Courier Boot Upgrades
Upgrade the boots you already own — don't replace them.
Courier Boot Upgrades was designed with the MineColonies mod in mind (give your couriers and guards faster, tougher footwear!), but it has no dependencies whatsoever — it works perfectly in pure vanilla and in any modpack. Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge 47.x, required on client and server.
What it does
Craft any pair of boots together with an upgrade material and you get the same boots back with a permanent upgrade trait added. No new boot items, no custom textures, no replacement gear: your enchantments, durability damage, custom names, lore, armor trims, dye colors and any other mod's data stay exactly as they were. It works for players and for mobs wearing boots (zombies, skeletons, piglins, armor stands, compatible modded entities).
All boots are auto-imported at game start. The mod scans the item registry and automatically makes every boot item upgradeable — vanilla boots, modded boots, all of them, zero configuration. Datapacks can additionally tag unusual footwear with forge:boots.
Built-in upgrades (shapeless, any crafting grid)
| Boots + | Trait | Default effect |
|---|---|---|
| Diamond | Courier | +10% movement speed |
| Diamond Block | Reinforced | 2× maximum durability |
| Emerald | Shiny | +5% movement speed |
| Emerald Block | Shiny II | +10% movement speed |
| Netherite Ingot | Swift | +20% movement speed |
| Netherite Block | Super | +20% movement speed |
Everything stacks — there are no tiers. Apply traits in any order; each one can be applied once. All five speed traits together = +65% movement speed at default settings. Durability traits multiply: Reinforced (2×) plus a custom 3× trait = 6× total durability — with the durability bar, breaking point, Mending and Unbreaking all respecting the new maximum.
Create your own upgrades in-game — no restart, no datapack
Operators (permission level 2) can invent new upgrade traits while the server is running, and they become craftable instantly:
Materials can be a single item or any item tag (#forge:...). Conflicting or ambiguous materials are rejected up front, and re-checked on every datapack reload.
Tune everything live
Every value — including the built-in ones — can be changed at runtime and applies immediately to all existing boots and every loaded entity wearing them, no recrafting needed:
Value ranges
| Effect | Range | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| speed | 0 – 100 | percent movement speed |
| armour | 0 – 100 | flat armor points |
| toughness | 0 – 100 | flat armor toughness |
| durability | 1 – 10 per trait | durability multiplier |
| combined durability | capped at 1000× | safety limit across all stacked traits |
Good to know
- All settings and custom traits are saved per world and synchronized to clients automatically — the server is always authoritative, and boots only ever store trait IDs (no cheatable NBT values).
- Tooltips list every trait on the boots, plus totals, in English and German.
- Runtime-created recipes can't show up in the vanilla recipe book (they're created after datapacks load) — crafting itself works perfectly.
- Designed alongside MineColonies for speedy couriers, but again: no dependencies, vanilla-friendly, drop it in any pack.
Install on both client and server.

