🚀 NERI — Not Entirely Random Item
A data-driven progression mod that replaces resource gathering with automated, staged item generation.
Built for skyblock, void worlds and custom progression maps: NERI gives you full control over how players obtain resources — even in a completely empty world. Available for NeoForge and Fabric (MC 26.1).
⚙️ The Core Idea
Instead of mining, the world itself hands your team items over time, drawn from weighted loot pools. Progression is split into stages — each stage defines its own loot pool, generation speed and unlock condition (items, advancements, time, or manual triggers). Separate stage tracks exist for the overworld, nether and end.
🌌 Void Worlds Done Right
- NeriVoidChunkGenerator — a true void world that keeps vanilla biome distribution, with
biome_sizescaling and a guaranteedspawn_biome. Biome-dependent gameplay works even on an empty map. - NERI dimensions — dedicated void variants of the nether and end with their own stage tracks, portal routing and per-team platforms.
- Vanilla advancements still work — the Nether and End tabs open properly inside NERI's own dimensions, and even Uneasy Alliance and Feels Like Home stay within reach.
- Weather, biome-locked categories and structure/mob loot all function with no terrain at all.
🧩 The Machines
📦 Give Controller — the heart of automation. Receives everything the world generates: three distribution modes (first_fit, round_robin, each), item-frame filtering (sponge on top = exact match), comparator output, hopper extraction. A lightning rod on top converts strikes into bonus generation.
♻️ Tier Recycler — re-rolls loot from earlier stages so outdated resources stay useful. Select the target stage with an item frame.
🧱 Block Spawner — physically places blocks around itself over time: ores, logs, soil, ice, nether and end materials — 13 data-driven categories selected by an item frame icon, with stage, dimension and biome restrictions. Includes an archaeology category: suspicious sand/gravel with brushable loot (sherds, trims, echo shards).
💧 Liquid Spawner — generates water or lava sources in a configurable area. The skyblock-friendly replacement for infinite-liquid exploits.
👾 Mob Spawner — spawns mobs into a room you build, matched by data-driven room requirements. Fuel it with essences via hopper; wrong fuel is rejected out the bottom.
🖥️ Display Panel — shows the neighbouring controller's timer, colour-coded by what the machine is actually doing, or mirrors an item from a frame.
🚦 Machines That Explain Themselves
A spawner whose category is locked behind a stage used to simply stop, with a countdown frozen on the same number. Every refusal now has a visible reason.
- 🔲 Smart Frame — an item frame that reports back. Selects a category exactly like a plain one, but its bezel shows the machine's state: green running, yellow blocked for now, gray nothing usable selected. Plain item frames keep working everywhere they did — they just stay quiet.
- The Display Panel tints its countdown to match, and names the stage you are waiting on outright instead of counting toward nothing.
- Idle machines give off a wisp of smoke, so a stalled corner of the base is visible from across the room.
🏆 Advancements
A sixteen-advancement tree that doubles as a tutorial, opening on the very first item the mod hands you and branching into automation, stages, spawners and the essence chain. Most of them unlock when a machine actually produces something — placing the block was never the hard part.
⚗️ Items & Worldcraft
- Six essences (nature, decay, sculk, ancient, nether, end) — spawner fuel with unique on-use effects.
- Six ingots, forged through worldcraft: drop the ingredients together in the right place (water, lava, mycelium, obsidian…) and they fuse.
- Unstable Matter — devours blocks beneath it to build charge; overcharge it and it implodes into the void. Charged matter is the key ingredient of the…
- 💥 Void Miner — mines resources out of nothing, category-driven, with Fortune support via the frame item.
- 🎆 Scatter Charge — one block, five data-driven categories: detonate to scatter themed terrain (moss, deepslate, netherrack, end stone, sculk) around it. Add a category with two JSON files.
🎁 Loot System
Weighted pools mixing plain items, tags, loot tables and pre-filled color-coded bundles (plants, food, seeds, ores, endgame). Hand out post-1.20 items that are otherwise unobtainable in a void world: biome plants, mob drops, structure loot.
🛠️ Fully Data-Driven
Everything above is JSON: stages, pools, block/liquid/mob/scatter categories, void miner loot, room definitions, worldcraft recipes. Ship your own datapack and NERI becomes a different mod.
/neri balance comes with it — audit your pools for dead weights and broken references, simulate what a stage really drops, and check the odds of any single item within a stage's budget. Written for whoever is tuning the numbers.
🔗 Optional Compatibility
✏️ Scribble Book — study NERI blocks and items in-game to unlock illustrated guide entries, including visual crafting recipes.
⚡ Energy (FE) — the spawners expose an insert-only energy buffer, and any category can be given an energy_cost. Nothing uses it out of the box, so the mod still runs standalone; the hooks are there for packs that want NERI running on their power grid.
📦 Official Modpack
Please Send Resources — designed around NERI progression, staged gameplay and automation. The perfect starting point if you want the full experience without manual configuration.
