colossal quarry

Updated Description as of 11/3/2026:

Colossal Quarry

A multiblock quarry that really mines. Build a 5×5×5 Quarry Rig, press Start, and a drill gantry rolls out over the ground behind it and digs the whole area, layer by layer, down to bedrock. It breaks real blocks. It never makes ores out of thin air.

Upgrade it for speed, Fortune, Silk Touch, bigger holes, ores-only mining or junk voiding. Hook up any pipe or cable mod, or just put a Coal Generator on top. It works in a pack with no other tech mods.

In-game build guides included: hover a block and hold W. (NeoForge.)

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Features

• A real multiblock. A hollow 5×5×5 box of Quarry Casing with a Controller and an Energy Port in the walls. It forms by itself when it's complete.
• A build hologram shows you where everything goes. Place the Controller and see-through ghost blocks show the whole rig: blue where a part still goes, red on any block that has to go (the inside must be empty). A line on screen says what's left, e.g. "Still needed: 37 Quarry Casing, 1 Energy Port." Right-click the Controller with an empty hand to hide or show it; sneak + right-click moves it to the next spot. Only you see it.
• In-game guides (NeoForge). Hover any Quarry block and hold W. Short animated scenes show how to build the rig, the hologram, where it digs, the upgrades, the ports and power.
• Breaking a part only unforms the rig. Nothing else breaks, nothing is lost.
• A moving drill gantry. When you press Start, the rig builds a yellow-and-black frame around the dig area. A bridge, carriage, shaft and spinning drill head then move over the hole, snaking across each layer. The gantry is drawn by the game, not made of blocks, so it costs nothing on the server.
• You pick where it digs. The hole is on the side of the rig away from the Controller. Set the width and length (3 up to 16, or up to 128 with Size upgrades) and a "Stop at Y" depth.
• It never deletes your items. Drops go into a 27-slot buffer. When it's full, the rig pauses and carries on by itself when there's room. Only the Void upgrade throws things away, and only what its filter says.
• A freshly built rig is stopped. Nothing digs until you press Start, so no surprise craters.
• Its own generators, so it works without a power mod: the Coal Generator (60 FE/t from anything that burns in a furnace) and the Heavy Generator, 8 Coal Generators in one block (480 FE/t).

Upgrades

Six upgrade slots. One of each type; a higher level replaces the lower one. Fortune and Silk Touch can't go in together.

Upgrade	Effect	Energy per block
Speed I / II / III	8 / 16 / 32 blocks per second (base: 4)	×1.25 / ×1.5 / ×2
Efficiency I / II / III	uses less energy	×0.8 / ×0.65 / ×0.5
Fortune I / II / III	drops as if mined with Fortune I / II / III	×1.25 / ×1.5 / ×2
Silk Touch	drops as if mined with Silk Touch	×1.5
Size I / II / III	max area 32×32 / 64×64 / 128×128	–
Ore Sieve	mines only ores and leaves the land standing	–
Void	deletes junk (cobblestone, dirt, stone, netherrack…) instead of storing it, or what you set in its filter	–

Fortune and Silk Touch work on every ore from every mod. The rig runs each block's own loot table as if it was mined with a Netherite Pickaxe carrying the rig's enchantment, so no compat code is needed.

The Void filter. Right-click the Void upgrade, or the gear next to it in the Controller screen, to choose what it deletes. Blacklist (the default) deletes the junk list plus anything you add; Whitelist keeps only what you list and deletes everything else. Items in the 9 "Never void" slots are always kept. The filter stays on the upgrade, so it goes with it to another rig.

Numbers

	Value
Base speed	4 blocks per second
Base energy	200 FE per block (40 FE/t at base speed)
Rig energy buffer	1,000,000 FE
Energy Ports	up to 20,000 FE/t in (all ports together), and up to 20,000 FE/t out through ports in Output mode
Output buffer	27 slots
Base area	16×16 (one chunk)
Frame	500 FE per frame block, built at 4 per second, no items needed
Coal Generator	60 FE/t while burning
Heavy Generator	480 FE/t while burning, 400,000 FE buffer

Example: Speed III + Fortune III + Efficiency III = 400 FE per block × 32 per second = 640 FE/t. Without Efficiency it's 1,280 FE/t: three Heavy Generators keep up with that.

A 16×16 hole from the surface to bedrock takes about 2 h 15 min at base speed, or about 17 minutes with Speed III.

Ports

Ports go in the middle 3×3 of any face of the rig. They use the loader's standard energy and item connections, so cables, pipes, hoppers and storage mods connect with no special compat.

