Gateways To Eternity

Overview

Gateways To Eternity introduces wave-based combat challenges to Minecraft through summoned arena events called Gateways. You craft a Gate Pearl for a specific gateway type, place it on the ground to summon the Gateway entity, and then fight through escalating waves of enemies. Each wave you survive drops rewards, and completing the entire gateway grants a final completion bonus that can include rare loot, experience, spawners, or even friendly animals.

The mod ships with seven built-in gateways ranging from beginner-friendly challenges to brutal endgame encounters. There are two gateway types: Normal gateways with a fixed number of waves, and Endless gateways that repeat indefinitely with increasing difficulty. Enemies in later waves receive stat modifiers like bonus health, armor, attack damage, and movement speed, so you need to be well-prepared before starting a gateway. You can browse all Gate Pearl recipes using the Recipes tab on this page.

Gateway Mechanics

Gateway Sizes

Gateways come in three sizes that affect their visual scale and collision box. Small gateways have a 1.0x scale with a 2x2 block hitbox. Medium gateways are 2.0x scale with a 4x4 hitbox. Large gateways are 2.5x scale with a 5.5x5.5 hitbox. The size is purely cosmetic and doesn't affect spawn range or difficulty, but larger gateways are visually more imposing and generally assigned to harder challenges.

Wave System

Each wave has a setup time (the delay before enemies spawn) and a max wave time (the timer for killing all enemies). Setup times range from 100 ticks (5 seconds) to 400 ticks (20 seconds), giving you breathing room between waves. Wave timers range from 600 ticks (30 seconds) to 2600 ticks (130 seconds) depending on the number of enemies. If you don't kill all enemies before the timer expires, the gateway fails.

Wave Modifiers

Later waves apply attribute modifiers to spawned enemies, making them significantly tougher. Common modifiers include bonus max health (up to +40%), additional armor points (up to +5), increased attack damage (up to +50%), knockback resistance, and movement speed boosts. Some advanced gateways also use special attributes like fire damage, arrow damage, life steal, armor shred, and protection shred from the Attributes library.

Gateway Rules

Each gateway has configurable rules that control its behavior. The default spawn range is 8 blocks, and the leash range is 32 blocks. Mobs get a +32 follow range attribute boost so they actively chase you. By default, mobs are removed on failure, discarding mobs is not allowed (you must kill them), and mobs cannot change dimensions. Some gateways override these defaults; for example, the Overworldian Nights gateway allows discarding entities.

Basic Gateways (Beginner)

The three basic gateways are small-sized encounters that focus on a single mob type. They have no failure penalties, making them safe to attempt without risking your base or inventory. These are ideal for learning how the gateway system works and for farming specific mob drops in bulk.

Blaze Gateway

The Blaze Gateway is a 5-wave challenge that spawns 3 Blazes in wave 1, scaling up to 7 Blazes by wave 5. Each wave rewards Blaze entity loot rolls (10 in wave 1 up to 25 in wave 4), and the final wave grants 500 experience points. Completing the entire gateway drops 75 additional Blaze loot rolls. By wave 5, Blazes have +35% health, +5 armor, +50% attack damage, and +20% knockback resistance, so bring fire resistance potions or a Shield.

Slime Gateway

The Slime Gateway runs 5 waves with Slimes that increase in size and power. Wave 1 starts with 3 medium Slimes (Size 1), while wave 2 introduces 3 large Slimes (Size 3). Waves 3 and 4 feature named mini-bosses: Acidic Slimes with armor shred and fire damage, and Magicbane Slimes with protection shred and cold damage. The final wave spawns a massive Huge Slime (Size 7) alongside Acidic and Magicbane variants. Completing the gateway awards 75 Slime loot rolls and 500 experience points.

Enderman Gateway

The Enderman Gateway is the best early-game Ender Pearl farm. It spawns 3-4 Endermen per wave across 5 waves, but with a twist: all Endermen have -20% movement speed, making them slower and easier to manage than their vanilla counterparts. The final wave introduces a Flaming Enderman mini-boss with fire resistance, +4 fire damage, and +8 bonus health. Completion rewards an enormous 100 Enderman loot rolls, making it excellent for stockpiling Ender Pearls.

Advanced Gateways (Mid-Game)

Advanced gateways are medium or large-sized encounters with multiple mob types, named mini-bosses with custom gear sets, and real failure penalties. These require solid combat gear, preparation, and strategy. The rewards scale to match the difficulty, offering loot table rolls, unique items, and utility summons.

Gateway of the Emerald Grove

The Emerald Grove is a medium-sized, nature-themed 4-wave gateway. It starts with 5 Zombies and progresses through Spider and mixed waves, with the final wave featuring a Necrotic Farmer (a Zombie Villager with a farmer profession and Iron gear set). Enemies have aggressive modifiers by wave 4: +40% health, +5 armor, +4 attack damage, +50% knockback resistance, and life steal. What makes this gateway unique is its rewards: instead of mob loot, you receive farming materials like Hay Blocks, Cactus, Sugar Cane, Bamboo, Carrots, Potatoes, Apples, and Saplings. The completion reward summons 6 Cows, 6 Chickens, 6 Sheep, and 6 Pigs, making it an instant livestock starter kit.

