Ex Nihilo Reborn: Skyblock from Nothing

Skyblock’s favourite companion mod is back.

Ex Nihilo Reborn – Minecraft Skyblock, Resource Generation & Automation

The sieve. The barrel. The crucible. The hammer and the crook. The toolkit a whole generation of skyblock packs was built on is back, rebuilt from the ground up for Minecraft 26.3 on Fabric. It is the only Ex Nihilo on 26.3, and it brings its own Sky Island world type: install one mod, press Create World, and you are standing on one dirt block and a tree. No modpack needed. Everything you remember is here, it feels better than you remember, and there is a whole island of new things on top.

Website and full wiki: exnihiloreborn.vercel.app

Forge version coming soon. The Fabric version is out now.

Based on Fabricae Ex Nihilo by LordDeatHunter (MIT licence). Full credits and what is different are at the bottom of this page.

Minecraft Version and Compatibility

• Minecraft 26.3 with Fabric Loader and Fabric API
• Forge version coming soon
• Needed on both the client and the server
• Roughly Enough Items, JEI, Jade and Mod Menu supported out of the box
• Its own mod (id exnihiloreborn), not a drop-in replacement for other Ex Nihilo versions, so start a fresh world

One block of dirt. One tree. Nothing else as far as you can see. From there you sift, crush, compost and melt your way to every resource in the game.

• Crook leaves for extra saplings and silkworms. Silkworms infest leaves and turn them into string.
• Barrels compost plants into dirt, collect rain, and mix fluids and items into new blocks.
• Sieves with six meshes (string, flint, iron, gold, diamond, netherite) pull pebbles, seeds, ore pieces, gems and even pottery sherds out of dirt, gravel, sand and dust. Meshes take Efficiency and Fortune.
• Hammers crush cobblestone into gravel, sand and dust. Each one sifts into something different. Hammers and crooks take Unbreaking and Mending.
• Crucibles squeeze water from plants and melt stone into lava.
• Witch water, brine and strainers for the stranger parts of the tech tree.

This is not just a port. Reborn adds a world type, machines, trees, a mob and a long list of things that make sky life smoother.

• Sky Island world type, picked for you on the Create World screen: an empty world with one dirt block and one oak, and an empty Nether to build out into. Dedicated servers start on it too.
• Sieve drops on the tooltip. Hold Shift over any block to see what it sifts into. Hold a mesh as well to see only what that mesh can find. No recipe viewer needed.
• Sieves that feel right. Dust puffs and sounds while you sift, a hopper above can load them, and a chest or hopper underneath catches the drops.
• In-game guide book on first join, plus advancements for the whole progression.

• Hands-free machines in five tiers each, every tier faster than the last: an auto sieve (takes a mesh), an auto hammer (takes a hammer; better hammers and higher tiers crush faster) and a cobblestone generator with a progress bar. Hoppers feed and empty them, redstone pauses them, comparators read them.
• Bigger loads. Compressed cobblestone, gravel, sand, dirt and dust in ten tiers, and a sledgehammer that crushes three by three.

• The Rustler. A leaf bug that sometimes jumps out of leaves you break, steals a stack from your pockets and runs for the edge of the island. One hit stops it, and a scarecrow keeps them away. New players get a grace period first.

• Eight fruit trees (apple, banana, cherry, coconut, lemon, orange, peach, pear) that grow in the shape of the real tree. Fruit hangs under the leaves: pick it by hand, bone meal the leaves for more, and plant near flowers for a chance at a bee nest.
• Fruit you can eat, each with a small perk: bananas for speed, oranges for haste, lemons against nausea, coconuts like milk.
• A wandering trader worth waiting for. He sells what the sky cannot give, buys pebbles, ore pieces, silkworms and fruit, and brings two farm animals with him. Each visit he pays double for one thing he is short of. A trader’s bell sends for him later the same day.
• A crook that does more. Tug an animal toward you, or use it on a trunk to shake every ripe fruit down.
• Living reefs. Coral beside brine spreads fans and new coral, dead coral comes back to life, and a big enough brine pool fills with fish, squid, turtles and dolphins. Silkworms work as bait for saltwater fishing.
• Clay bucket and watering can for the early game before iron, and dripstone that drips into barrels the way it fills a cauldron.
• Craftable end portal frames, ore pieces that smelt into nuggets, compost that makes mycelium, podzol and moss, ancient debris from crushed blackstone, and zombies that turn into zombie villagers in witch water.

• Roughly Enough Items, JEI and Jade are supported out of the box, with recipe categories for every block and info pages for the new items.
• Mod Menu gets a full settings screen.
• Twelve modded metals (tin, lead, silver, nickel, zinc, aluminum, osmium, platinum, uranium, iridium, titanium, tungsten) switch on by themselves when a mod adds the metal, with ore pieces in the sieve tables.
• Other fruit mods. If another mod adds the same fruit, this mod’s trees grow that fruit instead.
• Modded blocks join in. Sieve and hammer inputs go by tags, so modded gravels, sands and dirts work without a patch.
• Servers. Dedicated servers start on the Sky Island by default, and the config reloads without a restart.

