Where Spores Drift (Early Access)

[Vinter Nacht]

“Nature Alone Is Antique, And The Oldest Art A Mushroom” - Thomas Carlyle

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“Where Spores Drift” is a mushroom mod focused on growth and cultivation methods that are reality-inspired. Through it, you can start cultivating mushrooms using a bit of grass and the humble handbasket. From there, you’ll be able to explore a full range of mushroom cultivation options, including mushroom beds, logs, linen sacks, and other options. At every step, you’ll need to pasteurize or sterilize your tools, growth containers, and substrate materials to provide the perfect growing environment for your mushrooms. 

 

A Very Special Announcement

This mod is more than just another addition to the Aetherial Labs library. All of the beautiful art you all have been graced with has been the work of my wife, Huldra_Nacht. This mod represents her first foray into the coding side of things. She’s making incredible strides (at least when compared to my first (and continuing) fumbling steps, and that heralds a future with even more Aetherial Labs content coming your way.

 

Where We’re At In Development

0.2.0 (1.20) - Patron-Only Release

New Blocks -

• Mycelium Basket - A basket used for cultivating your mushrooms.  Created by interacting with a placed handbasket using an inoculated substrate.

 

New Items - 

• Inoculated Grass - Created by interacting with a mushroom using a handful of dry grass. Inoculated grass is one type of inoculated substrate.

 

At the time of the 0.2.0 release, the mod was still in its early stages of development. However, the mycelium basket has been introduced, and the tools necessary to use its core functionality are in place. You can collect spores from any mushroom using dry grass and use the resulting inoculated grass to convert a placed handbasket into a mycelium basket. You can then place three inoculated grass into the basket and water it using a watering can. 

 

When its moisture reaches 100%, it will begin growing. After the allotted time (seven in-game days for testing, it will be ~7 days for most mushroom types at the 1.0 release, modified by the DaysPerMonth setting.  On a 9-day month, it will take ~50 hours, or 2 days, 2 hours), you can harvest a crop of 3-10 mushrooms.  This value is currently entirely random; it will be influenced by how successfully you meet its growing conditions throughout its growth cycle in future releases. Presently, you cannot grow tree mushrooms.  Technically, the mushroom basket is fully capable of this. However, we have disabled this ability in anticipation of future development. 

 

There is an argument to be made that, in its current state, it's a fully functioning mod. While broadly true, there’s a long way to go to meet our vision. Due to this, the mod is only available for download by our patrons at the Unhallowed Host ($5) level and above. Public beta releases may occur when the mod is closer to our final vision.

 

What’s To Come

The next update will see the implementation of a few important features.

 - Pasteurization/Sterilization Processes: Safely growing mushrooms means ensuring your substrate is as free from contaminants as possible. Before collecting spores, you must sterilize your substrate through a new process.

 - Growth Requirements: We’ll begin fully implementing the growth processes intended for the final release. 

 - Moisture Loss: The growth container (Mycelium Basket) will further implement moisture loss. At first, this will be a flat rate, but in its final version, it will be climate-responsive.

 - Rain-sensitive: Baskets exposed to the open sky (including under leaves) will gain moisture during rainy periods, which can be detrimental to the successful cultivation of mushrooms.

 

 

 

Edited October 3, 2025 by Vinter Nacht

[Asreal]

Oh wow!

This is one of those mods I didn't know I needed, but this is really neat, And the showcase video is adorable

 

And there's a very good reason:

It's mushroom season!

Edited November 9, 2024 by Asreal

[Vinter Nacht]

Thank you!  This is my wife's first mod, and I'm incredibly proud of her progress.  There's a lot of work to be done yet, but the current patron-only release is stable and fully playable.  I'll post updates as the project comes along.  I'm excited to be a Husband, Wife, (and Wife...) modding team.

[Fishyman336]

Neat

[Vinter Nacht]

It's been a long time since I did a forum update on this.  I wanted to let everyone know it's still in production, and coming along nicely. We took a look at where we were and realized we needed to roll back to the beginning and start building from scratch.  Visually, the mod was beautiful, but there was an experience we wanted to produce that simply wasn't coming through with the original design.

Things are moving along well, a fully realized experience rather than a patched-together series of steps. I'm excited about what's coming... It may be a few weeks, or a couple of months...

But it's almost mushroom season.

[Vinter Nacht]

I'm just updating since it's been a couple of weeks. Progress continues to be made, but life keeps throwing roadblocks in the way of us making progress at the rate we want to.  The work continues, and things are looking promising for us completing the first growth cycle again soon.  A full breakdown of the changes and what's been happening will be coming along as soon as possible.

[Vinter Nacht]

Signs Of Life

The mod is far from abandoned.  Leaps and bounds are now being made in its progress, and it's much more than the experience that was had in the release we did above. All of the time and care taken to create this mod will be evident when it's completed.  While I will not give an ETA (because we see how well that worked) I will say that Huldra_Nacht has been elbow deep in mycelium and substrate working to bring this mushroom cultivation mod to you all.

I'll attempt to prioritize updating the initial post with more up to date information about the mod and where it's going.

Edited October 3, 2025 by Vinter Nacht