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🏆 What is ProgressiveStages?

ProgressiveStages is the ultimate progression control mod for NeoForge 1.21.1. Built for modpack developers who want players to actually earn their way through content — not skip straight to endgame on day one.

Lock items, recipes, blocks, entities, dimensions, fluids, and entire mods behind meaningful progression milestones. Players unlock stages through exploration, quests, boss kills, or custom conditions. No more sequence breaking. No more bypassing your carefully crafted progression curve.

Perfect for expert modpacks, skyblock-style challenges, gated tech progression, or any pack where the journey matters as much as the destination. If you've ever wanted Gamestages on modern NeoForge — this is it.

✨ Core Features

🔐 Comprehensive Locking System

Lock anything and everything standing between your players and the endgame:

🪓 Items — block use, pickup, crafting, and inventory holding
📦 Blocks — prevent placement and right-click interaction (furnaces, chests, machines, anything)
📜 Recipes — hide crafting outputs entirely from recipe viewers
🌍 Dimensions — gate portal travel to the Nether, End, or any custom dimension
👾 Entities — prevent attacking specific mobs, bosses, or all entities from a mod until the stage is earned
🧪 Fluids — hide specific fluids, fluid tags, or all fluids from a mod in EMI/JEI
🏭 Entire Mods — one line locks every item, block, entity, and fluid from a mod namespace
🔍 Name Matching — names = ["diamond"] locks anything with "diamond" in its ID across every installed mod, across ALL content types — items, blocks, entities, and fluids simultaneously
⚙️ Interactions — gate Create-style item-on-block interactions, right-clicking machines, applying items to blocks, and other custom player-world interactions

🎛️ Granular Mod Control

Most mods lock everything at once or nothing. ProgressiveStages gives you surgical precision:

mods = ["mekanism"] — locks EVERYTHING from Mekanism (items, blocks, entities, fluids)
item_mods = ["mekanism"] — locks only Mekanism items, not blocks or entities
block_mods = ["mekanism"] — locks only Mekanism blocks, not items or entities
entity_mods = ["mekanism"] — locks only Mekanism entities from being attacked
fluid_mods = ["mekanism"] — locks only Mekanism fluids from EMI/JEI visibility

And every lock type has a matching whitelist — lock all of Mekanism but allow the Configurator back:

mods = ["mekanism"]
unlocked_items = ["mekanism:configurator"]
unlocked_blocks = ["mekanism:teleporter"]
unlocked_entities = ["mekanism:robit"]
unlocked_fluids = ["mekanism:hydrogen"]

Whitelists always win — no matter how broad the lock, your exceptions are respected.

📖 EMI & JEI Integration

The best visual lock experience available for 1.21.1:

🔒 Lock icons on every locked item in the search index and recipe viewer
🟠 Orange overlay highlights on locked recipe outputs
💬 Tooltips showing the required stage name
👻 Hide locked items from search entirely (optional) — works for ALL NBT variants including Mekanism Chemical Tanks, Meka-Suit pieces, and any item with stored energy, fluid, or chemical data
❓ Item name masking — locked items show as "Unknown Item" until unlocked
⚡ Updates instantly when a stage is granted or when switching gamemodes — no relog, no reload required
🎨 Fully configurable — icon size, overlay color, icon position

👥 Team Progression (FTB Teams)

Progression that works the way multiplayer should:

🤝 Team-scoped stages — the whole team progresses together
🔄 Synchronized unlocks — one member earns it, everyone gets it
🛡️ Stage matching rules — lower-stage players must match the team's stage to join

📋 FTB Quests Integration

Native, deep integration with FTB Quests:

✅ Stage Tasks — require a specific stage before a quest completes
🎁 Stage Rewards — grant stages directly as quest rewards
🔐 Stage Required field — hide entire quests or chapters until the player reaches a stage, built directly into the quest properties UI — no workarounds needed

⚡ Automatic Stage Triggers

No commands needed — stages grant themselves when players:

🏅 Complete a specific advancement
🎒 Pick up a target item (also scans inventory on login to catch players who already have it)
🌀 Enter a dimension for the first time (one-time, persists across restarts)
💀 Defeat a boss (one-time, persists across restarts)

🔗 Dependency Graph

Build a real progression chain — stages can require other stages before they can be granted. ProgressiveStages supports any structure you can imagine.

Linear progression — the classic tier chain:

🪨 stone_age
    └── ⚙️ iron_age
            └── 💎 diamond_age
                    └── 🔮 netherite_age

Branching paths — tech and magic unlock separately:

🪨 stone_age
    ├── ⚙️ iron_age
    │       ├── 💎 diamond_age
    │       └── 🏭 tech_age
    │               └── ☢️ nuclear_age
    └── 📚 magic_age
            ├── 🔮 arcane_age
            └── 🌿 nature_age

Multi-dependency gates — require multiple paths before unlocking endgame:

🪨 stone_age
    ├── ⚙️ iron_age ──────────────────┐
    │       └── 💎 diamond_age ───────┤
    │                                 ▼
    └── 📚 magic_age ─────────► 🌌 endgame_age
            └── 🔮 arcane_age ────────┘
                (requires BOTH diamond_age AND arcane_age)

Parallel independent trees — some stages have no dependencies at all:

🪨 stone_age          🌿 nature_age          🗺️ exploration_age
    └── ⚙️ iron_age       └── 🔮 druid_age       └── 🌋 nether_age
            └── 💎 diamond_age                             └── 🐉 end_age

Missing a dependency when using /stage grant? The command warns you and asks for confirmation before bypassing it. With linear_progression = true, granting a stage auto-grants all missing dependencies up the chain automatically.

🛠️ Pack Developer Tools

Everything you need to build and iterate fast:

📝 TOML-based config — human-readable stage files, fully commented, no JSON hell
🚀 Auto-generated examples — stone_age, iron_age, diamond_age created on first run with every field documented inline
🔄 Live reload — /progressivestages reload applies all changes without a server restart
✔️ Validation command — catch typos, invalid IDs, and missing dependencies before your players find them
💬 Unlock messages — send color-coded chat messages to the whole team when a stage unlocks
🐛 Debug logging — detailed output for troubleshooting your stage setup

⚙️ Highly Configurable

Toggle any enforcement type independently — items, recipes, blocks, entities, dimensions, interactions
Creative mode bypass — ops and creative players skip all locks and lock UI
Customizable EMI/JEI visuals — icon size, overlay color, icon position, show/hide locked items
Notification cooldowns — no chat spam when touching locked items
Mask locked item names — show "Unknown Item" to keep content mysterious
Debug logging — detailed output for troubleshooting

💻 Commands

Player:

/stage list — View your unlocked stages
/stage check <stage> — Check if you have a specific stage

Admin:

/stage grant <player> <stage> — Grant a stage
/stage revoke <player> <stage> — Revoke a stage
/progressivestages reload — Reload all stage files live
/progressivestages validate — Check stage files for errors
/progressivestages ftb status <player> — Debug FTB integration
/progressivestages trigger reset <player> <type> <key> — Reset a one-time trigger

📦 Requirements

NeoForge for Minecraft 1.21.1 — required
EMI or JEI — optional, for recipe viewer integration
FTB Quests + FTB Library — optional, for quest integration
FTB Teams — optional, for team-shared progression

🐛 Found a bug? Have a feature request?

Open an issue on GitHub or drop it in our Discord. This mod is actively developed and every report gets looked at. We're building toward a stable 1.0 release and your feedback directly shapes what comes next.