Reborn is built to be the base of a sky pack.

• Every sieve, hammer, crook, crucible and barrel recipe is a data pack JSON file.
• The big optional parts (Rustlers, fruit trees, the trader rework, machines) are built-in data packs: switch them per world on the Create World screen, or force them on or off for every new world in the config.
• Settings live in config/, and /exnihilo reload applies changes without a restart.
• An addon API: an exnihiloreborn:api entrypoint for new woods, meshes, ore pieces and seeds, and server events for when a block is sifted or leaves finish being infested.
• Recipe formats, tags, config and the API are documented in the modding guide.

•  

• Minecraft 26.3
• Fabric Loader and Fabric API (required)
• Forge: coming soon
• Optional, with support built in: Roughly Enough Items, JEI, Jade, Mod Menu
• Needed on both the client and the server

Where is the documentation?
On the website: exnihiloreborn.vercel.app. It has a step-by-step progression guide, every sieve drop for every mesh, every recipe and the machine speeds. All of it is generated from the mod’s own data, so the numbers match the game.

Can I use it in my modpack?
Yes, in any pack, public or private. The mod is MIT licensed and the licence text ships inside the jar.

Is there a Forge version?
It is coming soon. The Fabric version is out now.

Are there addons?
Ex Nihilo Fauna, fourteen creatures for sky worlds, is on the way. See the addons page.

Found a bug or have an idea?
Leave a comment on this page. The guide book, advancements and newer items are translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Russian and Chinese; everything else shows in English.

Running a server, making a pack or covering the mod?
Get in touch.

Credits and original mod

Ex Nihilo Reborn is a derivative work. It is a port and expansion of Fabricae Ex Nihilo by LordDeatHunter (source on GitHub, MIT licence), built from its Minecraft 1.21 version. Fabricae Ex Nihilo continues the Ex Nihilo line: the original Ex Nihilo by MikeLydeamore, the port by Jacky1356400, Ex Nihilo Creatio by BloodWorkXGaming (MIT licence) and the Fabric port by SirLyle, with textures by Wolforce and LEWeee. The silkworm, crook, hammer and mesh textures come from Ex Nihilo Creatio.

Ex Nihilo Reborn is MIT licensed as well, and the original MIT licence text with every copyright line ships inside the jar.

How Reborn differs from the original

• Minecraft version. Rebuilt for Minecraft 26.3: the code was moved to the current mappings and the renderers, recipes and data files were rewritten for the new formats.
• New content the original does not have. The Sky Island world type, auto sieves, auto hammers and cobblestone generators in five tiers, compressed blocks in ten tiers, the sledgehammer, eight fruit trees with edible fruit, the Rustler mob and scarecrow, the wandering trader rework and trader’s bell, living reefs and brine fishing, the clay bucket, the watering can, the guide book, advancements and sieve drops on the tooltip.
• Changed. Every sieve drop table was rewritten, the mesh ladder is string, flint, iron, gold, diamond, netherite, sieve and hammer inputs go by tags, and the big optional parts are built-in data packs.
• Removed. Dolls and their summoning recipes, crooks other than wooden and bone, the copper and emerald meshes, silt, the blood fluid, leaf sifting and waterlogged sieve tables.
• Mod support. JEI and Reliable Recipe Viewer support is new. Support for mods that are not on 26.3 (Tech Reborn, Modern Industrialization, Industrial Revolution, Mythic Metals, EMI, WTHIT) was dropped.
• Separate mod. Reborn has its own mod id (exnihiloreborn), so it is not a drop-in replacement and worlds from the original do not carry over.

Start Your Skyblock Journey

Ready to build a world from nothing?

Download Ex Nihilo Reborn, explore resource generation, experiment with sieving and processing, and develop automated systems to take your Minecraft world further.

If you enjoy Minecraft Skyblock, Ex Nihilo-style gameplay, resource generation, automation, and progression-based survival, give Ex Nihilo Reborn a try.

Download, play, and start creating your own world from the ground up!

Found a bug or have an idea for a new feature? Please leave feedback through the project’s available issue tracker or discussion channels.

Sponsored by MineBlocks

A friendly Minecraft Skyblock server: start with one tree and a chest, and grow the greatest island in the sky.

mineblocks.net  |  Join the Discord

Search topics: Ex Nihilo Reborn, Ex Nihilo Minecraft mod, Minecraft 26.3 mods, Fabric mods, Skyblock mod, Sky Island, resource generation, sieving, automatic sieve, automatic hammer, cobblestone generator, crucibles, Minecraft automation, Skyblock progression, Ex Nihilo alternative, Minecraft resource processing, Fabric Skyblock mod, technical Minecraft, Skyblock modpack.