I wanted to ask about the dread plague spread because I am leerily about how easily it can spread. From what I understand it spreads from the plague clouds produced by killed dread infected mobs and the infection: goes down to bedrock from the point of spread.

Which leads me to the more important part of my question. Does the Dread Plague enchantment spread the dreadlands when mobs inflicted with the enchantment debuff are killed (because that would kill any desire to use that enchantment for anyone aware of it).

Any type of creature that is suffering from the Dread Plague will spread Dreadlands. That includes players, so don't enter the overworld while you are Dread-Plagued.

The Dread enchantment is now effectively a curse.
It's a negative effects in almost every situation.
As far as I know, it only spreads Dread on a critical hit.
BUT the newly-spread Dreadlands will quickly spawn Dread Creatures which in turn ALSO spread Dreadlands. So a single "lucky" crit can easily dreadify the entire world.

This mechanic is actually kinda cool if you're going for an apocalypse modpack of some sort.

But do not use the Dread enchantement it if you care about your world at all.

Same thing goes for the Dreadium Tconstruct parts btw. So don't use those either.

yeah, that was what I was afraid of. There goes any use for the dread enchantment or tinkers dread items. Coralium is still useful though.

Was this just added in today's update? Does this destroy my world? Does anyone have a full explanation of what's going on here? I'm not interested in any mod feature that destroys things I have spent my limited free time building.

If it is destructive, I would be grateful for any explanation of how to disable this feature entirely.

(Edit slightly for tone, I'm not mad just worried and ignorant of what I've gotten my beautiful base involved in.)

Well, this was an inquiry in to how exactly dread spread (lol the rhymes) works. Dread plague now spreads only when you get two infected entities next to each other and one gets the upgraded plague (plague 2), Otherwise it doesn't spread. The dreadland purge ritual also works better and covers more ground

How can entities get plague 2? Is this something that can happen while I'm minding my own business, building away in my base? Or do I have to trigger it via some specific AbyssalCraft feature?

if two entities infected from the plague come close, there is a chance the plague worsens and goes to tier 2 plague. Most noteably if something dies with plague, makes a plague cloud, and another infected entity goes through it and voila chance for plague to worsen.

Dread enchanted weapons may also make it worse if they double crit within a second too I guess. I have no idea.

Right, I got that from the earlier discussion. What I don't know is when, why, and how that happens. Assume I know nothing about AbyssalCraft except that I heard it was cool, so I threw it in the modpack I use to play casually with a friend who likes Lovecraftian horror. I've now come across this issue where someone says,

So a single "lucky" crit can easily dreadify the entire world.

I'm trying to make a decision about whether to take drastic action (like removing AbyssalCraft from my modpack) to prevent my entire world from getting dreadified. Do I need to do that? Or can I take some in-game action to guarantee it won't happen to my world?

the dread enchantment procs on crits, so you can avoid any problems by not using the enchantment or dreadium tinkers weapons (they have it automatically); you can fortify a pickaxe with dreadium without problems though, it's has an excellent mining speed. And it isn't a problem so long as you just keep the infected area lit as you need dread mobs to spawn first before the plague can spread further. the plague/biome spreads through MOBS, it's not like coralium which can destroy oceans and lakes on contact with water.

Also don't walk out of the dreadlands with the plague. that's also how it spreads. It isn't hard to contain so long as you don't play with fire.

As of today's update, the Dread Plague has been nerfed(?) a bit.
You now need Dread Plague II in order for it to spread.
This makes the weapons a bit less dangerous to use, tough it can still ruin a chunk if you accidentally plague 2 entities at once.

Edit: This also means that the Cloud of Plague left behind by Dread Monsters is less likely to cause more Dreadlands spread, so containing it is easier too.