounts for obstacles — the old trick of safely poking a spear through a doorway crack doesn't work in this pack.

If you equip a weapon in each hand (dual wielding) your attack speed increases by 20%, but the damage multiplier stays at 1.0 in both hands — so you gain extra tempo, not extra damage.

Dodge: the key to survival

Combat Roll — a mod that adds a sideways dodge roll to slip out of an attack — is bound to the R key in this pack. The roll lasts 8 ticks, or 0.4 seconds, and can be used once every 4 seconds. It barely touches your hunger bar: each roll costs 0.1 exhaustion, so it won't cause food trouble.

There are three situations where rolling doesn't work, all disabled in the pack's own config. Knowing them puts an end to "I pressed the key and nothing happened" moments:

• You can't roll while airborne. There's no escape move while you're falling off a cliff.
• You can't roll until your weapon's attack cooldown is full. This is the rule people trip on most: if you hit and try to immediately roll away, the key won't respond. Finish the swing, let the bar fill, then roll.
• You can't jump while rolling. The jump key is dead until the roll finishes.

Apotheosis: why gear is randomized

Apotheosis — the mod that adds randomized properties, socketed gems, and a new enchantment economy to gear — is the heart of this pack. Two more add-ons are installed alongside it: Apotheotic Additions and Apothic Curios — the latter extends the affix system to Curios slots, meaning extra equipment slots like rings, necklaces, and capes. Together, the three define 225 affixes and 68 socket gems in the pack.

To sum up the system in one sentence: every item you find has a rarity, rarity determines how many traits it gets, and the traits themselves are chosen at random. That's why there's no fixed answer to "what's the best sword" in this pack — a good sword is one whose affixes happen to match your playstyle.

Where does affixed gear come from? According to the pack's own settings:

• 7.5% of naturally spawned mobs carry an affixed item (drops when killed).
• 35% of items in vanilla chests, and 30% of items in modded chests, turn into affixed gear.
• Socket gems have a 4.5% chance to drop from mobs; bosses add another 33% on top of that.

The six rarity tiers

Rarity isn't just a color — it's <strong>the number that decides how many traits you get</strong>. The table below was calculated straight from the game's own rarity definitions: the "avg." columns show how many traits an item at that tier carries on average.

The six rarity tiers — drop chance, average trait count, and salvage material

Rarity	Drop chance	Avg. numeric trait	Avg. ability	Avg. socket	Salvage material
Common	40%	1.25	0	0	Mysterious Scrap Metal
Uncommon	32%	2.45	0	0.65	Timeworn Fabric
Rare	15%	3	1.33	1.5	Luminous Crystal Shard
Epic	9%	3.5	1.65	2.5	Arcane Sands
Mythic	4%	4	2.3	2.5	Godforged Pearl
Ancient	—	5	3.2	3.2	Manifestation of Infinity

Three practical takeaways come out of this table:

• There's no ability affix below Uncommon. A green item only grants numbers, it doesn't change behavior.
• Sockets become meaningful at rare. An average of 1.5 sockets means that's where you can start socketing gems.
• Ancient has zero drop chance. Don't look for that tier in loot.

What an affix is

An affix is a random property added to an item, and it shows up in the item's name. A word at the start of the name is one affix (Vampiric Iron Sword), an "of …" pattern at the end is another (Iron Sword of Bloodletting). The longer an item's name, the more traits it carries.

Affixes fall into four types, and which ones you can get depends on what you're wearing — a sword affix won't show up on armor.

The table's total is 222; the remaining 3 affixes aren't tied to any equipment type and can appear on anything. One is especially worth knowing: the Socket affix, whose name doesn't show but which opens a socket on the item (Durable grants durability, Telepathic sends what you break straight to your inventory).

The vast majority of these 225 affixes grant numbers: damage, armor, speed, chance. The genuinely fun ones are the 12 special affixes that change behavior — these don't inflate a number, they change what your weapon does.

Gems and sockets

A gem (socket stone) is a stone slotted into an item's socket that grants it a permanent bonus. Unlike an affix, a gem is your choice: you decide which stone goes into which item. The pack defines 68 different stones, and each has its own rarity.

