CodeBadger: Skillsmith

CodeBadger: Skillsmith

A skill system for NeoForge 1.21.1, inspired by Reskillable, where almost everything is yours to change.

Players level 20 skills from 0 to 40. Each skill gives perks as it levels, and locks items, recipes, potions, enchantments, blocks, dimensions and mob interactions until the player is skilled enough. Skills, perks, locks and XP all live in plain JSON files in your config folder. You can rebalance the whole mod, add your own skills or gate another mod's content without writing any code.

Beta: Skillsmith is feature-complete and tested, but new. Please report bugs and balance feedback.

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Two ways to level, or both

Vanilla XP mode (default) Players spend their vanilla experience to level skills from the skill screen. Each skill level costs the same XP that vanilla charges for that level, and every player has a budget of 350 points (1 per level). Players can spread their points across many skills or specialize in a few, and change their minds later with a respec: reset a skill to level 0 to free its points, with nothing refunded and a cooldown before it can be leveled again.

Skill XP mode Each skill earns its own XP from doing things: mining natural ores trains Mining, blocking hits with armor and shields trains Defense, exploring new ground trains Exploration. Skills level up on their own, with no point limit. Instead, each skill has a level cap that it raises by prestiging: reach the cap, prestige, and the skill starts over at level 0 with a higher cap and a small permanent bonus. Progress scales forever, and limits can be turned on if you want an end point.

Mix them Any skill can use the other mode. For example, let Exploration level on its own from travelling while every other skill is bought with vanilla XP. Each skill-XP skill can prestige or simply level to its max.

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The 20 skills

Skill	What it does
Attack	Hit harder with melee weapons
Defense	Get more protection from your armor
Dexterity	Deal more ranged damage and survive longer falls
Constitution	Raise your maximum health
Exploration	Move faster and step up whole blocks
Luck	Land critical hits more often, and harder
Magic	Gain more experience
Fishing	Get bites sooner and reel in better loot
Husbandry	Get more from animals and breed twins
Mining	Mine faster and find double ores
Gathering	Chop faster and get double logs
Farming	Grow crops faster and harvest double
Tinkering	Craft redstone devices, sometimes saving ingredients
Smelting	Get extra output when smelting ores and metals
Smithing	Craft tougher gear and repair it for less
Crafting	Craft everyday items, sometimes with extra output. Unlocks a 3x3 crafting tab
Culinary	Cook food that fills you more and lasts longer
Building	Use workstations and reach farther when building
Alchemy	Brew longer, stronger potions
Enchanting	Enchant for fewer levels, save lapis and roll higher enchantments

Every skill, its perks and how often they apply can be changed or removed, and you can add new skills. A skill's levels can need other skills too: for example, Attack 8 can need Dexterity 4 or Magic 5.

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Skill locks

• Crafting locks: you need the skill to craft the item. Netherite gear needs Smithing, redstone devices need Tinkering, workstations need Building, and bread, cake and other made foods need Culinary.
• Use locks: you need the skill to use, place, wear, wield or mine with the item.
• Block locks: placing or breaking a block can need skills. Planting crops, mushrooms and nether plants needs Farming, and so does harvesting wheat and nether wart. Root crops (carrots, potatoes and beetroots) can be harvested by anyone, and carrots and potatoes can be planted by anyone too. The soil under a locked crop can't be broken or trampled to pop it off.
• Brewing locks: potions need Alchemy (and some need Constitution).
• Enchantment locks: higher enchantment levels need Enchanting.
• Anvil rules: repairing and enchanting at an anvil can need skills, with a different level for each repair material: stone tools need Mining, leather needs Crafting, and gold, iron, diamond and netherite need more and more Smithing.
• Dimension locks: travelling to the Nether, the End or a modded dimension can need skills.
• Mob locks: attacking, trading with, riding, breeding, taming, shearing, leashing or naming a mob can need skills.

More than one way in. A lock can combine skills with AND, OR and NOT, so players aren't stuck behind a single skill. An axe needs Gathering or Attack, iron armor needs Defense 10 or Constitution 15, a lead needs Crafting or Husbandry, and a mace needs Attack 24, or Attack 16 and Constitution 16.

Tooltips show what's needed, in green when you have it and red when you don't.

No automation loopholes

Crafting locks apply at every vanilla workstation: the crafting table, smithing table, stonecutter, loom, cartography table, anvil, enchanting table, Crafter, brewing stand, furnaces and campfires.

Automated blocks like the Crafter, brewing stand and furnaces check the skills of the player who placed them, even while that player is offline. A block nobody placed can't make anything locked, and neither can one that was copied by a schematic or moved by a contraption. Its owner is tied to the spot in the world, not to the block.

