Workers Ore Compat

Workers Ore Compat

Villager Workers miners only recognise ores that carry the forge:ores tag. Every ore that misses that tag — crystals, clusters, essences, planet ores — is invisible to them, and the drops get left on the ground.

This mod fixes that with a config file. No datapack, no scripting, no jar edits.

What it changes

Two things, and nothing else:

• Wall scanning. When a miner checks the walls of its mining area for ore worth digging out, it now also counts the blocks and block tags you list.
• Pickup. The miner now picks up the items and item tags you list.

Both lists work in reverse too: anything in the exclusion lists is never treated as ore and never picked up.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.20.1
• Forge 47.x
• Villager Workers 2.0.3 or newer (which needs Villager Recruits)

Install on both client and server.

Configuration

Generated on first launch at:

config/workers_ore_compat-common.toml

Seven options:

Option	Effect
additionalOreBlocks	Block IDs counted as ore during wall scanning
additionalOreBlockTags	Block tags counted as ore
additionalOreDrops	Item IDs the miner picks up
additionalOreDropTags	Item tags the miner picks up
excludedOreBlocks	Never counted as ore
excludedOreDrops	Never picked up
debugLogging	Log every custom match once, for pack debugging

Example:

additionalOreBlocks = ["weirdmod:uranium_ore", "weirdmod:deepslate_uranium_ore"]
additionalOreDrops = ["weirdmod:raw_uranium"]
additionalOreDropTags = ["forge:raw_materials/uranium"]
excludedOreBlocks = ["weirdmod:decorative_ore_bricks"]

Edits apply immediately. Save the file and the cache rebuilds — no restart, no /reload. Tag contents are re-read on /reload as well, so a datapack change is picked up too.

An ID for a mod you do not have is skipped silently, so one config can cover a whole pack. A tag that nothing defines is reported in the log instead of failing quietly.

Covered out of the box

The default config already lists the ores and drops of:

Immersive Engineering · Mekanism · Create · Applied Energistics 2 · Geolosys · Powah · Extreme Reactors · Forbidden & Arcanus · The Undergarden · Mystical Agriculture · Ad Astra

None of them are required. Add your own IDs for anything else — press F3 while looking at a block to read its ID, or F3+H to put item IDs on tooltips.

Notes

• Only wall scanning is affected. Blocks inside the marked mining area are broken either way; this mod decides what is worth digging out of the walls.
• Removing forge:ores from additionalOreBlockTags turns off the automatic promotion of ore block items for pickup, if you want tighter control.
• An entry naming an exact item outranks a broad tag, and exclusions outrank everything.

Tips

Ready-made configs. Two are kept in the repository, drop either one in as config/workers_ore_compat-common.toml:

• base.toml — the stock defaults, for a normal pack
• many-mods.toml — a wide list for kitchen-sink packs, adding Thermal, AllTheModium, Silent Gear, Draconic Evolution, Occultism, Aether, Galosphere, RFTools and more

Writing a config for your own pack. Handing your mod list to an AI assistant and asking it for the block and item IDs is a fast way to get a first draft — but treat that draft as a guess. Language models invent plausible-looking IDs, and a wrong ID is skipped silently, so the miner simply ignores the ore with nothing in the log to explain why.

Always verify: set debugLogging = true, look at the block in game with F3 open to read its real ID, and use F3+H to show item IDs on tooltips. Fix the entries that never show up in the log.

License

MIT.