The prefix in a gem's name tells you its rarity:

The same gem grants a different-sized bonus at different rarities. Most gems also grant a different bonus depending on what they're socketed into — for example, a gem might grant damage on a sword, durability on armor, and something else on a ring. So read the in-game "When Socketed in…" lines before you socket a gem.

1. Find a socket. Items rare and above are born with sockets. You can add up to 3 sockets to an item that doesn't have one, with a Sigil of Socketing.
2. Socket the gem. At a Smithing Table: item on the left, gem on the right. No other station needed.
3. Removing it is expensive. Vial of Arcane Extraction saves the gem, destroys the item. Vial of Searing Expulsion saves the item, destroys the gem. You have to choose.

Reforging and the material loop

Reforging wipes an item's affixes and rolls new ones at random. Rarity doesn't change — a mythic item stays mythic — but its traits are completely refreshed. It's the only way to salvage a good item that rolled bad affixes.

There are two stations. The Simple Reforging Table is cheap (iron ingot + Gem Dust + Enchanting Table + smooth stone) and can be built early. The Reforging Table needs netherite ingot + Arcane Sands + nether brick on top of that.

Both stations have an upper rarity limit they can process, and that limit is written on the block in-game as "<em>Max Rarity</em>" — check it before you build.

The "rarity material" in the cost table is the material tied to the rarity of the item you're processing — Godforged Pearl for a mythic item, Luminous Crystal Shard for a rare one. These materials can't be bought; you get them by <strong>breaking down your old items</strong>. The whole system is a closed loop:

1. Salvaging Table — don't throw away items with useless affixes, break them down into rarity material here instead. A mythic item yields 1-4 Godforged Pearl.
2. Gem Dust — drop a gem you don't want on the ground and drop an anvil on top of it. The crushed gem becomes Gem Dust. (Yes, it's not a recipe — it's done by dropping a block.)
3. Gem Cutting Table — upgrades a gem to the next rarity tier using Gem Dust and rarity material. This is the only practical way to reach the ancient tier.
4. Reforging Table — spend accumulated material and dust to re-roll your item's affixes. If you don't like the result, do it again; the only limit is your supply.

The Enchanting Table has changed

Apotheosis also changes vanilla's enchanting system, and this is one of the things that surprises new players the most. <strong>The Enchanting Table can now go past level 30</strong>, and some enchantments only appear above 30. What you place around the table is no longer just a bookshelf count either — there are <strong>four separate stats</strong>:

• Eterna — the enchantment level you can reach. The equivalent of vanilla's "bookshelf count".
• Quanta — how much the result varies. High quanta widens the odds of both a very good and a very bad outcome.
• Arcana — the tendency for rare enchantments to appear.
• Rectification — biases quanta's variance toward the good side. High quanta + high rectification is the combination you want.

Values for shelves you can place around the Enchanting Table (selection)

Block	Eterna	Quanta %	Arcana %
Draconic Endshelf	10	0	0
Echoing Sculkshelf	5	5	15
Pearlescent Endshelf	5	7.5	7.5
Soul-Touched Sculkshelf	5	15	5
Blazing Hellshelf	4	5	0
Heart-Forged Seashelf	3	0	10
Endshelf	2.5	5	5
Deepshelf	2.5	5	5
Hellshelf	1.5	3	0
Seashelf	1.5	0	2
Beeshelf	-15	100	0
Stoneshelf	-1.5	0	-7.5

If you'd also like a refresher on Minecraft's own mechanics, our Minecraft: Redstone 101 guide covers the vanilla side.

The <strong>Beeshelf</strong> row in the table isn't a joke: it lowers eterna while sending quanta through the roof — meant for players who want extremely risky low-level enchanting. <strong>Stoneshelf</strong>, on the other hand, lowers Eterna and Arcana (doesn't touch Quanta) — remove it from your setup if it's there by mistake.

The caps have also been raised. The 30 vanilla enchantments below can now go far past their vanilla maximum levels:

Weapon types

Simply Swords — a mod that adds medieval weapon variety — brings 15 different weapon types to the pack. Each type can be forged in iron/diamond/netherite, and there are also 46 named weapons found in the world. The difference between types isn't cosmetic: range, how many hands it takes, and combo length all change.