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No easy farming

• Double drops only count natural blocks. Ores, logs and crops have to have generated or grown naturally, so placing and re-mining blocks earns nothing.
• Loops are detected. Recipes that can be crafted back and forth (ingots and blocks, or longer chains), blocks that break back into their ingredients (snow, clay) and re-wettable sponges give no refunds, extra output, bonus output or skill XP.
• Crafting perks only cover their own recipes. Tinkering's refunds apply to redstone devices, and Crafting's extra output to everyday items like planks, torches and slabs, from lists you can edit.
• Cooked food and brewed potions remember their maker. They're stamped with the cook's or brewer's skill, and the bonus follows the item.
• If you use skill XP mode (or give some skills their own skill XP), that XP has to come from real play:
  • Alchemy only counts potions a brewing stand actually brewed.
  • Building only counts blocks that stay placed.
  • Defense and Constitution only train from mob and player hits, not cactus or falls.
  • Slime bounces don't count as falls.
  • Travel only counts ground you haven't crossed recently, so AFK minecart and boat loops stop paying after one lap. Riding counts, and elytra flight is capped.
  • Any XP source can be given a per-minute limit.

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Built for modpacks

• Everything is JSON in config/skillsmith/: skills, perks, locks, anvil rules, XP sources and messages. It's written tall and simple (one setting per line), with full docs copied into the folder on first launch and commented-out examples in the files that start empty.
• Split by mod: every folder can hold one file per mod. Entries for mods that aren't installed are skipped quietly, and requires_mod / unless_mod turn skills, perks or sources on or off depending on which mods are present. A later file can replace a built-in perk or XP source by using its id.
• 40+ perk types: any attribute (vanilla, NeoForge or modded), plus coded perks like double drops, critical hits, breeding twins, crop growth, ingredient refunds, potion strength and more. Perks can also run commands when a level is reached.
• Item lists: name a list of items once (@tinkering) and use it in any perk or XP source. Mods and packs can add to a list without replacing it.
• AND, OR and NOT work in every lock, anvil rule and skill level requirement.
• Per-skill XP settings: give any skill its own XP curve, cost multiplier, prestige step, rank limit or lock scaling, so Mining can level faster than Attack.
• Gate modded machines and crafting screens by listing them in gates/workstations/, with no data pack or code needed.
• Messages and sounds: every level-up, prestige, respec, lock and death message can be rewritten, moved to chat, the action bar or a title, and given its own sound. Resource packs can reword and re-sound them too.
• Per world or shared: one config for every world, or a separate copy for each world.
• Mistakes don't break servers: a typo in a config file is reported in the log with the file and entry, and that entry is skipped.
• /skillsmith reload applies config changes without restarting.

General settings (skillsmith-common.toml)

XP mode, point budget, XP cost multiplier, level loss on death (off by default), respecs, the skill XP curve, prestige range and limits, how locks scale in skill XP mode, loop exceptions, and whether the config is shared or per world.

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Skill screen

Press K (rebindable) to open it.

• Skills: every skill as a card in a scrolling grid, with an icon that grows with it (Attack goes from a wooden sword to a netherite one), and a panel for the selected one showing its upgrades, what its next level needs, the next items and potions it unlocks, and the button to level or prestige it.
• Bonuses: every bonus a skill can give, and where each one comes from.
• Unlocks: search every locked item and potion by name, skill, lock type and level.
• Styles: pick how the screen looks: Slate, Gilded, Floating, Parchment or Runestone.

The screen fits itself to small windows and large GUI scales.

Tooltips tell you the rest: what an item needs to craft, use, plant, harvest or brew; which skill perks affect crafting it ("Tinkering: +25% Ingredient Refund"); and what a cook's or brewer's stamp adds ("+25% hunger and saturation").

Make your own styles: a resource pack or mod can add styles, from a quick recolor to a completely new look with its own images for the window, panels, cards, buttons and tabs. No code is needed, and mods can also draw pieces in code.

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Commands

Command	Who	What it does
/skillsmith info [player]	Everyone (others: operators)	Show levels, points and costs
/skillsmith levelup <skill>	Everyone	Level up a skill bought with vanilla XP
/skillsmith respec <skill>	Everyone	Reset a skill bought with vanilla XP to level 0, with a cooldown
/skillsmith prestige <skill>	Everyone	Prestige a skill at its cap
/skillsmith set <players> <skill> <level>	Operators	Set a skill level
/skillsmith xp <players> <skill> <amount>	Operators	Give skill XP
/skillsmith setprestige <players> <skill> <rank>	Operators	Set a prestige rank
/skillsmith reset <players> [skill]	Operators	Reset skills
/skillsmith reload	Operators	Reload the config

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Addons and other mods

Compat addons can bring ready-made setups for other mods. Their default files are copied into your config the first time they're installed (and never again, so your changes and deletions stick). An addon can:

• add new skills, replace built-in ones, or add perks and level requirements to them;
• add perks, XP sources, locks, machines, item lists, messages and anvil rules, or replace built-in ones;
• add new kinds of XP sources and perks, which you then tune in JSON like any other.

Skillsmith has a public API (com.codebadger.skillsmith.api.SkillsmithApi) for reading skills and perks, checking locks (with their AND, OR and NOT), reading block owners, giving skill XP, listening for XP, level and prestige events, and registering machines, crafting screens, XP source types and perk types. To mark a machine with no dependency at all, send an InterModComms message: