River Fishing 1.0.0 — Patch Notes

Minecraft 1.20.1 (Fabric & Forge) · 1.21.1 (Fabric & NeoForge) · 26.1.2 (Fabric & NeoForge) · 26.2 (Fabric & NeoForge)

Everything in this update is compared to 0.9.0, the last released version. The 0.9.1 draft was never released separately - its changes are included here.

Welcome to 1.0.0

Hey anglers.

This is the big one.

Fly fishing has been rebuilt from the ground up. The fly line is now a real physical rope connected to the rod tip. It has weight, buoyancy, slack and tension. Water carries it, the bottom catches it, and the rod reacts to its load.

There are no casting bars, no timed prompts and no automatic hook sets. You cast the line, watch what it does, and fish it.

Rivers now have actual current. The fish database has grown to 267 species. You can tie your own flies on a 32×32 canvas. Every fish can be cooked. Private ponds have their own stocking records. Fish stay visible throughout the fight, and even a completely outmatched setup can eventually bring a tired fish to the bank.

There is a lot here, so start with the highlights and then jump to the parts you care about.

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Patch Highlights

• Fly fishing has been rebuilt around a physical line. The line is a real rope attached to the rod tip, with slack, tension, buoyancy and weight. Casting, false casting, shooting, mending and stripping all happen through the line itself.
• Rivers have current. Water flows, boats and dropped items drift, foam moves downstream, and your fly line develops a belly in the current.
• 267 fish species are now available, including 160 new species. The new database adds six families, species-specific diets and hybrids.
• Every fish can be cooked. Cooked fish keep their species, weight and catch information. Prime fish also provide their species' effects.
• Private ponds have their own fish records. A pond can cover up to 100×100 blocks of water, has its own name and keeps track of the fish actually stocked there.
• Fish are visible throughout the fight. Runs, dives, jumps and head shakes are now represented by the fish itself.
• Flies are tied on a 32×32 canvas. If you create something that doesn't match one of the known patterns, it still works - but its effectiveness is intentionally unpredictable.
• Any fish can be used as live bait. The size of the bait now determines the minimum predator size that can take it.
• Koi is now a proper species. koi_carp has its own profile and bite rate. The five old koi variant species have been removed.
• Multiplayer fight sounds are local. You hear your own drag and reel at full volume, while nearby players hear a quieter version.

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Fly Fishing

Five experimental fly-fishing systems were discarded during development. This is the sixth version, and it is built around one simple idea:

The line is the mechanic.

There are no timed casting bars, no automatic hook sets and no hidden button sequences. The rod moves the line, and the line determines what happens.

The line is a rope

• The fly line is physically simulated. By default it consists of 96 points (/rfrod rope segments <n>). Gravity, drag, water surface, bottom collision and river current all affect it.
• Line buoyancy matters. Floating, intermediate and sinking lines behave differently. The leader is neutral, while the fly sinks according to its pattern.
• The line starts at the actual rod tip. In first person it leaves the visible tip vertex; in third person it follows the bent 3D tip.
• The line changes appearance with depth. Deeper sections become darker and bluer, making a submerged line visible as a submerged line.
• The rod bends from the line load. The force acting on the rope is transferred back into the blank.
• There are only three inputs. Nothing is timed:
  • Left click: feed 0.6 m of line into the cast. Hold it to open the hand and let the loop shoot line.
  • Right click: strip 0.6 m of line into the hand loop. Hold it to wind line onto the reel.
  • Hotbar change: puts the tackle away, as with other rods.
• Stripped line forms a loop between the reel and the first guide. Shooting line uses that loop first at full speed, then pulls against the reel at one quarter of the rate.
• Casting is physical rather than scripted. Sweep the rod back and let the line straighten. The rod loads as the line pulls against it. Sweep forward and open your hand as the loop passes the tip.
• Release too early and the loop collapses. Release too late and the line falls behind you. A fast 180° turn can throw the line a long way, but usually lands it hard.
• While the fly line is out, vanilla item use and swing are disabled. The rod GUI (Shift + use) can only be opened while the fly is out of the water.

