Evolving Furnaces

Evolving Furnaces lets you upgrade vanilla Furnaces, Blast Furnaces, Smokers, and Brewing Stands into stronger machines. Start from a normal furnace or brewing stand, turn it into Copper, then keep evolving it through Amethyst, Iron, Lapis, Redstone, Gold, Diamond, Emerald, Obsidian, and Netherite.

Vanilla machines stay vanilla until you upgrade them. Each type keeps its own recipes, fuel behavior, and base speed. Higher tiers process faster, handle more items (or potions) at once, and change appearance using the textures of their material.

Getting Started

Place a vanilla Furnace, Blast Furnace, Smoker, or Brewing Stand, open its GUI, and click the Upgrade button. The first upgrade costs 8 Copper Blocks and 2 experience levels, and turns the machine into its Copper tier.

From there, keep using it. Furnaces, Blast Furnaces, and Smokers gain progress as items finish cooking. Brewing Stands gain progress from potions actually produced. When you have done enough work, gather the next material and experience cost, then upgrade again. Contents, fuel, cycle progress, and progression are kept.

The Info panel shows the current tier, process time, batch size, remaining progress, and the next upgrade cost without leaving the GUI.

Key Features

• Vanilla-first: Furnaces, Blast Furnaces, Smokers, and Brewing Stands are not replaced. You upgrade them when you are ready.
• 10 default tiers: Copper to Netherite, with a new look at every step.
• Usage-based progression: Furnaces need to cook a certain number of items. Brewing Stands need to produce a certain number of potions.
• Faster processing: Each tier reduces cycle time. Blast Furnaces and Smokers stay twice as fast as Furnaces.
• Batch cooking: Higher furnace tiers cook several items in a single cycle. Fuel is still consumed per tick, not per item in the batch.
• Batch brewing: Higher brewing tiers hold several potions per bottle slot. One cycle can brew all three slots. Ingredient cost is the largest brewable stack (8-7-4 consumes 8, 3-2-0 consumes 3). Fuel stays one Blaze Powder charge per cycle.
• Upgrade costs: Each upgrade spends materials from your inventory (main, hotbar, and offhand) plus experience levels.
• Info panel: Check stats and the next upgrade cost directly in the machine GUI.
• Configurable IO: Set each side to Input, Output, Fuel, or Disabled. Hoppers and other item pipes respect that config. There is no auto-eject. On brewing stands, fuel is Blaze Powder only.
• Custom visuals: Each furnace tier uses the source material's textures on the machine borders. Brewing stands fuse the material into the base plate. The rest stays vanilla, so resource packs still apply.
• Data preservation: Upgrading keeps inventory, fuel, cycle progress, stored recipe XP, facing, name, IO config, and progression.
• Recipe compatibility: Uses vanilla smelting, blasting, smoking, and brewing, including recipes added by other mods or datapacks.
• JEI, EMI, and REI: Browse every enabled tier, compare stats, and see upgrade costs. Jade shows the styled machine name.
• Per-machine config: Each machine type can be enabled or disabled in evolvingfurnaces-common.toml. Disabling one hides it from creative and recipe viewers, removes the vanilla upgrade button, and converts already placed Evolving blocks of that type back to vanilla (contents kept).
• Fully data-driven: Tiers, stats, costs, visuals, display names, and progression can all be changed with JSON datapacks.
• Lightweight by design: Throughput comes from batch size, not from processing many items in a single server tick.

Default Tiers

Furnace, Blast Furnace, Smoker, and Brewing Stand each have their own progression. The default material path is the same for all four:

• Copper
• Amethyst
• Iron
• Lapis Lazuli
• Redstone
• Gold
• Diamond
• Emerald
• Obsidian
• Netherite

Default Furnace stats:

Blast Furnaces and Smokers use the same batch sizes, but cook twice as fast. A Netherite Furnace cooks 8 items in 5.5 seconds. A Netherite Blast Furnace or Smoker does the same in 2.75 seconds.

Default Brewing Stand stats. Batch is potions per bottle slot, so Netherite can brew 24 potions in one cycle:

Breaking an upgraded machine drops the machine at its current tier. Items inside drop separately, like vanilla.

For Modpack Makers

Nothing is hardcoded around the default 10-tier path. A datapack can define 5 tiers, 50, or 135.

Each machine type has its own JSON file. You can change:

• Number of tiers and their order
• Display names per language
• Cook time or brew time, and batch size
• Required items cooked, or potions produced, to unlock the next upgrade
• Upgrade materials, including item tags
• Experience level cost
• Visual style block and texture face

Furnace, Blast Furnace, and Smoker use required_cooks and cook_time. Brewing Stands use required_brews and brew_time.

A datapack replaces the full list for that machine. /reload updates the server and syncs the new tiers to clients, GUIs, tooltips, and recipe viewers.

Each machine can also be turned off in the common config. A datapack cannot re-enable a machine disabled there.

Compatibility

Required: Minecraft 1.21.1, NeoForge

Optional: JEI, EMI, REI, Jade

Evolving Furnaces currently supports the Furnace, Blast Furnace, Smoker, and Brewing Stand.