Simply Swords's 15 weapon types — range is in blocks; for comparison, the vanilla sword is 2.5 blocks with a 3-step combo

Weapon type	Range (blocks)	Hand	Combo steps	What it's for
Sai	1.8	One-handed	1	The shortest range, the fastest one-handed option. Pairs with a shield or a second weapon.
Cutlass	2.5	One-handed	4	Short range but a four-step combo. One-handed, good in a crowd.
Warglaive	2.6	One-handed	3	Designed to be dual-wielded; equipping one in each hand increases your attack speed.
Rapier	2.75	One-handed	2	A piercing, two-step weapon. One-handed and fast.
Katana	2.9	Two-handed	4	A four-step combo — one of the longest chains in the pack. Two-handed.
Longsword	2.9	One-handed	3	A bit longer than the vanilla sword, one-handed. The easiest weapon to transition to.
Twinblade	3	Two-handed	3	Sharp on both ends; performs a wide horizontal sweep.
Spear	3.1	One-handed	1	A single, long, direct forward thrust. Suited to a single target, not a crowd.
Glaive	3.25	Two-handed	3	Swings on a vertical plane — hits enemies above and below you too.
Claymore	3.5	Two-handed	3	A wide horizontal swing, three steps. Clears crowds.
Greataxe	3.5	Two-handed	3	Same range as the Claymore, a heavier blow.
Greathammer	3.5	Two-handed	3	The heavy weapon class; gets Apotheosis's heavy-weapon affixes.
Scythe	3.5	Two-handed	2	A 150-degree horizontal sweep. For when you're surrounded.
Halberd	4	Two-handed	4	The longest melee range plus a four-step combo. Slow but safe.
Chakram	5	One-handed	3	A thrown ring; the highest range value on the list, but it doesn't behave like a melee weapon.

The one rule when choosing: <strong>range is survival.</strong> Someone hitting from 4 blocks away with a Halberd takes far less damage than someone hitting from 1.8 blocks with a Sai. Short weapons, on the other hand, are fast and can be dual-wielded.

Boss weapons and armor sets

Besides Simply Swords, there are three more sources in the pack, and their items connect to the affix system in different ways.

L_Ender's Cataclysm

L_Ender's Cataclysm — a mod that adds massive bosses and the unique items they drop — brings 129 items to the pack. Most of these are 3D-modeled boss rewards with their own unique abilities. The creator, Cisco, manually linked six of them to Apotheosis affix families — meaning these six items can be reforged and get affixes:

Cataclysm items not on this list are still powerful, but they're not part of the affix system; what you see on them is the item's own fixed ability.

Celestisynth and Knight Quest

Celestisynth adds 7 'celestial' weapons with special right-click abilities. These are crafted, not looted; their materials (Lunar Scrap, Starstruck Feather, Celestial Core) are gathered from specific enemies.

Knight Quest [Reforged] adds 37 complete armor sets (all four pieces) to the pack, plus single-piece cosmetic tunics. Most sets come from a specific enemy or structure and carry a set bonus; wearing all four pieces together is different from wearing them separately.

Simply Swords also has its own socket system, and it shouldn't be confused with Apotheosis's. The mod's named weapons have "empty rune socket" and "empty nether socket" slots, which take a Runefused Gem and a Netherfused Gem respectively. Apotheosis gems don't fit into these slots, and the reverse isn't true either.

Armor and durability

In this pack, mobs gain unlimited levels the further you get from spawn, and the damage they deal grows accordingly. Two small mods keep this from instantly destroying your gear.

Armor Damage Limit — caps the durability damage a single hit can deal to armor. In this pack, that cap is 20%: one hit can take away at most a fifth of a piece of armor's total durability. So even after the hardest boss hit, your armor is still on you — it'll just need repairing.

AttributeFix — the mod that manages Minecraft's attribute caps. In vanilla, a player's health can be at most 1024 and armor at most 200; once affixes and gems stack up, you hit these caps and the excess is silently ignored. The pack has raised five caps:

The practical meaning: there's no point where stacking health and armor stops helping. However many armor affixes you collect, they all count. The remaining 274 attributes are left at their default limits, so you can still hit a cap on values like speed or attack speed.

