Nether World, Nether Realm – however you put it, The Nether still sounds like a bum euphemism. Step forward The Aether, an alternative alternate dimension to put Mojang’s to shame.
The Aether is a “hostile paradise”, made up of floating sky islands and populated by oddities both sentient and static. All you’ll need to get there is enough of glowstone to make a portal – found exclusively in The Nether, funnily enough – and a bucket of water.
After months of work, the Aether team have just released its second iteration, and it sounds quite ambitious. An entirely new dimension is accompanied by new items, mobs, music, dungeons, blocks, and a party system. The party system eases grouping with friends, thanks to an overlay UI which details the health, hunger, armour and wealth of your companions. Players can name their own party, and recruit up to nine others.
“Our goal is to rework the Aether to be the best experience it can be in a multiplayer context and to improve on where we fell short previously,” say the team. “We haven’t added all the features we want to yet, but we will definitely be working on more content updates in the future.”
The Aether 2 is in alpha (when is a mod not?) and runs exclusively in Minecraft 1.5.1. It also requires the installation of three mod-enabling tools: Forge, Player API and Player Render API(direct links).
For details instructions on that, see the Minecraft Forum. To donate to the team – project lead Kingbdogz, coders Jaryt and Saspiron, artists Dark and Oscar Payn, musician Emile van Krieken, and lore writer Liberty – head to theofficial Aether site.
Have you played around in the Aether before? What did you think?