Meteors & Meteorites

Things fall out of the sky on Ancients — and they're worth chasing. There are three related sky events: meteors (big ore mounds on a timer), heroic meteors (rarer, with a guarded treasure chest), and meteorites (small, frequent single-block ore deposits, sometimes arriving in showers).

Meteors

Roughly every 30 minutes, a meteor streaks toward the main prison world. Chat announces it twice — once when it's incoming and once when it lands — with the coordinates and the nearest mine ("METEOR incoming near Iron Mine — …"). A naturally falling meteor takes about 3 minutes to land from the announcement, so you have time to get there. Players using the optional client mod also see a red beacon beam marking the landing spot.

Don't stand at ground zero: the impact damages and knocks back anyone too close.

The crash site is a mound of ore blocks — a mix of tiers biased around one ore type (coal up through emerald, depending on how far the season's level cap has advanced). Mining meteor blocks pays out:

• The ores themselves (your usual ore bonuses apply)
• Mining XP and Ancient Energy
• Ore shards
• A small chance of finding Contraband

Work fast — a landed meteor despawns after 10 minutes.

Heroic meteors

Every fourth meteor arrives as a heroic meteor, with its own louder announcement and golden beam. Instead of raw ore, the mound is made of refined blocks (iron blocks, diamond blocks, and so on — they mine like their ore equivalents). At the center sits a chest sealed inside a cube of obsidian.

Each obsidian block takes 100 hits to crack. Break through, and the first player to open the chest claims the entire prize — the claim is broadcast to the whole server.

The heroic chest rolls several rewards from a pool that includes: chunks of Ancient Energy, high-tier Contraband (up to Exceptional, the rarest), enchant dust, enchant erasers and rerolls, mystery enchant orbs, booster boxes, forge fuel, stat rerolls, more flares, randomization scrolls — and, on rare rolls, a mystery boss key, armor/weapon expander boxes, or Fortune's Dice.

Heroic meteors also despawn after 10 minutes, so don't dawdle.

Meteorites

Meteorites are the small cousins: glowing single blocks that fall frequently near active players in the main prison world, and also inside the Pit. Each one is a packed ore deposit — hit it repeatedly and every hit pays out a bundle of ore plus Ancient Energy at a generous rate. The deposit holds a limited pool of ore and disappears when it's emptied; ignored meteorites slowly decay away on their own.

What a meteorite pays depends on your level — higher-level miners pull higher-tier ore from the same rock:

About half of shower meteorites land refined — these pay out the processed resource (ingots, gems, netherite scrap) instead of raw ore.

If you use the optional client mod, a floating label over each meteorite shows the ore tier and how many ores are left inside.

Meteorite showers

Periodically (and from a Meteorite Shower Flare), a meteorite shower drops a cluster of meteorites — per the flare: 4–8 of them within a 10-block radius, about half refined. Showers are announced in chat with the landing coordinates.

Flares

Three flare items let you call sky events on demand — all are loot from events like KOTH, heroic meteors, and Rift Caches:

• Meteor Flare — right-click to call a meteor down on that spot; it lands in 60 seconds with the usual bold announcements.
• Meteorite Shower Flare — right-click to start a meteorite shower at your location.
• Heroic Meteor Flare — the rare one: calls down a full heroic meteor.