Season 1: The Last Harvest, began 2/26/2026, ends at the first of April! The season is Autumn - winter looms next season.

Ruthless Frontiers is a combat-focused survival modpack with slight RPG elements. It has visceral, weighty combat in an unforgiving world. It is aesthetically inspired by bleak frontier ARPGs such as Grim Dawn and survival city-builders such as Farthest Frontier, with additional inspiration from zombie survival games such as Project Zomboid.

A Distinct Aesthetic - Grimdark Agrarian

The world is grim, and humanity struggles to survive. Your plants grow in the fertile soil, but the darkness creeps at night and monsters overwhelm the farmlands. 

Magic combat mods are heavily tweaked to preserve the frontier occult theme of the modpack, while avoiding fantasy tropes in favor of more gritty, grounded survival ones.

Open-Ended Adventure

There is no questbook to tell you what you should or shouldn't do. Take this as an invitation to experience the world on your own terms, the way you yourself would want to do things. 

Refreshing take on RPG mechanics

There is no RPG class-based gating - use all the tools available at your disposal to defeat the enemies that creep upon your farmlands at night, whether that means equipping a dagger to defend yourself if something gets too close for your glaive, or sacrificing your off-hand slot to carry a lantern. If you had a friend, you could depend on them to bear a torch as you cleave nearby enemies.

An Unforgiving World

Ruthless Frontiers disables all forms of natural regeneration. You have to craft bandages or healing salves in order to heal, or heal yourself using magic - both methods are equally valid. Non-magical healing is what you're likely going to have to use if you're not a healing class or don't have a healer friend, but it can keep up with magical healing provided the proper supplies.

Hunger exists as a de-facto stamina, preventing you from sprinting when hungry, but no longer affecting health regeneration. Combat has been tuned to make you step forward with each attack, during which you cannot normally move. New, crisp attack animations are added for extra snap and weight to each attack. Enemies are sent flying further when attacked. Attacking enemies triggers a slight "hit-stop" that allows confirmation of the hit, enabling proper follow-through. You can holster your weapons to move faster, for the sake of travelling.  

The biggest persisting threat is the constant darkness at night. You aren't given endless ability to see in the dark. Using your off-hand to carry a light source is a legitimate trade-off, because two handed weapons are very powerful. Survival entails knowing where and when to use your resources - all of them. 

Incredible Performance

This modpack has run spectacularly, running at highs of 200+ fps and averages of around 100 fps on 4gb of RAM with configured shaders on a 6 year old computer, on a server. A server for two to three people can reliably run on 4gb of RAM. 

Here's my discord! https://discord.gg/9kYEhnjRWR