YUNG's Better Desert Temples

Overview

YUNG's Better Desert Temples replaces every vanilla Desert Pyramid with a sprawling, multi-floor dungeon. Instead of dropping into a single room with four Chests and a TNT trap, you now enter a full-scale temple with two distinct layers: a puzzle floor on top and a loot-filled labyrinth below. Each temple is procedurally assembled from dozens of room templates, so no two temples are ever identical.

The mod does not add new items, blocks, or crafting recipes. What it adds is an entirely new gameplay experience built from vanilla Minecraft mechanics: Redstone puzzles, Husk spawners in Sarcophagi, parkour sections, hidden traps, and a boss fight against the Pharaoh. Mining Fatigue prevents you from simply digging through walls, forcing you to engage with the temple on its own terms. Once you defeat the Pharaoh, the Mining Fatigue lifts permanently for that temple.

Temple Structure

Every Better Desert Temple is divided into two main layers, each with a distinct purpose. Understanding this layout is key to clearing temples efficiently.

Upper Floor: The Puzzle Layer

The upper floor spans two levels connected by stairways in the four corners. Scattered throughout are Sarcophagi containing Husk spawners. These are the only mob spawners on this floor; darkness alone won't cause hostile spawns. Light up or destroy the Sarcophagi as you explore to keep the area safe. The three puzzle stations are spread across this floor, each marked by an unlit Campfire that ignites when solved.

Lower Floor: The Labyrinth

Once all three puzzles are solved, Sticky Pistons retract to open the way down. The lower level focuses on exploration, looting, and survival. You'll encounter parkour sections over Magma Blocks, Cobweb-filled library rooms, tripwire-activated traps, and various spawner rooms featuring Skeletons, Slimes, and more Husks. The rooms are randomly assembled from a large pool of templates, so each temple offers a unique layout. The labyrinth eventually leads to the Throne Room where the Pharaoh waits.

All Six Puzzle Types

Each temple randomly selects three puzzles from six possible types. Learning to recognize and solve each one quickly will make temple runs much smoother. Getting a puzzle wrong usually triggers a punishment: mobs dropping from the ceiling, Sand avalanches, or Splash Potions.

The Maze Puzzle

A grid of Pressure Plates laid out in a maze pattern. You need to walk across every Pressure Plate in the correct order, following the path from start to finish without skipping any. Crouch-walking is recommended so you don't accidentally step on the wrong plate. Watch for Tripwire Hooks with String stretched across the path. If you trip the wire, trap doors open and drop Splash Potions on you. Break the Tripwire Hooks (not the String) before starting to disable these traps safely.

The Sword Puzzle

Four named Swords sit in Item Frames, each numbered 1 through 4. A set of clues tells you which number should "point at" which other number, for example "4 goes to 3" or "1 goes to 4". You need to rotate each Sword in its Item Frame so it physically points toward the correct numbered Sword. Right-click the Item Frames to rotate them. Once all four are correctly oriented, press the Button to confirm. A wrong answer spawns hostile mobs from above, but you can try again immediately.

The Banner Puzzle

Four Buttons sit below a display of colored Banners. You must deduce the correct Button from the Banner pattern. There are three known Banner variations. With yellow foreground on black background Banners, the correct Button depends on which outer Banners are displayed. With blue and yellow Banners, the answer is typically bottom-right. If you can't figure out the logic, you can simply try each Button, deal with any mobs that spawn from wrong answers, and eventually hit the right one.

The Lights Out Puzzle

A row of Redstone Lamps with Pressure Plates in front of them. Stepping on a Pressure Plate toggles that lamp and its neighbors. Center plates toggle three lamps; edge plates toggle two. The goal is to turn all lamps off. This is a classic "Lights Out" logic puzzle. Start from one end and work across systematically. Each temple generates a solvable configuration.

The Arrow Target Puzzles

There are two variants of the bow puzzle. In the first, stepping on a Pressure Plate causes a lit indicator to pulse across a row of lamps. You must shoot the Target Block when all lamps are lit simultaneously. You get two pulse cycles to make the shot, so timing and a small amount of arrow lead are key. In the second variant, three Target Blocks pop in and out of view. You need to hit all three while standing on the Pressure Plate. Both variants provide a Bow and Arrows in a nearby Chest, though bringing your own Bow is recommended if you're more comfortable with its draw speed.

The Lectern Puzzle

Several Lecterns hold Books, each open to page 1. The page displays a grid with dots in various positions. The number of dots on each page tells you which page number that Lectern's Book should be turned to. For example, if a Book shows three dots, turn it to page 3. This puzzle uses vanilla Redstone mechanics: different Lectern page numbers output different Redstone signal strengths, and the correct combination completes the circuit.