The take

• A cast only counts as a cast if the fly actually flies. It must travel at least four blocks through the air before landing in water. Simply lowering, dropping or dragging the fly into the water does not start a drift.
• The landing matters. A fly landing below 1.5 m/s is treated as a natural presentation. A hard landing at 8 m/s can spook fish, much like dropping a lure too loudly.
• The fly's splash is both visible and audible.
• Lining spooks fish. If the fly line itself lands within 1.5 blocks of the fly, the line has crossed the fish before the fly arrived. The lie becomes quieter and its interest is reduced by half.
• Fishing spots remember pressure. Water is divided into 4×4-block patches. Every landing reduces the patch's interest slightly. Catching a fish or spooking one reduces it further. Leave the area alone for roughly six minutes and the interest recovers above normal.
• In other words: the first drift over a rested seam is much more interesting than the twentieth drift over the same metre of water.
• Presentation matters. Every fly pattern has a preferred way of being fished. The correct presentation makes the bite clock run twice as fast; the wrong presentation can stop it completely.
• A badly presented dry fly dragged across the current produces a visible V-shaped wake. The faster it moves, the larger the wake and spray become.
• The take is shown by the water. The fly disappears under a bulge and splash. There is no text prompt telling you what happened.
• The strike is physical. A sharp lift produces a sudden load on the rod. You can also strip while the fish is holding the fly.
• Slack matters. If the line has a large belly, the rod cannot transmit the strike until you strip the line tight.
• The strike window is roughly one to two seconds. Miss it and the fish spits the fly and the line goes slack.
• The fight uses the same physical line. Open your hand to give line, strip to take it. Every strip effectively becomes a turn of the reel.
• Natural bait can also be used on the fly rig: worm, maggot or live baitfish under 150 g.
• The catch card now records the actual fly used.

Fly tackle

There are now five fly-rod classes:

• #3 - ultralight
• #5 - light
• #7 - medium
• #9 - heavy
• #11 - extra-heavy

The class affects both casting distance and fighting power.

Each class has its own handmade blank, tint, bend behaviour and 3D chain.

There are also five matching fly reels - one per class. Fly reels have no drag. Line is controlled with the open hand.

Fly lines

Nine fly lines are available: three tapers × three buoyancies.

Tapers:

• WF - Weight Forward: easiest to shoot and the longest casting.
• DT - Double Taper: softer presentation and better for mending.
• SH - Shooting Head: longest range, but less delicate.

Buoyancy:

• F - Floating
• I - Intermediate: slowly sinks through the water column.
• S - Sinking: sinks quickly for deep water and strong current.

The line itself has no weight value. The rod class determines how much line the rod can load and cast.

All fly rods, reels and lines have crafting recipes.

The rod GUI cannot be opened while the tackle is in the water.

---

Rivers Have Current

River water is no longer visually moving while behaving like still water.

Rivers now actually flow.

• Flow.at() is the central current system.
• Still water and non-river biomes have zero current.
• River current follows the surrounding terrain and water flow.
• Current is generally faster in deeper, central parts of the river and slower near the banks.
• Eddies behind obstacles can flow in the opposite direction.
• Neighbouring cells are smoothed so the current does not change direction abruptly from block to block.

The current affects the world:

• Water texture moves.
• Boats drift.
• Dropped items drift.
• Foam and bubbles move downstream.
• Your fly line develops a belly where sections of line are moving at different speeds.
• A small lift and upstream repositioning of the line can free it from the current - a mend.

If you want the old behaviour, set flow: false in the config.

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Fish

The new species table

The fish database now contains 267 species, including 160 new species.

The new table adds:

• six new families;
• the Afrotropical biogeographic province;
• a diet for every species;
• hybrid species;
• a unique inventory icon for every new fish.

Some species also received more accurate behaviour and presentation.

For example, the three river stingrays now actually lie flat instead of being displayed vertically like bream.

Hybrids

Hybrid fish are treated differently depending on where they are found.

In wild water, a hybrid weighs only 1/25 of its normal profile, preventing hybrid species from dominating their parent species.

Once stocked and settled, hybrids behave like normal fish.

The catch card identifies a hybrid by its two parent species.

Catch restrictions are gone

The following values are no longer used to determine whether a fish can be caught:

• rod;
• rig;
• reel;
• distance;
• hook tolerance.

The angler ladder now runs from 0 to 50 and does not lock species behind progression requirements.

Deeper water matters

The visible shoal now determines its available species from the deepest water within three blocks, rather than from a single bank-side water column.

This allows deep-water species to appear properly in lakes and rivers that actually contain enough depth for them.

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Koi Is Now a Species

koi_carp is now a proper fish species with its own bite rate.

• Base bite rate: 0.8, matching carp.
• Wild koi live in cherry-grove water.
• Stocked koi can live wherever their owner puts them.
• A private pond of bred koi behaves like any other stocked pond.
• Koi now reliably appears in cherry-grove water when its habitat conditions are met.

Koi colour, variety and genetics remain unchanged.

Wild koi roll their variety from the species table. Their genotype is stored on the catch card, and the icon is generated from those genes.

Bred koi pass their genes through the pond's stocking system.

Removed koi species

These five old species IDs are gone:

• Kohaku
• Tancho Sanke
• Showa Sanke
• Asagi
• Bekko

Their profiles, items, models, icons, journal art, translations, tags, cooked effects and the Koi Collector advancement have been removed.

A Living Jewel now requires koi_carp, and the koi quest tracks the new species.

