Magic Building Staffs

Build, reshape and move your world with magic — no machines required.

Magic Building Staffs gives you a staff that places, swaps, clears, copies and moves whole areas of blocks at once. It's a non-tech take on the classic building-gadget idea, inspired by Direwolf20's Building Gadgets: no power, no chargers, just a staff and its durability.

Every action shows a translucent ghost preview first, so you always see exactly what will happen before you click.

The Staffs

Five tiers, crafted from three sticks and two of the material:

• Each block placed, swapped, destroyed or pasted costs 1 durability. Copying and cutting are free.
• Staffs accept Mending, Unbreaking and Silk Touch.
• Holding a staff extends your reach to 15 blocks.

Modes

Switch modes with Sneak + Scroll. The current mode appears on screen for a few seconds.

Build (blue)

Fill an area outward from the face you're aiming at. Sneak + right-click a block to choose what to build with, then right-click to build. Size it with Up / Down / Left / Right / Forward / Back in the settings menu (up to 15 per axis).

Build to Me (blue)

Builds a pillar from the block you're aiming at straight toward you. The farther you stand, the longer the pillar (up to 12).

Exchange (yellow)

Swap blocks on a flat surface for your chosen block. Removed blocks are returned to your inventory as their normal drops — stone gives cobblestone, grass gives dirt. With Silk Touch on the staff, you get the block itself.

• Fuzzy ON (default): only swaps blocks matching the one you aim at.
• Fuzzy OFF: swaps everything on the surface.

Destruction (red)

Clears an area. Blocks are voided — nothing drops. You'll see a warning the first time each login, plus an extra warning whenever the area contains furnaces, hoppers or other blocks that hold items.

Copy (green)

Right-click one corner, then sneak + right-click the opposite corner to copy the 3D area between them (up to 256 per side). Beds, doors and tall flowers are always copied whole, even if your selection only catches half.

Cut (green)

Select two corners like Copy, then Ctrl + right-click to cut. After you confirm, the blocks are lifted out of the world and stored — no items, no drops. Paste places them back once, for free. A stored cut survives death.

Paste (green)

Places your copy or cut where you aim. Alt + Scroll rotates it 90° at a time, and the preview turns with it.

• From a copy: uses blocks from your inventory, all or nothing — if you're missing anything, nothing is placed and you're told exactly what's missing.
• From a cut: free, one-time, and needs every space clear.

Undo & Redo

Ctrl + Z undoes and Ctrl + Y redoes your last 3 staff actions.

• Undoing a build returns your blocks and the exact durability it cost (Unbreaking included).
• Undoing an exchange restores the original block and takes back exactly what you were given for it.
• Undoing a destruction restores the blocks.
• Undoing a cut puts the blocks back where they were.

Controls

All keys can be rebound under Controls → Magic Building Staffs.

Storage & Safety

• Chests, trapped chests, barrels, ender chests and shulker boxes are never touched by any mode, and modded storage using the common chest and barrel tags is covered too.
• Items inside furnaces, hoppers and similar blocks are lost when those blocks are cut or destroyed — you're always warned first.
• Respects claim and protection mods.
• Large actions are spread across server ticks to avoid lag spikes.

Backpack Support

Blocks are pulled from — and returned to — backpacks in your inventory or worn in the Curios back slot. Tested with Sophisticated Backpacks and Pocket Storage. Neither mod is required.

Server Config

Limits are adjustable in magic_building_staffs-server.toml: build, destruction and copy sizes, Build to Me length, blocks placed per tick, and undo history length.

Minecraft 1.21.1 · NeoForge — by ArmedBOB