Ice Maze (Deep Frozen Ocean)

Nearly everything in Aquamirae happens inside the Ice Maze, so it’s the first thing you’ll want to find once the mod is installed. It’s a frozen labyrinth of ice walls and drowned canyons, with pirate wreckage scattered through it. Almost every item the mod adds can be found in there somewhere.

What catches most players out is that it isn’t a new biome you need to go hunting for. Aquamirae rewrites the vanilla Deep Frozen Ocean instead, so any Deep Frozen Ocean in your world simply transforms into the Ice Maze.

White ash drifts over dark water, and every corridor might be hiding a pack of hostile Maw. It’s cold enough to kill you in the water too, that’s the part which catches people out in seconds.

Generation

The Ice Maze generates in the Overworld, and it’s built by patching the Deep Frozen Ocean rather than by adding a biome of its own. That biome’s temperature is forced down to -1.0, a canyon carver is added to it, and the mob spawns are swapped over to Aquamirae’s creatures. Particles and ambient sound get replaced as well.

Your debug screen and the locate command will still read Deep Frozen Ocean, because underneath it still is one. The command below finds the nearest, and it’s the fastest way in by a long way. Otherwise, hop in a Boat and explore, the unique terrain of the Ice Maze should come into view soon enough.

One thing to watch for is that the Ice Maze advancement can also trigger in a Deep Cold Ocean. That’s a separate biome and it gets none of this treatment. If you arrive somewhere that looks like an ordinary cold ocean with no walls, you’re in the wrong place, so keep traveling.

Because the biome sits at -1.0 the surface ices over, but the deep water below stays open. That’s what lets the canyons work as a second maze underneath the first one, and you’ll be able to dive straight down from the surface in most places. A distant ship horn will play at random while you’re in the maze, which doesn’t mean anything is coming.

Features

Walls of Packed Ice, Blue Ice and Snow rise out of the ocean and break the surface up into corridors, which is where the maze gets its name. They’re built in 2 layers, a lower one reaching about 5 blocks and a taller one that can go up to 14. The biggest of them will stand well over your head and block your line of sight completely.

Structures tend to sit tightly inside a single maze, so one landmark usually means several more are close by. Wisteria Niveis, a rare pink-flowered plant, grows through the ice, and clusters of Oxyhelium can be found on packed and blue ice. Both are worth stopping for, you’ll want them later.

Layered Packed Ice and Blue Ice capped with Snow, which will funnel you into dead ends. Climbing one to look at the layout is usually faster than walking the corridors, and it’s the easiest way to spot a Camp, Outpost, or a Ship from a distance. These are also the blocks the Maze Mother smashes through when she’s hunting you, so a wall between you and her buys you nothing.

Wide canyons are cut through the ocean floor by the mod’s own carver, and they make up the underwater half of the maze. Most of the loot and all of the dangerous creatures are down there. They’re dark and disorienting, and you might easily lose track of which way is back up, so it’s worth marking your entry point with a block, and some Sea Lanterns.

Small camps sit on snow platforms with a lit Campfire, some benches and a few Barrels. They’re the easiest loot in the maze by a distance, and they’re the one place where food can be picked up reliably before a dive. Each Barrel rolls its contents between 1 and 4 times, and a Pirate Pouch might turn up in one.

Sweeping arches and spiral towers of ice are generated all over the maze as natural sculptures. Golden Moths flutter around the arches in small groups, and they won’t be found anywhere else, so this is where to look if you want a Golden Moth Jar. They also make the best landmarks in an area that otherwise looks identical in every direction.

4 built structures generate in the maze as well, all of them pirate wreckage of one kind or another. Each has its own page with the full loot tables. The Frozen Chest isn’t in this list, as it isn’t a structure, it’s a locked block that sits inside the Pirate Shelter.

The Pirate Ship is the one you’ll want to prioritize. Its captain drops the Shell Horn, and that’s what summons the Ghost of Captain Cornelia. The Pirate Shelter is the deepest and most dangerous of the 4, since both the Eel and the Frozen Chest are kept down there.

Mobs

Aquamirae replaces the ocean’s usual spawns rather than adding to them, so you won’t be seeing Drowned or Squid down here. The Maw is what you’ll meet first and most often. It spawns in packs of 2 to 4 at a spawn weight of 400, which is why they can feel like they’re everywhere. The Anglerfish is far rarer at a weight of 10.

The Maze Mother is the nastiest surprise in the maze, and the way she turns up is worth being clear about. Every time an Anglerfish spawns naturally there’s a 1% roll. If it passes, a Maze Mother is spawned at the same spot. She doesn’t replace the Anglerfish, she’s added alongside it, so you might end up fighting both at once.

A few things in the maze never spawn in open water at all. Tortured Souls, the Eel and the armed maze pillagers can only be found inside the pirate structures. The Shipbreaker isn’t a mob in the normal sense either, it’s a roaming world event that passes through on a timer of roughly 30 minutes. Each of those has its own page.

Resources

The Ice Maze is really a resource run dressed up as a dungeon. Barrels in the survivor camps will cover your food and basic materials early on, and the Oxyhelium growing on the ice keeps you breathing. Wisteria Niveis is what gets distilled into a Niveis Tear later on. The Frozen Chest is the payoff at the end of all of it.

Oxyhelium is the one to understand properly, since it’s what makes the canyons survivable before you have any gear. Walking into a bud or right-clicking one uses it up, and you’ll be given Water Breathing for 10 seconds. Those 10 seconds stack if several buds are touched in a row.

Push the total past 60 seconds though, and the plant turns on you. Nausea II is applied for 10 seconds, which underwater is genuinely unpleasant. It’s better to top up as you go than to load up all at once.

The Frozen Chests are locked, and the only key is the Frozen Key dropped by the Ghost of Captain Cornelia. That makes the chest the last thing you open rather than the first. Every chest rolls 8 to 12 times on Emeralds, Gold Ingots, Diamonds and Golden Apples, then again for enchanted weapons and Treasure Pouches.

That last pool is also where the Dagger of Greed, a Totem of Undying and a Sea Stew can turn up. None of those are guaranteed, which is worth knowing before you burn a Frozen Key expecting one. Sea Stew has no recipe at all, so a Frozen Chest is one of the few places it can be obtained.

Surviving the Maze

2 things kill unprepared players here, and neither of them is the mobs. The first is drowning, because the canyon swims are long and there’s often no surface directly above you. The second is the cold, and the cold works in a way that isn’t obvious.

You’ll only freeze while you’re actually in the water. Standing on the ice, walking the corridors or sitting in a boat does nothing to you at all. The moment you’re swimming in an Ice Maze biome though, frost starts building at 4 times the normal rate, and it will keep going well past the point where the damage starts. Get out of the water and it drains away again.

Salvager Armor is the intended answer to both problems, and it’s worth crafting before you commit to the deep sections. It doesn’t give you permanent Water Breathing, which is what most people assume. What it actually does is refill your air bar to 280 the instant it empties, so you’ll be able to stay under indefinitely while all 4 pieces are worn.

Wearing the full set stops the freezing as well, since the cold check is only run on players who aren’t wearing it. Until you have the set, Water Breathing potions and Oxyhelium buds will do the same job in a rougher way. Night Vision makes the canyons a lot less disorienting, and a boat gets you between ice walls quickly.

Pack more food than feels necessary, as the swimming and the cold will burn through hunger faster than anything else you’ll be doing down there. The full breakdown of the air and freezing numbers can be found on the Surviving the Ice Maze page.

Frequently Asked Questions