If an old world contains one of the removed koi items, Minecraft will report the missing ID and continue loading the world. Old stocking-book entries for those species are left inert.

---

Cooking

Every fish can now be cooked.

Use either a furnace or smoker.

The cooked fish keeps:

• species;
• weight;
• length;
• catch card;
• size.

Only the inventory icon changes to the cooked version.

There are now 263 cooked fish sprites.

Nutrition

Food value is based on weight: 2 + 6 × √kg, with a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 20.

A prime fish also grants every effect associated with its species, including both positive and negative effects.

An ordinary fish only provides food.

Every cooked fish also gives Saturation: 2 seconds per 3 kg.

For example:

• 3 kg carp → 2 seconds
• 30 kg catfish → 20 seconds

Fish oil

Fish oil is now brewed, not smelted.

Place an oily fish over glass bottles in a brewing stand.

This recipe now works consistently across loaders. The old furnace and campfire recipes have been removed.

A cooked fish is now simply food.

It cannot be:

• released;
• placed in a keepnet;
• put into an aquarium;
• filleted;
• turned into live bait.

---

Live Bait

Any fish can now be used as live bait, regardless of weight.

The old 150 g crafting limit is gone.

The bait keeps its original weight.

Predator size

A predator generally takes prey between one tenth and one fifth of its own weight.

The bait now creates a hard minimum:

minimum predator weight = bait weight × 5

There is no upper cap.

For example:

• 10 kg bait → minimum predator weight 50 kg
• 10 kg bait → an 11 kg fish cannot take it
• If the largest specimen of a species is below 5× the bait weight, that species cannot take the bait at all.

This minimum also applies to stocked fish.

The size roll is performed after pond re-centring and size genes so that those systems cannot accidentally produce a fish below the bait's minimum.

A foul-hooked fish is exempt because it did not actually take the bait.

The fly rig keeps its own special limit: baitfish under 150 g.

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Tying Flies

The old mormyshka system has been replaced with a proper tying bench.

Open the Tie page at the Tackle Station and build your fly directly on the hook.

32×32 canvas

The tying canvas is now 32×32 pixels.

The eight built-in templates were originally authored at 16×16 and are scaled to the new canvas. Existing 16×16 designs are automatically scaled when loaded.

The hook is already displayed on the canvas:

• eye on the left;
• shank through the middle;
• bend on the right.

You draw on the hook.

The hook size is selected at the station.

Materials

The palette represents actual tying materials rather than arbitrary colours.

Available materials include:

• thread in 16 dye colours;
• hackle from feathers;
• dubbing from wool;
• iron and gold beads from nuggets;
• copper tinsel;
• eyes from ink sacs.

Every pixel consumes a small amount of the selected material.

The Tackle Station keeps a supply of tying materials and shows what your fly will cost.

Templates

Eight templates are available:

• pellet
• drop
• devil
• ant
• nymph
• streamer
• shrimp
• dry fly

Select a template and it appears as a ghost over the hook.

Stamp places it on the canvas, after which you can edit it.

Mirror and Clear are available beside it.

The drawing itself becomes the item's icon - in the inventory, in your hand and on the ground.

What fish actually see

Fish do not analyse every pixel individually.

The drawing is converted into physical characteristics:

• silhouette → size and weight;
• average colour → colour/light response;
• bead and tinsel → flash;
• hackle → action;
• two dark pixels → eyes.

Species profiles can also rate specific fly types by name.

Every fly has a presentation

The tooltip tells you how the fly should be fished.

• Dry fly / ant: free drift on the surface, without tension.
• Nymph: free drift below the surface.
• Pellet / drop / devil: worked near the bottom.
• Streamer / shrimp: stripped through the middle layers.

When fished correctly, the bite clock runs twice as fast.

When fished incorrectly, it can stop completely.

Each fly type also has its own sinking rate.

The Thing

Not every drawing matches a known pattern.

A fly that matches nothing is assigned a hidden effectiveness value between 0.1 and 2.0 when it is tied.

The value is rolled once and never shown to the player.

Fish might love your strange creation.

They might hate it.

You only find out by fishing it.

A tied lure still follows the normal mormyshka rules:

• usable with the winter rod;
• not consumed;
• carries its own hook.

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The Pond

A private pond is no longer just a place to fish.

It is a place where you keep fish.

Claiming a pond

A pond sign can cover up to 10,000 blocks of water - a 100×100 footprint.

The calculation uses water columns, not total water volume, so deep ponds are no longer penalised for their depth.

Lakes and rivers cannot be claimed as ponds.

Naming

The owner can right-click the sign with a named name tag.

The tag is consumed.

Other players cannot rename the pond.

Replacing the sign keeps the pond's name.

Reading the sign

Clicking the sign shows:

• pond name;
• owner;
• amount of water;
• water upgrades;
• fish recorded in the pond;
• grown fish and fry.

