Portables Beacons

A beacon you carry.

Put a Portable Beacon in your inventory and it projects beacon effects: on you, and once it can share, on the people around you. Which effects, how strong, who they reach and what they cost are all set in its own screen. Craft it into the next tier and it keeps everything it carried.

It does not replace the Beacon block. Every Portable Beacon is crafted from one, its reach stays below the block's, an effect a real beacon already gives you costs nothing, and a real beacon recharges the ones you carry. The block is still what you build for a base; this is what you take with you.

	Effects	Max level	Reaches	Range	Augment slots
Beacon I	1	I	you	—	0
Beacon II	1	I	you	8 blocks	1
Beacon III	2	I	your team	12 blocks	2
Beacon IV	3	II	your team	16 blocks	4

• Cinder, Void and Tidal beacons trade the standard list for effects the tiers never offer: fire resistance and strength, slow falling and night vision, water breathing and conduit power.
• A Creative Beacon for builders and pack makers: every slot, every level, and no fuel.
• One runs at a time. Switching one on switches your others off. Wear it in a Curios charm slot if you like.

One row per effect, and everything set right there: click the icon to choose the effect, the level to raise it, the figure to choose who it reaches, the switch to turn it off. Right-click steps back.

• A bar under each effect shows its share of what the beacon burns.
• A status light says whether it is running, idle, low on fuel or dry.
• The beacon's figures and its augments live in side tabs.
• Effects are picked from a searchable grid, keyboard included.

Seven are pure gains: Range, Focus (+1 effect), Amplification (+1 level), Efficiency (up to −55% fuel), Capacity (up to ×4 buffer), Attunement (share wider) and Discretion (hide the particles).

Seven give something up, and those are where the decisions are:

Augment	Gains	Pays
Communion	sharing costs much less	everything costs more
Wellspring	your most expensive effect is free	the rest cost ×1.6
Wayfarer	cheap while you move	dear while you stand still
Sentinel	cheap while you stand still	dear while you move
Vanguard	+12 blocks and wider sharing	fuel ×1.9
Prism	+1 effect and +1 level	fuel ×2.2
Recluse	fuel ×0.35, triple buffer	keeps everything to you

Fourteen augments, at most four slots: the question is never which ones you want, but which four.

Every effect burns fuel each second, more for higher levels and more again for sharing it. Copper, iron, gold, emerald, diamond and netherite each last longer than the last.

• The screen shows time, not units: how long the beacon lasts at what it is drawing now.
• A real beacon recharges it. Stand in a lit beacon's range and every beacon you carry tops up.
• Forge Energy. Any mod's charger fills it.
• A minute's warning before it runs dry, and when it does, it waits and starts again by itself as soon as there is fuel.
• Servers can turn fuel off entirely: the slot and gauge disappear with it.

Effects, tiers, augments and fuels are datapack files. A pack can retune every number, add any effect from the game or another mod, or make a new augment with its own colour and icon, all without code. The shipped list sticks to the vanilla beacon's kind of effects on purpose.

Nine server options cover the rest: fuel on or off, PvP-safe sharing, a global cost multiplier, a reach cap, dimensions where beacons switch off, and more.

Requirements

	1.21.1	26.1	26.2
Loader	NeoForge 21.1	NeoForge 26.1.2	NeoForge 26.2
Curios (optional)	9.5+	15.0+	16.0+
JEI (optional)	19.x	29.x	30.x
EMI (optional)	1.1+	—	—

Needed on both the client and the server. All three versions have the same content.

FAQ

Does it make the Beacon block pointless? No. You need one to craft any Portable Beacon, the block reaches further, and standing near one makes your portable beacon's matching effects free.

Can I add my own effects? Yes, with one datapack file each. See the datapack guide.

Fabric? 1.20.1? No Fabric. 1.20.1 is not available yet.

Can I put it in my modpack? Yes. No need to ask.

Permissions

Modpacks: yes. No permission needed, no message required, public or private, monetised or not, on any platform or launcher.

Credit is appreciated and never required.

Forks and addons: yes, under the MIT terms. Please do not publish a fork under the name Portable Beacons: the name is not covered by the licence.

Assets (icons, GUI artwork, logo) are the one exception: redistribute them with the mod freely, but do not lift them into another project.

Links

Wiki · Source · Report a bug