When Dungeons Arise: Finding the Mod's Dungeons
When Dungeons Arise is a large structure mod that scatters 30+ unique dungeons across your world for exploration and loot. This guide covers what it adds and how to find it.
What the mod adds
Rather than reworking vanilla structures, When Dungeons Arise generates its own imposing builds — palaces, coliseums, illager fleets, airships, bandit camps and more. Each is designed as an adventure with guarding foes and loot deep inside, so they play like set-piece raids.
Finding dungeons
The structures generate randomly and are spaced widely — most sit about one attempt per 45x45 to 50x50 chunk region, at least 40 chunks apart — so expect long expeditions between them. Traveling far, exploring new terrain and watching the horizon (some dungeons are tall towers or floating airships) is the way to find them.
Coming prepared
Because dungeons generate foes to keep you out until you are ready, treat each as a combat encounter: bring armor, weapons and food, and be careful raiding aerial structures where a fall is a real risk. The structures guide breaks down the notable dungeons by theme so you know what you are walking into.
What the mod is, mechanically
When Dungeons Arise adds 40 structures and nothing else — no items, no blocks, no recipes of its own. Everything you take out of one of its builds is vanilla loot or loot from whatever else is in your pack. That makes it a pure exploration mod: there is no tech tree to climb and no material to unlock, only places to find.
They are deliberately rare
Almost every structure sits at a spacing of 45 to 50 chunks with a separation of 40 to 45. In practical terms that is one structure per several thousand blocks, and two of the same kind will never be neighbours.
This is worth internalising before you go looking. At that spacing, wandering will not find them reliably — you want a horse or an elytra, a large render distance, and a habit of flying in straight lines rather than exploring in circles.
Surface, with one exception
The great majority generate in the surface-structures step, so they are visible from the air and are best hunted by flying rather than caving. The Foundry is the exception, generating underground at spacing 50, and the Giant Mushroom uses its own placement rules rather than the standard grid.
Preparing for a trip
Because the mod adds no gear, you arrive with whatever your pack already gave you. Bring what you would take to a vanilla woodland mansion: a full armour set, a bow, blocks for pillaring, and enough food for the travel rather than the fight. The buildings are large, and the walk to them is usually longer than the clear.