Balanced Levels
- By
Charges enchanting and anvil work in real XP points instead of flat levels, removes the anvil's Too Expensive limit, and stops repairs from inflating future costs.
The problem
Vanilla charges enchanting and anvil work in levels - it subtracts a flat number from your level counter. But the XP curve is not linear. The points between level 30 and 33 dwarf the points between level 0 and 3, even though both are "3 levels".
So a level-33 player pays roughly 13x more real XP for the same 3-level enchant than a level-3 player does. Same enchant, wildly different price.
What this mod does
Every such charge is repriced in XP points: a cost of N always costs the points needed to climb from level 0 to level N, no matter where you are on the curve.
| Vanilla | BalancedLevels | |
|---|---|---|
| Enchanting table | Flat level deduction | Points for level 0 to N |
| Anvil | Flat level deduction | Points for level 0 to N |
| Anvil cost 40+ | "Too Expensive!", refused | Allowed - you pay the real cost |
| Repair with material | 1 level per unit + prior-work penalty | Flat 2 levels |
| Repair's aftermath | Doubles the item's hidden penalty | Leaves it untouched |
| Rename | 1 level + prior-work penalty | Flat 1 level |
| Grindstone refund | Full | 50% |
You still need to be level N to afford a cost-N operation. That part is unchanged.
About the prior-work penalty
Every anvil operation stamps a hidden number onto your item and doubles it each time. That number is then added to the price of every future anvil operation on that item. It is why a well-used tool eventually becomes untouchable.
As a brake on stacking enchantments that is fair enough, and it is left fully intact for enchantment combining. The problem is that vanilla applies it to plain repairs and renames too, which add no power to the item at all. Patch your armor up a few times and you have quietly made it expensive to enchant later, for nothing.
So repairs and renames now cost a flat fee, and repairs no longer escalate the penalty.
Expect your level to drop by less than the number shown
That is the point. A 3-cost enchant at level 33 costs 27 points and leaves you at level 32, not level 30. Level 30 to 33 is 363 points; level 0 to 3 is 27. Charging 363 for a "3 level" enchant is exactly the overcharge this removes.
Why the grindstone is nerfed
Vanilla's refund is derived from each enchantment's own min-cost value and has nothing to do with what you paid to apply it. Once enchanting is repriced, the refund can exceed the cost - enchant, grind, repeat, profit. Halving it closes most of that gap. Set it back to 1.0 in the config if you would rather have vanilla's refund.
Configuration
All nine behaviours are individually toggleable in config/balancedlevels.json, which ships with comments explaining each setting and its valid values. Turn any single piece back to vanilla without losing the rest.
Requirements
Fabric Loader 0.19+ on Minecraft 26.2. No Fabric API dependency.
The Balanced Levels Team
