Runic Skills

Runic Skills

Turn Minecraft XP into a full RPG character progression system.

Credit to TheWiggleDuck for the awesome Curseforge project icon!

Runic Skills adds a deep but flexible skill system to Minecraft. Instead of XP being useful only for enchanting and repairs, you can spend it to improve your character across 10 different skills, unlock hundreds of perks, invest in permanent passive bonuses, equip powerful abilities, earn titles, and qualify for better equipment.

The system is designed for both normal survival worlds and heavily modded RPG packs. Runic Skills works on its own, but also includes extensive optional compatibility with magic, combat, equipment, questing, food, firearm, and interface mods.

How It Works

Earn experience normally by playing Minecraft, then open the Skills screen with Y and decide where to spend it.

Each skill becomes progressively more expensive to level, encouraging players to specialize instead of automatically becoming good at everything.

Your choices can unlock:

• 445 perks with combat, utility, crafting, exploration, magic, survival, and mod-specific effects
• 38 passives that provide permanent attribute improvements
• 75 Powers with their own loadout and progression system
• Titles earned through achievements and major milestones
• Equipment requirements that can make stronger gear require appropriate skill levels

A configurable global level cap can also limit how far one character can progress across all ten skills.

Skills

Skill	Focus
Strength	Melee combat, physical damage, heavy weapons, and offensive abilities
Constitution	Health, healing, food, survivability, and defensive bonuses
Dexterity	Ranged combat, accuracy, movement, critical hits, and evasion
Endurance	Defense, resistance, sustained combat, and environmental survival
Intelligence	Enchanting, crafting, alchemy, trading, and technical knowledge
Building	Mining, construction, harvesting, salvaging, and block-related abilities
Wisdom	Farming, experience, enchanting support, focus, and utility
Magic	Mana, spellcasting, magical damage, spell efficiency, and magic-mod integration
Fortune	Luck, loot, fishing, critical effects, gems, and rare rewards
Tinkering	Tools, smithing, repairing, durability, crafting, and equipment improvement

Perks

Perks are the heart of building your character.

Each skill contains its own selection of unlockable abilities, ranging from straightforward bonuses to mechanics that can significantly change how you play.

Examples include:

• Mine entire ore veins more efficiently
• Access your Ender Chest remotely
• Improve villager prices
• Cleave through groups of enemies
• Improve tools and repaired equipment
• Gain specialized critical-hit effects
• Enhance cooking, fishing, farming, enchanting, or crafting
• Improve spellcasting from supported magic mods
• Unlock specialized effects for weapons, firearms, gems, summons, and other modded systems

Perks can be enabled, disabled, ranked, and limited according to the server or modpack's configuration.

Passives

Passives let you invest in permanent character statistics such as:

• Maximum Health
• Attack Damage
• Movement Speed
• Armor and Armor Toughness
• Projectile Damage
• Critical Damage
• Knockback Resistance
• Magic Resistance
• Mana and Mana Regeneration
• Additional attributes provided by compatible mods

They use Minecraft's attribute system wherever possible, allowing them to interact naturally with equipment and other mods.

Powers

Runic Skills also includes a separate Power system with 75 abilities.

Powers use their own loadout instead of occupying perk slots and are divided into progressively stronger tiers:

• Marks
• Seals
• Crowns

Thirty Powers are designed around broader combat and utility concepts such as projectiles, mobility, summoning, channeling, weapon casting, and general spell behavior.

Another forty-five are tied to the nine magical schools from Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks, with five Powers available for each school when that mod is installed.

Powers have their own icons, HUD feedback, effects, sounds, accessibility settings, and configurable visual quality. The system also distinguishes between exact implementations and the small number of Powers that use documented alternative behavior when an upstream mod does not expose the mechanic needed for the original design.

Titles

Players can earn titles for meaningful accomplishments such as defeating major bosses, reaching progression milestones, or completing difficult challenges.

An earned title can be displayed as a prefix to the player's name.

Titles do not replace or modify the player's actual Minecraft name, making the system much friendlier with nickname, chat, team, and tab-list mods.

Title definitions and requirements are also datapack-driven, allowing modpack authors to customize them.

Skill-Based Equipment

Runic Skills can require players to reach certain skill levels before using powerful equipment.

For example, acquiring an endgame weapon from a chest no longer necessarily means a brand-new character can immediately use it at full effectiveness.

Requirements appear directly in item tooltips so players can see what they need.

This system supports both vanilla and large amounts of modded equipment.

Do not want equipment restrictions? The entire system can be disabled with the enableItemLocks configuration option.

Individual items and individual integrations can also be excluded without disabling the whole feature.

Mod Compatibility

All integrations are optional. You do not need any of these mods to use Runic Skills.

When supported mods are installed, Runic Skills can automatically add appropriate perks, passives, Powers, item requirements, events, or interface support.