The Pharaoh Boss

At the bottom of the labyrinth sits the Throne Room, home to the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh is a heavily buffed Husk wearing a custom Pharaoh Head (a Player Head with a unique texture). It functions as a standard Husk in terms of attack behavior, meaning it inflicts Hunger on hit, but has significantly more health than a regular Husk.

Defeating the Pharaoh is the key to clearing the temple. When the Pharaoh dies, all players currently inside the temple have their Mining Fatigue removed, a beacon deactivation sound plays, and the temple is permanently marked as cleared in the world save data. This means you can return later to mine blocks, collect building materials, or repurpose the structure as a base without ever being affected by Mining Fatigue again.

Loot and Rewards

Better Desert Temples offer substantially more loot than vanilla pyramids. Loot is distributed across multiple room types throughout both floors, with different rooms offering different categories of items.

Armory Rooms

Armory rooms contain Armor Stands with randomized equipment and Item Frames displaying weapons. Armor Stands have a 30% chance to wear Chainmail armor and a 20% chance for Gold armor in each slot, with a 50% chance of any given slot being empty. Item Frames in armories can contain Stone Swords (5%), Golden Swords (10%), Stone Axes (5%), Golden Axes (10%), Shields (10%), Bows (10%), Arrows (5%), or Name Tags (5%), with a 40% chance of being empty.

Wardrobe Rooms

Wardrobe rooms also feature Armor Stands, but with different probabilities. These have a 40% chance for Leather armor and a 20% chance for Chainmail armor in each slot. These rooms are less valuable than armories but still worth checking for Chainmail pieces, which are otherwise unobtainable through crafting.

Food Storage Rooms

Food storage areas contain Item Frames with consumables and farming supplies. You'll find Bread (20%), Potatoes (20%), Honey Bottles (10%), Cookies (10%), Cake (10%), Slime Balls (5%), various Seeds (2.5% each for Beetroot, Wheat, Melon, and Pumpkin), and rarely a Rabbit Foot (1%). These are useful for restocking mid-dungeon, especially the Bread and Potatoes.

Other Loot

Throughout both floors you'll find standard Chest loot that varies depending on your modpack's loot table configuration. The labyrinth also contains blocks of Raw Gold, Iron Bars, Wool, and various other building materials that become freely harvestable once you defeat the Pharaoh and the Mining Fatigue lifts.

Mining Fatigue Mechanics

The Mining Fatigue system is central to how Better Desert Temples work, so it's worth understanding the details. The effect is Mining Fatigue III (amplifier level 2) applied for 30 seconds (600 ticks). The mod checks your position every 5 seconds (100 ticks) while you're in Survival mode, and if you're inside an uncleared temple, the effect is refreshed. This means you cannot simply wait it out while standing inside.

The effect triggers with the Elder Guardian curse sound, the same eerie noise you hear near Ocean Monuments. Once you leave the temple's boundaries, the effect will naturally expire after its 30-second duration and won't be reapplied. The temple tracks its cleared state persistently in the world save, so clearing a temple by killing the Pharaoh is permanent across play sessions.

Configuration

The mod's config file is located at betterdeserttemples-forge-1_21.toml in your config folder. There are two main settings to be aware of.

The Disable Vanilla Pyramids setting (default: true) controls whether vanilla Desert Pyramids are removed from world generation. With this enabled, only Better Desert Temples will generate. Setting it to false would let both structure types coexist, though this is not recommended as it can cause spacing and generation conflicts.

The Apply Mining Fatigue setting (default: true) controls whether players receive Mining Fatigue inside uncleared temples. Disabling this removes the anti-cheese mechanic entirely, letting you mine through walls freely. This is useful if you want to repurpose temples as bases without needing to clear them first, but it removes much of the intended challenge.

Additionally, the mod creates JSON configuration files in the config/betterdeserttemples/ directory that let you customize the probability distributions for armor on Armor Stands and items in Item Frames. Each file uses an ItemRandomizer format where you specify items and their spawn probabilities. The total probability should not exceed 1.0, with any remaining probability assigned to a default item (typically Air, meaning nothing spawns).

Compatibility Notes

Better Desert Temples requires YUNG's API as a dependency, which handles the structure template system and item randomization used by the mod. It works with both Forge and Fabric mod loaders. Since this mod replaces vanilla structure generation, it is compatible with virtually any mod that doesn't also modify Desert Pyramids. Other YUNG's Better mods (Better Mineshafts, Better Strongholds, Better Dungeons, etc.) are fully compatible and designed to work together.

Mods that add custom worldgen features like AE2 Meteors or large ore veins can occasionally intersect with a temple's structure, damaging rooms or removing puzzle components. This is a natural consequence of worldgen order and isn't a bug. In most cases, the temple remains functional even with minor damage.