Rough Beginnings

Rough Beginnings

An early-game survival overhaul for NeoForge 1.21.1.

Goal

- make those first 30 minutes of a fresh world feel like you're truly starting from scratch.

What it does

- Plant Fiber & Plant String. You need to really think about how your going to obtain your starting tools, do you have acess to gravel near by? Is there a lot of grass around you? Any dead bushes or leaves in sight? Those are all the new questions you'll need to ask yourself during your first day getting started in your new world. - Plant Fiber & Plant String. Rocks scatter across every overworld biome on dirt or stone surfaces via anything that tags into `#minecraft:is_overworld`. Pick them up, place them as decoration , or chuck them at friends and foes! - Plant Fiber & Plant String. Snowball-style trajectory, 2 damage on hit. 85% chance the rock drops back so you can pick it up; 15% chance it shatters with stone particles and a satisfying crack. - Plant Fiber & Plant String. Sword, shovel, pickaxe, axe, hoe. Stronger than wood, slightly weaker than stone, wooden mining tier flint gets you cutting and digging without breaking the stone pickaxe needed for iron progression. Recipes need plant string for binding. - Plant Fiber & Plant String. A 3×3 surface you knap by hitting with a rock. Accepts any vanilla crafting recipe. Works as a primitive crafting table for when you can't make a real one yet. - Plant Fiber & Plant String. Right-click to insert dirt, sand, gravel, etc. Then keep right clicking until items drop. Drops useful early-game items per the data pack: string, bone, clay, iron and gold nuggets, or even the rare diamond depending on what you Sieve! - Plant Fiber & Plant String. Fiber drops from almost every type of grass. Twist 1 fiber into 2 strings.

How it plays

1. Spawn in a fresh world. Punch grass, get plant fiber. Leaves are still hand-breakable for saplings/sticks. 2. Find 3 rocks on the ground create your crafting rock while holding onto your Knapping Rock. 3. Gather plant fibers from grass than twist your 4 fibers into 2 plant strings. 4. Place a crafting rock. Knap your first flint tools at the crafting rock. 5. Get wood and string for a Sieve. Sieve dirt and gravel for early bones, clay, and your first iron nugget. Cobble together better tools as the materials come in. 6. By the time you have a stone pickaxe, you've actually earned it.

Compatibility

- Immersive Weathering (NeoForge port) — sandy dirt, silt, and grassy variants are sieve-able with themed loot. - Salt (NeoForge port) — `salt:salt_block` is hand-breakable. - Still Life — rocks generate in all 108 of its biomes automatically (it tags into `#minecraft:is_overworld`).

No hard dependencies on any of the above — they're pure compat patches that activate when the mod is present.

Configuration

`config/rough_beginnings-common.toml`:

| Option | Default | Behavior | |---|---|---| | `requirePreferredTool` | `false` | If true, you must use the matching tool category (pickaxe for stone, axe for wood, etc.) - not just *any* tool. | | `alwaysAllowInstaBreak` | `true` | Instant-break blocks (tall grass, etc.) bypass the rule even without a tool. | | `forceInCreative` | `false` | Apply the hand-breaking rule in creative mode too. |

For finer control, edit the `rough_beginnings:breakable` block tag and the `rough_beginnings:canbreak` item tag via a datapack. The data pack also defines per-block sieve drops in `data/rough_beginnings/sieve_drops/` - you can add your own without touching the jar.

Credits & License

MIT-licensed. Built on:

- 96_Leaf by 96_Leaf (MIT) - original Fabric mod whose rock, sieve, crafting rock, and flint tool concepts power the gameplay here. Heavily modified for NeoForge 1.21.1; most upstream features cut, rewritten, or restyled. - %%MD1%% by 96_Leaf (MIT) - the block-breaking restriction logic that became the "Hands Off" backbone.

Full breakdown of what came from where in the ATTRIBUTIONS file.