• Energy Port: takes FE in from any cable or generator. Sneak + right-click it to switch it to Output mode (NeoForge): then it gives the rig's stored power back out. Cables and batteries can pull it, and it fills a battery placed right next to it by itself. Handy to empty a rig before you move it, or to send its spare power somewhere else. Input is the default.
• Item Port: gives out the buffer's items. Pipes or a hopper underneath can pull from it, or sneak + right-click to switch it to Push mode, where it fills a chest next to it by itself.
• Redstone Port: run always / only when powered / only when not powered, and a comparator shows how full the buffer is.

Made for servers and modpacks

• Respects land claims. Before each block it fires the normal "a player broke this" event as the rig owner, so claim mods can stop it. Protected blocks are skipped and counted.
• Never mines bedrock and other unbreakable blocks, chests, spawners and other block entities, or anything in the colossalquarry:never_mine tag.
• Light on the server: at most 4 blocks broken per tick per rig; a stopped, finished, unpowered or full rig does no work at all; it chunk-loads only its own chunk and the drill's chunk (at most 4), and releases them when it stops. Chunk loading can be turned off.
• Survives restarts. It picks up exactly where it left off.
• Every number is in the server config, and every upgrade's numbers come from data. On NeoForge that is a data map (colossalquarry:quarry_upgrade); on Forge it is the same JSON file, read by the mod (item IDs only; item tags there are NeoForge-only). Packs can change them or add new upgrade items with a datapack or KubeJS. The Ore Sieve and Void lists are item/block tags.

Recipes

Played on its own, everything is crafted from vanilla items. The rig costs about 100 Iron Ingots, 100 Stone Bricks, around 45 Redstone and 4 Diamonds: mid-game, on purpose. Fortune and Silk Touch upgrades need the real enchanted book.

On NeoForge, the recipes change when Mekanism and/or Create are installed:

Mods installed	Recipes
Neither	Vanilla
Mekanism	Mekanism parts (Steel, Osmium, circuits, alloys)
Create	Create parts, with Sequenced Assembly lines
Both	A progression through both mods

Only one set is active, so JEI and EMI only show the recipes that work. Pack makers can force a set in config/colossalquarry-common.toml (recipeSet), and datapacks or KubeJS can still change any single recipe.

On Forge, it's always the Vanilla recipes. Create and Mekanism have no Forge 1.21.1 versions, so the Forge file has no Mekanism or Create recipe sets and its config only offers Vanilla.

Requirements

	NeoForge 1.21.1	Forge 1.21.1
Loader	NeoForge 21.1.206 or newer	Forge 52.1 or newer
Required mods	none	none
Recipe sets	Vanilla, Mekanism, Create, Create + Mekanism	Vanilla only
Optional: JEI	recipes + info pages	recipes + info pages
Optional: EMI	recipes + info pages	– (no Forge 1.21.1 version)
Optional: Jade	rig status, energy, speed	– (no Forge 1.21.1 version)
Optional: Mekanism, Create	change the recipes	– (no Forge 1.21.1 versions)
Ponder (in-game build guides)	included: hold W over a Quarry block	– (no Forge 1.21.1 version)

Install it on both the client and the server.

FAQ

Does it generate ores? No. It only mines what's really in the ground.

Where does it dig? Behind the rig: on the side away from the Controller. Put the Controller on the face that points away from where you want the hole.

Why isn't it digging? Look at the status line in the Controller screen: "Stopped", "No power", "Output full", "Frame damaged" or "Stopped by redstone" tell you what it's waiting for.

Can I use it in my modpack? Yes.

Fabric? Not planned.

What's next? 2.0 adds storage, fluids and more upgrades; 3.0 adds bigger rigs and drill heads. The full list is on the roadmap. Both will load your 1.x worlds.

Credits

Made by DecayPlay. The mod's own code and art are original.

Includes Ponder by the Create Team, MIT License. Includes Flywheel by Jozufozu, MIT License (Ponder needs it). Both come inside the NeoForge file, with their license files.

This mod, along with all my other mods, is created using AI tools. I develop the ideas, make the design decisions—including what the mod does, how it functions, and how it is balanced—and test every version in-game before release. The code, textures, and art are all generated with AI tools. I carefully review every bug report and suggestion, which directly influence future updates. Due to time constraints, I rely on AI tools to assist in development. If you are opposed to AI-generated mods, this mod may not be suitable for you. I hold the copyright for all images and artwork used in my mods. At this time I also have enabled comments on all of Mod pages If you want to leave any feedback or any ideas you can use this GitHub repository to make a issue slash idea, It will be used for bugs features from you And feedback https://github.com/tyler919/mods/issues