What doesn't work in this pack

Not everything written in mod wikis holds true in this pack. The creator didn't delete some enchantments but made them unobtainable — they're still registered in the game and would even work if you somehow got your hands on one, but you'll never find them through normal means. Seven entries in the pack's config deviate from default:

So there's no need to look for the Dodge enchantment; rolling is already on the R key, coming from the Combat Roll mod. Aftershock is also searched for often because it's mentioned in wikis, but it's unobtainable in this pack.

On top of these, three more things don't work, or don't work the way you'd expect:

• Three gems are disabled: the Tyrannical Gem, the Gem of the Royal Family, and the Purity Gem. The Aether Gem also only drops at mythic and above.
• Ancient items don't drop from loot — the drop weight is zero, and the Reforging Table has no recipe for this tier.
• Vanilla Sweeping is disabled. Instead of the classic "mow everyone down in one swing" behavior, Better Combat's own falling-damage sweep is active.

Next part: Magic System

Frequently asked questions

Why do random properties show up on my gear?

Because of the Apotheosis mod's affix (random property added to gear) system. About a third of items from chests, and 7.5% of naturally spawned mobs, carry an affixed item. The same iron sword can be garbage or an end-game weapon depending on its affixes.

What is reforging, and how do you do it?

Reforging wipes an item's affixes and rolls new ones at random — rarity stays the same, traits change. You start by building a Simple Reforging Table (iron + Gem Dust + Enchanting Table + smooth stone). The cost depends on rarity: a mythic item needs 2 Godforged Pearl + 5 Gem Dust + 50 XP levels.

How do you socket a gem, and can you remove it later?

A gem is socketed at a Smithing Table: item on the left, gem on the right. Removing it works one of two ways, and both destroy something — the Vial of Arcane Extraction saves the gem but destroys the item, the Vial of Searing Expulsion saves the item but destroys the gem. So don't socket an expensive gem into a cheap item.

My item has no socket — can I add one later?

Yes — a Sigil of Socketing (8 Gem Dust + dragon breath + lodestone + amethyst shard) adds a socket to an item, but you can open at most 3 sockets this way. Given that an ancient item is born with an average of 3.2 sockets already, adding them later is mostly a way to salvage mid-tier gear.

How does dodging work, and why does it sometimes not trigger?

You roll with the R key; the move lasts 0.4 seconds and can be used once every 4 seconds. There are three situations where it won't trigger, all disabled in the pack's config: while airborne, before your weapon's attack cooldown is full, and while trying to jump during a roll. So it's used while grounded and between hits, not while jumping.

I saw something higher than Sharpness V — is that normal?

Yes. Apotheosis raises vanilla's enchantment caps: in this pack you can go up to Sharpness IX, Protection VIII, Feather Falling XI, Efficiency IX, and Fortune VIII. The Enchanting Table can also go past level 30; some enchantments only appear above 30 in the first place.

I can't find the Dodge and Aftershock enchantments anywhere.

You won't — the pack made them unobtainable on purpose. Dodge, Aftershock, Eternal, Frost Heart, and Rebounding are still registered in the game but don't appear at the Enchanting Table, their books don't drop in loot, and villagers don't sell them. These are the enchantments people search for in vain because they're written up in wikis.

How do you find an ancient item?

You can't find one from random loot: the ancient tier's drop weight is zero, and no dimension's rarity range goes above mythic. The Reforging Table also has no recipe for this tier. In practice, ancient is a tier you only reach by upgrading a gem at the Gem Cutting Table.

Why doesn't my armor break in one hit?

The Armor Damage Limit mod steps in: a single hit can take at most 20% of your armor's total durability. Since mobs in this pack gain unlimited levels based on distance, without this protection a single boss hit could destroy a full set of armor. So your armor wears down, but it doesn't vanish in an instant.

We're a group of three — how should we split up gear?

Rarity materials and Gem Dust should be treated as a shared resource; if all three of you reforge separately, no one accumulates enough to fix a mythic item. A practical split: have one person handle the Salvaging Table and turn useless affixed items into material, one person upgrade gems at the Gem Cutting Table, and a third run the Reforging Table. Split weapon types too — have one of you go long-range (Halberd, Glaive), one fast one-handed (Rapier, Cutlass).

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