# The pack that packs itself.
You know the drill: twenty stacks of loot, one bag, and five minutes of dragging things
into rows. **Packwork** does that part for you. Drop an item in and it *goes somewhere* —
stamped leather tabs down the side are compartments, and a rules engine files every item
into the right one the instant it lands. A Loose tab catches anything no rule wanted, so
nothing you drop in ever disappears.
## 🎒 Sorting is the soul
- **Auto-tabs out of the box** — Food, Combat, Tools & Utility, Ores & Valuables,
Brewing & Alchemy, Nature & Farming, Blocks & Building, and Loose. They sort by what an
item *is*, so any mod's pickaxe is a Tool and any mod's stew is Food — no config, no
per-mod support. Two more compartments (Charts & Bearings, The Catch) open up when you
fit the trinket that earns them, and every category list is a datapack tag, so packs
can retune them without code.
- **Make your own compartments** — name a tab, stamp it with any item's icon, dye the
leather, reorder the rail. The stamp is a live filter: a pickaxe stamp gathers tools,
a bread stamp gathers food.
- **Pin an item by putting it where you want it** — drop it into any compartment it
wouldn't sort to and the pack pins it there on the spot (a stitched note tells you so).
Pinned items wear a red ribbon and beat every rule. Hover + `P` toggles a pin too.
- **Every compartment picks its arrangement** — Tidy (the pack arranges it) or **keep my
layout** (items stay in the exact cells you drop them; new arrivals fill the gaps;
Tidy Up still re-sorts once when you ask).
- **Tidy Up, search, flatten** — merge and re-sort with one button, find anything across
every tab, or collapse it all into one grid when you just want to rummage.
## ⛏️ It files what you mine
Fit a **Lodestone Charm** and the pack doesn't just magnet nearby drops — it takes over
your pickups. Anything you pick up that the pack knows where to put (it sorts to a
compartment, it's pinned, or the pack already holds some) goes **straight into the pack**,
filed under the right tab, while new, unknown finds still land in your pockets. Mine a
vein of cobble and your inventory stays clean. A small switch on the pack turns
pack-first pickup off per pack.
## 🧳 Six tiers, and the slots go DEEP
Canvas → Leather → Studded → Reinforced → Runed → **Sculkhide**. Every tier is crafted as
a full **ring around the pack before it** — its hide or plating on the edges, its
fittings on the corners: copper buckles, iron studs, gold with diamonds, diamond bound in
netherite, and finally amethyst cornered with echo shards from the Deep Dark. The upgrade
carries **everything** inside straight up — contents, compartments, pins, trinkets, name,
every store. No recipe in this mod can eat a filled pack.
And every step cuts the slots **deeper**: one vanilla stack per slot on Canvas, up to
**six stacks in a single slot** (384 cobble) on Sculkhide — filed under one tab, while
your cursor, hoppers, and fittings only ever pull legal stacks back out.
## 🔧 Brass sockets, eighteen trinkets
Craftable fittings slot into the brass rail — and pull back out any time:
| Fitting | |
|---|---|
| Lodestone Charm | the magnet + pack-first pickup: it files what you mine |
| Restock Strap | refills your hotbar from pack stock |
| Repair Kit | slowly mends worn and held gear |
| Bottomless Lining | more slots, never voided |
| Compass Rose | the only way a pack throws anything out — opt-in, per item |
| Quick-Draw Straps | a tool breaks in your hand, the pack hands you another |
| Quill & Ledger | the rule editor — write your own filters (name, mod, category) per compartment |
| Tinker's Kit | a leather tool roll unrolls inside the pack: a 3×3 bench fed from your stores, with a parchment **Recipe Ledger** of everything craftable from pack stock |
| Field Furnace | banked embers cook raw ore and raw food as you walk |
| Provisioner's Pouch | feeds you before hunger bites, plainest rations first |
| Cartographer's Sleeve | opens Charts & Bearings for maps, compasses, clocks |
| Angler's Creel | opens The Catch — your catch lands straight in the pack |
| Torchbearer's Loop | sets a torch from pack stock when you stand in the dark |
| Herbalist's Bundle | replants harvested crops from your own seed stock |
| Waterskin Rack | a real fluid tank, shown as a glass gauge |
| Soul Vial | banks your XP, pours it back, auto-mends Mending gear |
| Charge Crystal | an arcane charge in copper-wound glass — standard FE, tops up your powered tools |
| Alchemist's Flask Harness | bottled vapors — a chemical tank (with Mekanism) |
New to the pack? Craft the **Outfitter's Handbook** — five in-game chapters on sorting,
trinkets, tiers, and the stores, with every number pulled live from the code.
## 🏕️ Set it down, pipe it up
Sneak-right-click to stand a pack in the world — leather and brass, wearing its tier's
own trim (twine, studs, plates, glowing runes, or the Sculkhide's echo-lit hide). Break
it and you get the pack back with everything still inside. A placed pack speaks
NeoForge's own item, fluid, and energy capabilities, so hoppers, pipes, and cables feed
it with no bridge block — and piped-in items auto-file into the right compartment,
because the sorting is virtual over one store.
## 🤝 Needs nothing, plays with everything
**Zero hard dependencies.** Every cross-mod touch lights up only when its mod is present:
- **JEI** — every craft renders as a real recipe (the tier rings included), plus info
pages for every pack, trinket, and the handbook.
- **Curios** — wear the pack in the back slot and open it right off your shoulders: B
finds it when your pockets hold no pack, Shift-B opens the worn one outright, and its
trinkets keep working worn.
- **Mekanism** — the Flask Harness becomes a real chemical tank its pipes can fill.
- **Forgework** — Flux cables charge a placed pack, 1 Flux = 1 FE, and the Charge
Crystal tops up carried Forgework terminals.
- **Pantrywork** — its food tags fold into the Food tab.
Remove any of them and Packwork carries on without it.
## ⚙️ Requirements & honest notes
- **1.21.1 / NeoForge** (21.1.235+). No other dependencies, ever. Other loaders and
versions may follow based on demand.
- The pack never voids anything on failure. The only trash path is the Compass Rose,
and it's opt-in per item.
