QuestBridge

Writing FTB quests for a 300-mod pack is mostly guesswork

You want a quest for "eat five different foods" or "rest by a campfire at night," but FTB Quests only ships item, kill, biome, dimension, structure, advancement, and a handful of other fixed task types. Everything else has to be faked with a checkmark task and an honour system, and every item task still needs you to know the exact registry ID or tag before you can type it in.

QuestBridge is a Fabric server mod that closes that gap for FTB Quests. It exports what your modpack actually contains so you are not guessing IDs, gives FTB item tasks broad filters ("any food," "anything tagged c:ingots," "anything from this mod"), and lets an FTB custom task track real gameplay — eating, sleeping, crafting, taming, breeding, fishing, trading, placing or breaking a block, killing a group of mobs, standing by a lit campfire at night — instead of just an honour-system checkmark. It was built for and is running in Nytheria, but nothing about it is Nytheria-specific: every feature works from a plain JSON file you can write for any pack.

What it does

1. Modpack data dumps for quest authoring

/questbridge dump snapshots the running server's registries and writes a timestamped export under the instance folder: items, blocks, entities, bosses, biomes, POIs, fluids, effects, potions, enchantments, structures, dimensions, advancements, recipes, and stats, split both by category and by mod namespace, plus FTB Quests authoring catalogs (requirement snippets, armor set bundles, task/reward type reflection). This is reference data for you to read — QuestBridge never edits config/ftbquests from a dump.

2. Smart item filters for FTB item tasks

/questbridge ftb filter give <type> hands you a marker item that plugs into any normal FTB item task. Put it in the task slot and that task now accepts a whole category instead of one exact item: any item from a mod namespace, anything in an item tag, anything with a given data component, any food, tool, armor piece, block item, damageable item, ore/ingot/seed-tagged item, or Curios/Trinkets-style item. No custom task, no JSON — just a smarter item task.

3. Event-driven requirements that turn real actions into custom-task progress

For everything FTB's built-in tasks cannot express, write a small JSON file under config/questbridge/requirements/ and tag an FTB custom task with questbridge_<id>. QuestBridge then feeds that task real progress from gameplay:

• eating or drinking a matching item (with optional "N distinct foods" counting)
• crafting or fishing up a matching item
• placing, breaking, or using a matching block
• using or killing a matching entity, including grouped kills ("any undead")
• taming or breeding an animal, trading with a villager
• standing somewhere that matches a location selector while it ticks — by a lit campfire at night, inside a structure or structure tag, during a thunderstorm, below a Y level, in a biome or biome tag — with continuous streaks that reset when the player leaves the condition
• sleeping through the night, changing dimension
• completed-advancement groups and custom statistic thresholds

Every requirement can carry a feedback block: an actionbar line with {title}/{progress}/ {max}/{percent}/{id} placeholders and &-colour codes, a sound with volume/pitch, a completion particle burst, and an optional team-wide notification — so progress feels alive instead of silent. Progress is tracked per FTB team and survives reloads in a per-world save file.

60-second example

Write this to config/questbridge/requirements/campfire_rest_at_night.json (or just run /questbridge examples, which writes this and seven other ready-made files for you):

{
  "id": "campfire_rest_at_night",
  "title": "Rest by the Fire",
  "description": "Stay within four blocks of a lit campfire for 30 seconds after dark.",
  "kind": "location_timer",
  "trigger": "location_tick",
  "selector": {
    "near_block": "minecraft:campfire",
    "radius": 4,
    "lit": true,
    "time": "night"
  },
  "duration_ticks": 600,
  "count": 600,
  "continuous": true,
  "progress_scope": "team",
  "ftb_task_mode": "custom_task",
  "feedback": {
    "actionbar": "&6Resting... &f{progress}&7/&f{max}",
    "sound": "minecraft:block.campfire.crackle",
    "on": "both",
    "particles": "minecraft:flame"
  }
}

Run /questbridge reload, then tag any FTB custom task with questbridge_campfire_rest_at_night. That task now fills in as the player sits near a lit campfire at night, with an actionbar countdown and a crackling sound, and resets if they walk away before the streak finishes.

Command overview

All commands require permission level 2.

Safety by design

QuestBridge assumes you do not trust a mod to rewrite your quest book, so it does not — unless you explicitly ask it to:

• Read-only by default. Dump, inspect, validate, ideas, draft, and capture never touch config/ftbquests.
• Explicit apply, with backup and rollback. The only commands that can write real quest files are /questbridge ftb apply preview and commit, and commit copies a backup first unless a profile explicitly disables it. /questbridge ftb apply rollback <backup_id> restores it. Backup and rollback paths are normalized and checked against their root directory before any file operation runs, so a crafted profile or backup id cannot copy files outside the intended folders.
• Fail-safe binding. If an FTB custom task is tagged for a QuestBridge requirement that no longer exists, the task is bound as a manual-click task instead of being left permanently stuck — a broken binding can never block a chapter behind an impossible task.
• FTB Quests is optional. QuestBridge checks isModLoaded("ftbquests") before touching any FTB API. Without FTB Quests installed, the dump and export tooling still works.

Requirements & compatibility

• Minecraft 1.21.1, Fabric Loader 0.19.1+, Fabric API, Java 21
• FTB Quests is optional; compiled and tested against FTB Quests Fabric 2101.1.35
• Server-side by design — install it on the server (or singleplayer) to get dumps, filters, and event-driven requirement progress. Clients only need the mod installed if you want FTB's in-game item-task GUI to show the live "which items currently match this filter" preview for a QuestBridge marker item; without it on the client, the filter itself still works correctly in play, only that preview list is unavailable.

Can I remove it before release?

Depends on how you used it.

• Authoring-only: if you only ran /questbridge dump, ideas, draft, validate, or capture to help you write normal FTB tasks with exact IDs and tags, QuestBridge can be removed before you ship the pack — none of that output is read at runtime.
• Runtime use: if any real quest uses a QuestBridge filter marker item, a QuestBridge named requirement, or a custom task tagged questbridge_<id>, QuestBridge must stay in the released pack — FTB Quests asks it directly whether items match and how tasks progress.

FAQ

Does this replace FTB Quests? No. It is a companion mod that only activates its FTB-specific features when FTB Quests is installed, and it never invents its own task/reward GUI.

Will it edit my existing quest book? Not unless you run /questbridge ftb apply commit <profile> yourself, with a profile you wrote. Every other command is read-only or writes to its own authoring folders under config/questbridge/ or the instance's moddump/ folder.

What happens if I remove QuestBridge and a quest still uses one of its marker items or custom tasks? The item task no longer knows the marker's meaning, and the custom task's binding is gone. Check /questbridge ftb validate book before removing it from a pack that has real quests depending on it.

Does this work in single-player? Yes. FTB Quests treats a solo player as a team of one, so team-scoped progress works the same way.

Can I use it purely for the data dump and ignore everything else? Yes — /questbridge dump and the ftb_quests/ authoring snippets work whether or not you ever touch requirements, filters, or custom tasks.

Does it require KubeJS, Trinkets, or any other mod besides Fabric API? No. FTB Quests is the only optional integration; everything else is plain Fabric/Minecraft.