Rough Beginnings
An early-game survival overhaul for NeoForge 1.21.1.
Goal
- make those first 30 minutes of a fresh world feel like you're truly starting from scratch.
What it does
- Starting your world. You need to really think about how your going to obtain your starting tools, do you have acess to gravel near by? Is there a lot of grass around you? Any dead bushes or leaves in sight? Those are all the new questions you'll need to ask yourself during your first day getting started in your new world.
- Rocks everywhere. Rocks scatter across every overworld biome on dirt or stone surfaces via anything that tags into
#minecraft:is_overworld. Pick them up, place them as decoration , or chuck them at friends and foes! - Throwable rocks. Snowball-style trajectory, 2 damage on hit. 85% chance the rock drops back so you can pick it up; 15% chance it shatters with stone particles and a satisfying crack.
- Flint tools. Sword, shovel, pickaxe, axe, hoe. Stronger than wood, slightly weaker than stone, wooden mining tier flint gets you cutting and digging without breaking the stone pickaxe needed for iron progression. Recipes need plant string for binding.
- Crafting Rock. A 3×3 surface you knap by hitting with a rock. Accepts any vanilla crafting recipe. Works as a primitive crafting table for when you can't make a real one yet.
- Sieve. Right-click to insert dirt, sand, gravel, etc. Then keep right clicking until items drop. Drops useful early-game items per the data pack: string, bone, clay, iron and gold nuggets, or even the rare diamond depending on what you Sieve!
- Plant Fiber & Plant String. Fiber drops from almost every type of grass. Twist 1 fiber into 2 strings.
How it plays
- Spawn in a fresh world. Punch grass, get plant fiber. Leaves are still hand-breakable for saplings/sticks.
- Find 3 rocks on the ground create your crafting rock while holding onto your Knapping Rock.
- Gather plant fibers from grass than twist your 4 fibers into 2 plant strings.
- Place a crafting rock. Knap your first flint tools at the crafting rock.
- Get wood and string for a Sieve. Sieve dirt and gravel for early bones, clay, and your first iron nugget. Cobble together better tools as the materials come in.
- By the time you have a stone pickaxe, you've actually earned it.
Compatibility
- Immersive Weathering (NeoForge port) — sandy dirt, silt, and grassy variants are sieve-able with themed loot.
- Salt (NeoForge port) —
salt:salt_blockis hand-breakable. - Still Life — rocks generate in all 108 of its biomes automatically (it tags into
#minecraft:is_overworld).
No hard dependencies on any of the above — they're pure compat patches that activate when the mod is present.
Configuration
config/rough_beginnings-common.toml:
| Option | Default | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
requirePreferredTool |
false |
If true, you must use the matching tool category (pickaxe for stone, axe for wood, etc.) - not just any tool. |
alwaysAllowInstaBreak |
true |
Instant-break blocks (tall grass, etc.) bypass the rule even without a tool. |
forceInCreative |
false |
Apply the hand-breaking rule in creative mode too. |
For finer control, edit the rough_beginnings:breakable block tag and the rough_beginnings:canbreak item tag via a datapack. The data pack also defines per-block sieve drops in data/rough_beginnings/sieve_drops/ - you can add your own without touching the jar.
Credits & License
MIT-licensed. Built on:
- EarlyStage by Globox_Z (MIT) - original Fabric mod whose rock, sieve, crafting rock, and flint tool concepts power the gameplay here. Heavily modified for NeoForge 1.21.1; most upstream features cut, rewritten, or restyled.
- Never Punching Trees by 96_Leaf (MIT) - the block-breaking restriction logic that became the "Hands Off" backbone.
Full breakdown of what came from where in the ATTRIBUTIONS file.
