Underwater Explosion Effects in Explosive Enhancement: Blast Wave, Shockwave, Bubbles, and Emissive Options
Explosive Enhancement gives underwater explosions their own dedicated set of visual effects, separate from the effects used on land. The Explosive Enhancement Config screen holds all of these controls, and the underwater options live together in a group labeled Underwater Explosions, described as underwater explosion options.
Turning Underwater Effects On or Off
The first setting in the group asks whether underwater blasts should get a special treatment at all. When it is switched off, an explosion that happens in water looks exactly the same as an explosion on land, following whatever you configured in the sections above it. When it is switched on, the explosion pulls from the settings inside the Underwater Explosions group instead. That means the underwater group only takes effect while this master toggle is active.
The Underwater Particle Types
Inside the group you can enable or disable individual particle effects:
- Shockwave Particle — described as an upright circle tinged with blue, comparable to the fireball particle.
- Underwater Blast Wave Particle — a wide, roughly blue horizontal ring, comparable to the regular blast wave particle.
- Bubbles — small bubbles that burst after a delay. A warning attached to this option notes that spawning too many bubbles can cause lag, so keep the count reasonable.
Each of these can be toggled on its own, so you can run a shockwave without bubbles, bubbles without a blast wave, or any other combination.
Emissive Underwater Explosions
A separate toggle, Emissive Underwater Explosions, controls whether underwater explosions glow. The matching land-based toggle, Emissive Explosions, does the same job for ordinary explosions. These two are independent, so you can make one type glow and leave the other flat.
Particle Visibility and Rendering
The config opens with a notice that the mod relies on particles, and that lowering your particle visibility setting may hide the enhanced explosion effect. A second line reports your current particle visibility value and recommends a particular value. If effects seem to be missing, check that setting first.
Always Show Particles is related: when enabled, explosion particles try to render from roughly twice the usual distance and also appear on lower particle settings. The description advises using it wisely, since it pushes rendering further than normal.
Dynamic Sizing for Underwater Blasts
The Dynamic Explosions group covers scaling an explosion's size according to its power, and it includes a dedicated Dynamic Underwater Explosion Sizing toggle for water blasts. Related options include Dynamic Explosion Sizing for normal blasts, Extra Power Overrides for adding or removing power based on explosion size, and separate Big Explosions Extra Power and Small Explosions Extra Power values.
Two more options affect small blasts: Attempt Better Small Explosions lowers the y coordinate of an explosion whose power equals one, such as a wither skull or ghast fireball, for what the description calls a sometimes better look, with Small Explosions Y Offset setting that offset. Single Player Truly Dynamic Explosions keeps accurate power-based scaling working in single-player worlds; it has no effect on multiplayer servers. Attempt Calculating Power From Knockback estimates an explosion's rough power from the knockback you personally received, and only functions if you were actually knocked back.
A note explains that perfect scaling on multiplayer servers is no longer achievable, and that on servers explosions are instead scaled between large and small based on how many vanilla particles would have appeared.
Operating the Interface
Everything above is changed through the config screen's toggles, sliders, and value fields. The mod's own hotkeys are handled through the controls menu: assign the corresponding hotkey there for any action you want bound, rather than relying on a preset key.