Major integrations include:

• Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks
  • Nine magic schools
  • Spell progression
  • Mana and spellcasting perks
  • Summoning interactions
  • School-specific abilities
  • The full magic-school Power system
• Ars Nouveau
  • Spell damage and mana interactions
  • Glyph and form specialization
  • School-focused perks
  • Cross-mod magic synergies
• Apotheosis and Apothic Attributes
  • Gem and socket progression
  • Affix interactions
  • Enchanting improvements
  • Additional passive attributes
  • Gem rarity requirements
• FTB Quests
  • Native quest tasks for skill levels
  • Global level requirements
  • Perk ranks
  • Passive levels
  • Unlocked titles
  • Currently selected titles
• KubeJS
  • Server scripts can react to skill progression
  • Skill level-ups can be allowed or denied through scripts
  • Advancement-based progression rules are supported
• Farmer's Delight and supported addons
  • Cooking and food-related progression
• Let's Do series
  • Compatibility with supported food and farming content
• Tinkers Construct
• Tinkers Jewelry
• Tinkers' Thinking
• TCIntegrations
• Tinkers' Leveling
• Tinkers' Delight
• Tinkers' Advanced
• Simply Swords
• Simply More
• T.O. Magic
• Tide
• Ice and Fire
• Cataclysm
• Mowzie's Mobs
• MineColonies
• Overgeared
• Starcatcher
• Spartan equipment mods
• Samurai Dynasty
• Jewelcraft
• Locks Reforged
• TacZ
• Scorched Guns 2
• Point Blank
• MrCrayfish's Gun Mod compatible versions
• Various additional equipment and content mods

Runic Skills also includes compatibility with inventory-tab mods and interfaces such as:

• Legendary Tabs
• L2Tabs
• CustomNPCs

Unsupported or missing optional mods are simply ignored.

Built for Modpacks

Runic Skills provides extensive control for pack authors and server owners.

You can configure:

• Maximum skill levels
• XP costs
• Global level caps
• Perk limits
• Disabled perks
• Disabled passives
• Disabled Powers
• Whether disabled content remains visible
• Equipment requirements
• Automatic modded-equipment requirements
• Individual item exemptions
• Integration-specific features
• Power behavior and presentation
• UI and HUD options

The server is authoritative for gameplay configuration and synchronizes its rules to connected players.

Configuration files are stored primarily under:

config/RunicSkills/

Most gameplay settings are contained in:

config/RunicSkills/runicskills.common.json5

Equipment requirements use:

config/RunicSkills/runicskills.lockItems.json5

Client-side display options use:

config/runicskills-client.toml

Many settings can be reloaded without restarting the server using:

/skillsreload

Datapack Support

Pack authors can customize several systems through datapacks, including:

• Titles
• Title requirements
• Perk groups
• Power overrides
• Power values
• Custom skill artwork and backgrounds

Skill visuals can be replaced individually, allowing resource packs and modpacks to give the interface their own theme without modifying Runic Skills itself.

FTB Quests Support

With FTB Quests installed, quest authors receive native Runic Skills task types for checking:

• A specific skill level
• Total character level
• Perk rank
• Passive level
• Whether a title has been unlocked
• Whether a title is currently equipped

This allows progression packs to directly connect Runic Skills to quests without relying on scoreboard workarounds or manual commands.

Multiplayer

Runic Skills supports:

• Singleplayer
• LAN
• Dedicated servers

The mod must be installed on both the server and connecting clients.

Gameplay rules are controlled by the server, including skill caps, disabled content, equipment requirements, and progression settings.

Player progression is stored with the player's world data.

Configuration Menu

YetAnotherConfigLib, or YACL, is optional.

Installing YACL provides an in-game configuration interface through:

Mods > Runic Skills > Config

Without YACL, Runic Skills still functions normally and its configuration files can be edited manually.

YACL is not required on dedicated servers.

Controls

• Y: Opens the Skills screen by default and can be rebound
• Skills inventory tab: Provides quick access from the player inventory
• Powers screen: Accessible from the Skills interface, with an optional configurable keybind
• Shift while hovering perks: Displays additional perk information

Inventory tabs automatically try to avoid overlapping the recipe book, potion effects, and interface elements added by other mods. Their position can also be adjusted by the player.

Administration

Runic Skills includes commands for server operators to manage progression, including:

/skills
/listskills
/respec
/titles
/registeritem
/globallimit
/skillsreload
/powers

Players can also use:

/respec

to reset their own character progression.

Requirements

• Minecraft: 1.20.1
• Loader: Forge
• Forge: 47.3.0 or newer
• Java: 17
• Client and server installation: Required for multiplayer
• YACL: Optional
• Other supported mods: Optional

Runic Skills does not require a magic mod, quest mod, or other content mod to function.

Accessibility

Power presentation includes configurable accessibility options such as:

• Power visual quality
• Reduced or disabled particles
• HUD feedback
• Proc sounds
• High-contrast rune presentation
• Particle intensity
• Screen shake
• Flash effects

Screen shake and flash effects are disabled by default.

Open Source

Runic Skills is open source under the Apache License 2.0.

It was originally forked from JustLevelingFork and has since been extensively reworked and expanded with new progression systems, UI, integrations, configuration, Powers, titles, content, and modpack support.

Source Code and Issue Tracker

Bug reports, compatibility reports, suggestions, and contributions are welcome.