Grindworks

Everything you need to build a compact, fully automatic mob farm, and nothing you don't.

Grindworks adds a small, focused set of machines that move mobs, kill them, collect the loot and store the experience. Each block does one job and fits in a single block space, and its art is drawn to sit naturally next to vanilla.

The machines

Mob Masher

The heart of every farm. Power it with redstone and its blades kill whatever stands on it.

• Kills count as player kills, so you get player-only drops and full XP
• Six stackable upgrades: Sharpness, Looting, Fire Aspect, Smite, Bane of Arthropods and Beheading (mob heads)
• Up to 10 upgrades per slot by default, configurable on the server
• Zombies hit by the Masher don't call reinforcements

Mob Fan

Pushes mobs (and you) in the direction it faces while powered.

• Upgrades for width, height and distance
• A "Show Area" toggle in the GUI draws the exact push zone in the world

Entity Conveyor

An animated belt that carries mobs and items along. Sneak to walk against it. Mobs can spawn on it, so it works as a spawning floor.

Iron Spikes

Simple contact damage. Mobs killed by spikes alone still drop their XP, but they do not count as player kills.

Absorption Hopper

A vacuum for your kill chamber.

• Collects items and XP orbs in a 7x7x7 area, expandable with Absorption Radius Upgrades
• The collection area can be offset in all three axes and previewed in the world
• Every side can be set to item output, fluid output or off, and small connectors on the block show the current mode
• Items go into adjacent inventories, experience becomes Fluid XP in its internal tank and flows into adjacent tanks
• A redstone signal pauses it

Liquid experience

Collected XP is stored as Fluid XP, 20 mB per experience point.

• Singularity Tank holds 32 buckets, and its fluid level is visible in the block and on the item
• Jumbo Tank holds 1,024 buckets
• XP Drain Singularity Tank: stand on it and your own XP drains into storage
• XP Tap: attach it to the side of a tank and right-click to turn Fluid XP back into orbs
• Use a glass bottle on a tank to fill a Bottle o' Enchanting for 200 mB
• Tanks keep their contents when broken, and crafting a tank alone in the grid empties it
• Fluid XP can be bucketed and placed, and standing in it trades hunger for experience

All tanks and the hopper use the Fabric Transfer API, so pipes and tanks from other mods can connect.

Look and feel

• All textures are hand-made 32x pixel art in the vanilla style: iron plates, dark hopper metal, glass tanks
• GUIs follow the vanilla container look, with ghost icons showing which upgrade each slot takes
• Upgrades share a blue plate design, so they are easy to find in a chest

Configuration

config/obscuras_mob_grinder-server.json

• masherMaxUpgrades: maximum upgrades per Masher slot (default 10, range 1–64)
• fanStrongerBlades: stronger fan push (default off)

The server's values sync to clients on join, and /reload re-reads the file.

Requirements and compatibility

• Minecraft 1.21.1, Fabric Loader 0.19.5 or newer, Fabric API, Java 21
• Works in singleplayer and on dedicated servers, where it is required on both server and client
• No built-in recipe-viewer or Jade integration yet. Crafting recipes show in the vanilla recipe book, but beheading drops do not show in recipe viewers
• Languages: English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese

Getting started

1. Build a dark spawning room, or use Entity Conveyors as the floor
2. Use Mob Fans and Conveyors to move mobs onto a Mob Masher
3. Power the Masher with a lever
4. Place an Absorption Hopper beside the kill spot, set one side to items facing a chest and one side to fluid facing a tank
5. Add upgrades, then attach an XP Tap to the tank when you want your levels back

FAQ

Does the Masher need fuel or energy? No, only a redstone signal. Do Masher kills give rare and player-only drops? Yes. Looting upgrades apply too. Can I use it in a modpack? Yes. Forge or NeoForge version? Not planned. This is a Fabric mod. Found a bug? Please report it on the issue tracker with your mod list and log.