UnstablePotions
Brewed potions in vanilla Minecraft are predictable — you know exactly what you'll get every time. UnstablePotions changes that. When players brew potions, there's a configurable chance the result comes out slightly wrong. Or slightly too good. Or just wrong enough to matter.
It's a simple concept that adds real depth to potion-heavy servers — survival, RPG, PvP, economy — anywhere potions have value, instability makes them interesting.
What it does
- 🎲 Five outcome types — Duration Shift, Amplifier Shift, Inversion, Side-Effect, and Jackpot, all weighted and independently configurable
- 🧫 Ingredient influence — optional system where specific brewing ingredients (Glowstone, Redstone, etc.) push the instability chance higher
- 📋 Per-potion rules — enable or disable instability per potion type, control inversion per type, set per-type chance multipliers
- 🌍 World gating — whitelist or blacklist worlds where unstable behavior is active
- 🎨 Visual markers — unstable potions optionally show name/lore markers and fire particles when used
- 🔒 HMAC tag signing — every unstable potion is cryptographically tagged at brew time and validated at use time, blocking duplication exploits and NBT tampering
- 🥛 Milk integration — drinking milk can clear tracked side-effect debuffs
- 🖥️ Full in-game Admin GUI — every setting is adjustable without touching a config file
- 📊 Debug metrics + audit logging — live outcome counters, suspicious-tag detection, in-game notifications
Why servers want this
Potions being perfectly reliable makes them commodities. When there's a chance your Strength II potion turns on you, or your Speed potion comes out stronger than expected, the brewing economy gets more interesting. Skilled brewers who understand the risk are rewarded; casual use carries actual stakes.
The plugin is built cleanly — no database, no repeating tasks, no background polling. It hooks into brew and consume events and stays out of the way otherwise.
GUI controls
The entire plugin is managed through a multi-page in-game GUI (/unstablepotions admin). Pages cover Brewing settings, Outcome weights, Safety caps, Potion rules, Visuals, World rules, Performance, and Admin tools. Everything saves and applies immediately.
Security & performance
- Potions are signed with HMAC on brew and verified on use — no outcome fires without a valid tag
- Suspicious activity (invalid tags with visual markers) is logged and shown to notified admins
- Particle rate limiting and a per-tick event budget keep things controlled on busy servers
- Tipped arrow support and lingering cloud processing are both off by default to avoid unnecessary overhead
If you want potion brewing to have some actual risk, drop this in and tune the numbers to fit your server.