Gateway of Overworldian Nights

The Overworldian Nights is a medium-sized 4-wave gateway that throws every common Overworld hostile mob at you. Wave 1 spawns 5 Zombies, 3 Skeletons, 1 Spider, and 1 Creeper. By wave 2, Witches join the fight, and enemy counts climb to 19 mobs per wave. Wave 4 features 5 Undead Legionnaires (Zombies with Iron armor and Diamond weapons) alongside regular Skeletons, Creepers, and a Witch. The final wave modifiers are brutal: +25% health, +3 armor, +3 attack damage, +50% knockback resistance, armor piercing, and life steal.

This gateway is notable for being the only one with the 'allow discarding' rule enabled, meaning mobs can be removed without killing them (useful if a Creeper is about to explode near your base). Completing it grants 10 Dungeon Loot table rolls, which can include Enchanted Books, Saddles, Music Discs, and other rare dungeon chest items. Failure inflicts 20 seconds of Blindness on nearby players and summons 2 Witches.

Gateway of the Hellish Fortress (Endgame)

The Hellish Fortress is the hardest Normal gateway in the mod. It is a large-sized 4-wave encounter themed around Nether Fortress mobs, and it demands endgame gear to survive. Wave 1 starts with 5 Zombified Piglins and 3 Wither Skeletons. Wave 2 adds 3 Blazes to the mix and introduces fire damage modifiers. Wave 3 brings Withered Rangers (Wither Skeletons equipped with Chain armor and Bows with +20% arrow damage) alongside the regular forces. The final wave is anchored by the Butcher, a named Piglin Brute with terrifying stats.

The Butcher wears Gold armor, carries an Axe, and has +30 bonus health (on top of a Piglin Brute's base stats), 50% armor shred, 25% protection shred, +2.5 attack knockback, +25% knockback resistance, and 10% life steal. It is immune to zombification and heals itself as it hits you. Wave 4 also applies +25% health, +3 armor, +4 fire damage, +50% knockback resistance, and 10% life steal to all enemies, making every mob in the wave a serious threat.

The completion rewards make this brutal challenge worthwhile: 10 Nether Fortress loot table rolls (which include Diamonds, Horse Armor, Saddles, and Iron equipment) plus a Wither Skeleton Spawner. That Spawner alone makes the Hellish Fortress one of the most valuable gateways in the mod, since Wither Skeleton Spawners are unobtainable through normal gameplay and enable automated Wither Skull farming.

Failing the Hellish Fortress triggers a strength-4 explosion with fire and block damage (equivalent to a charged Creeper), plus 2 Blazes are summoned as punishment. Make absolutely sure you can handle this gateway before activating it.

Endless Gateways

Endless gateways are a fundamentally different challenge. Instead of a fixed number of waves, they repeat a base wave indefinitely with modifiers that stack as you progress. You can never truly "complete" an Endless gateway; instead, you survive as long as possible, earning rewards from each wave until you're eventually overwhelmed or choose to let the gateway fail.

Endless Blaze Gateway

The only built-in Endless gateway spawns a base wave of 3 Blazes with 10 Blaze loot rolls as a reward. It is medium-sized and uses the inward spiral spawn algorithm, which spawns mobs progressively closer to the gateway. Two modifier types stack as you progress: every 3 waves (up to 10 applications), 3 additional Blazes are added to the wave and the max wave time decreases by 40 ticks while setup time decreases by 10 ticks. Every 5 waves (up to 3 applications), all Blazes gain +15% max health.

This means by wave 30, you could be fighting 33 Blazes per wave with +45% bonus health, and the wave timer will be 400 ticks shorter than it started. The rewards scale too, with 10 additional Blaze loot rolls added every 3 waves. The Endless Blaze Gateway has no failure penalties and uses a nameplate boss display instead of the standard boss bar.

Reward Types

Gateways use several reward types that modpack authors and datapack creators can mix and match. Entity loot rewards roll a mob's loot table a specified number of times, giving you drops as if you killed that many mobs (with Looting effects if applicable). Stack rewards give specific items in set quantities, while stack list rewards randomly select from a pool of possible items. Loot table rewards roll from any Minecraft loot table, such as Dungeon chests or Nether Fortress chests. Experience rewards grant XP orbs, and summon rewards spawn entities (used for the Emerald Grove's animal spawns). There is also a chanced reward type that applies a probability to any other reward.

Rewards drop from the gateway entity itself as items, spawning with particle effects and sounds. If many items need to drop at once, they queue up and dispense at a rate of 3+ items every 4 ticks to avoid lag spikes. Wave rewards drop immediately when a wave is cleared, while completion rewards spawn with a special upward trajectory when the final wave ends.

Datapack Customization

One of Gateways To Eternity's greatest strengths is its data-driven design. Every gateway is defined as a JSON file in the 'data/gateways/gateways/' directory, which means modpack authors and players can create entirely custom gateways through datapacks without writing any code. You can define custom waves with any mob type, set entity counts and NBT data, configure attribute modifiers, assign gear sets, and define any combination of rewards and failure penalties.

Custom gateways automatically get their own Gate Pearl item with a colored name and full tooltip. The recipe system uses a custom serializer that embeds the gateway ID into the Gate Pearl's NBT, so you can create crafting recipes that produce Gate Pearls for any registered gateway. Spawn algorithms (open field or inward spiral), boss bar settings, and all gateway rules are configurable per gateway.