Copperworks

Copper tools and armor that age with you. Equipment progresses from Fresh to Exposed, Weathered, and Oxidized, changing its appearance and performance. Wax a favorite finish or scrape your equipment back toward fresh copper.

Requirements and installation

• Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.1.
• NeoForge 21.1.251 or newer in the 21.1 series; 21.1.251 is the tested version.
• Java 21.
• Install copperworks-1.0.0.jar in the instance's mods folder.
• Multiplayer requires Copperworks on both the server and every client. Use the same mod version. No additional library mods are required.

This build does not target Fabric, Forge, Bedrock, or other Minecraft versions. For a packwiz-managed pack, update the pack's existing Copperworks artifact and hash using its established workflow; no packwiz manifest is stored in this repository.

Equipment

Craft a copper sword, pickaxe, axe, shovel, hoe, helmet, chestplate, leggings, or boots with copper ingots and the usual equipment crafting shapes. Tools use sticks for their handles. Copper ingots are also the repair ingredient.

Tools have 180 base durability and an iron-equivalent harvest level, with their own copper speed and damage values. Fresh armor provides 2 / 5 / 4 / 1 defense for helmet / chestplate / leggings / boots, with no toughness or knockback resistance.

Oxidation and care

While carried in either hand or worn, each eligible piece gets an oxidation check every 600 player ticks (30 seconds at 20 TPS). Each dry check has a 0.25% chance to advance one stage. Being in water, swimming, or standing in rain triples that chance to 0.75%. Fully oxidized equipment stops advancing. This is random, not a fixed countdown. Equipment elsewhere in the inventory or in storage does not age.

To wax equipment, hold it in one hand and use honeycomb in the other hand. Waxing consumes one honeycomb in survival and freezes the current stage. To remove wax or scrape oxidation, use an axe in one hand with the equipment in the other. The first use removes wax; subsequent successful uses remove one oxidation stage. Successful axe uses consume durability in survival.

Wax does not restore performance or give an extra bonus: waxed Weathered equipment still has Weathered penalties. Inventory/held item textures and worn armor textures follow the individual stack's stage.

Default balance

Stage	Durability wear	Mining speed	Attack damage	Armor defense
Fresh	1.00x	1.00x	1.00x	1.00x
Exposed	1.10x	0.95x	0.97x	0.95x
Weathered	1.25x	0.90x	0.93x	0.90x
Oxidized	1.50x	0.80x	0.85x	0.80x

Wear changes durability consumed, not an item's maximum durability. Fractional wear is randomized so it averages to the multiplier. Unbreaking and Mending retain their normal roles; Creative players do not consume durability. Mining penalties apply after ordinary tool speed effects, including Efficiency and Haste; Creative mining is unaffected. Sword mining penalties apply only to its naturally efficient blocks. Attack speed does not change. Armor scales each piece's defense, without affecting toughness or knockback resistance.

Tooltips show the stage and durability wear, plus mining/attack effects for tools or defense for armor. Waxed appears only when waxed. Percentages are displayed as whole numbers; gameplay retains the configured precision.

Advancements

• Age of Copper — obtain Copperworks equipment.
• It Builds Character — naturally reach full oxidation on a piece of equipment.
• Not Getting Any Older — wax a piece of equipment with honeycomb.

Admin commands change components directly; they do not award the interaction or natural-oxidation advancements.

Commands and configuration

All commands require permission level 2 (operator). Equipment commands inspect or change the item in the player's main hand:

/copperworks oxidation status
/copperworks oxidation set <0–3>
/copperworks oxidation wax
/copperworks oxidation unwax
/copperworks config

status reports stage, wax state, and current performance effects. config is read-only, works from the server console, and reports active server balance values.

The server generates config/copperworks-server.toml. An existing file at <world>/serverconfig/copperworks-server.toml overrides it. On multiplayer, NeoForge sends these settings to clients; players do not manually copy the server config.

Stop the world/server before editing and restart afterward. Live edits are not supported and can leave existing and newly connecting clients with different values. See CONFIGURATION.md for keys, ranges, toggles, and synchronization details. Every penalty system can be independently disabled.

Compatibility and limitations

Existing vanilla enchantment integration is provided through item tags. Other mods that replace item attributes, mining events, or equipment rendering may interact with these systems; compatibility with arbitrary modpacks is not guaranteed. Resource packs can replace the existing item and armor textures.

This repository currently has no LICENSE file and no mod icon. Metadata retains the existing All Rights Reserved value; a release licensing decision and icon are still pending. No public download/project URL is assumed here.

Building

With JDK 21 installed, run the checked-in Gradle wrapper:

.\gradlew clean build --warning-mode all

The output is build/libs/copperworks-1.0.0.jar. Gradle, ModDevGradle, NeoForge, and Java language versions are pinned in the build files. Archives use stable ordering and omit source timestamps. Rebuilding with the same toolchain and dependencies should produce the same jar; the release pass compares two clean-build hashes.

Development launches are ./gradlew runClient and ./gradlew runServer; server startup requires accepting Minecraft's EULA in the development run directory. Generated IDE launch files and output are local, not versioned.

See CHANGELOG.md and release notes for maintainers.