Every pond has its own fish book

Each claimed pond now has its own stocking ledger.

Two ponds in the same region no longer share fish.

If a 0.9 pond already has fish stored in the old regional system, those fish are transferred into the pond's own book when the pond is first read.

Your fish are not lost during the upgrade.

The pond only knows its own fish

The old system used the surrounding chunk stock as a proxy for fish that were still dispersing.

That could make a pond beside the sea think it contained sea fish, or make a pond's net pull species that had never been stocked there.

That is gone.

A claimed pond now reads only its own ledger.

If a fish is not in the pond's book, it is not in the pond.

Growth and stocking

Every fish released into a claimed pond is stored individually with:

• genes;
• sex;
• nature;
• pattern;
• variety;
• morph;
• name;
• weight.

Fish caught or netted from the pond are grown versions of those fish.

Growth is normally around 6% of the species mean per season, with additional growth possible from large genes and a feeding station.

Growth is capped at 90% of the record.

Fish born inside the pond continue to use the normal growth and breeding systems.

A fish that escapes the hook is still in the pond.

No habitat checks

Private ponds do not check:

• habitat compatibility;
• breeding pairs;
• spawn windows.

The first fish or fry placed in a pond establishes that species there.

Fry use their normal 12-day growth cycle.

Pairs breed according to the season.

A pond with 100 stocked beluga no longer gets treated as if those fish were merely a temporary 1% population.

The per-minute farm tick also updates ponds signed within 160 blocks, so fish continue growing while you are standing nearby.

Old pond claims continue to load. Unnamed ponds retain their previous dimensions and are converted into the new ledger system when first read.

Pond Blocks

• Bait traps now produce live bait only. They can no longer generate actual local fish automatically.
• Water upgrades now drop themselves when broken. They previously had no loot tables.
• Aquarium fish are visible again. The aquarium water no longer writes to the depth buffer before the fish are rendered.
• The Tackle Station is now a barrel with drawers, oriented toward the player who placed it.

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The Fight

The fish is now a physical part of the fight, not just a progress bar.

• The fish appears on the line immediately after hook-up.
• It uses the same model as the shoal and aquarium.
• It is shown at its actual length.
• You can see the line attached to its mouth.
• Runs, dives, jumps, head shakes and fatigue are represented visually.
• Other players can see the fish too.

The fish remains visible underwater throughout the fight.

Outclassed tackle

A fish can still be stronger than your tackle.

If its pull exceeds the line's strength, with a margin below 0.85, the fish becomes played out rather than simply becoming impossible to reel in.

The fight can last up to six times longer.

Trying to wind against a strong run with a closed drag pushes the line toward overstress.

Opening the drag during the run is the way to survive it.

Holding the rod across the direction of the run is almost twice as effective.

The hook-up now reports the relevant ratio once.

Getting the fish to the bank

A played-out fish can now be brought all the way to the crank.

Previously, an outclassed fish could become fully exhausted while still leaving the player unable to gain the final metre.

The amount gained from the crank now increases with the fish's fatigue, eventually reaching a full crank.

Other fight changes

• The line-on-block snag system from the 0.9.1 draft has been removed. Piers and ledges no longer turn into invisible walls for the crank.
• Fight patterns now scale with specimen size.
• Fight timeout is capped at 6000 ticks.
• Fish pull scales with √(weight / mean weight), so a 72 g barbel does not fight like a 2 kg specimen.
• The smallest hook on the rig determines the smallest fish that can take it.

Bite staggering

Two rods belonging to the same pod or player can no longer bite simultaneously.

If another bite occurs within 10 seconds of the previous bite, it is delayed by 10–100 seconds.

Other players' rods are unaffected.

Winter rod

The winter rod now handles the jigging rhythm itself.

Hold use and the rod jigs automatically.

• stopping pulls the bite closer;
• left click during a stop adds an accent;
• releasing use creates the pause.

The rod can no longer be jerked by repeatedly clicking.

The old jig text has been replaced by the gauge.

Fewer messages

The following text prompts have been removed:

• hook-up message;
• sounding hint;
• strike prompt.

The water, rod animation and boss bar now provide the information instead.

---

Multiplayer

Fight sounds are now local to the angler.

Previously, the drag, reel and rod sounds were played into the world at full volume, so two anglers standing next to each other could easily hear each other's fight as if it were their own.

Now:

• the angler fighting the fish hears their own sounds at full volume;
• everyone else hears them at roughly one third volume and slightly lower in the mix.

You can still tell that somebody nearby is fighting a fish, but their drag should never be confused with yours.

Bite staggering is also isolated per pod and per player.

It never delays another player's bite.

Netting another player's fish by right-clicking it at the bank still works as before.

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Tackle & Progression

The general tackle progression has also been brought back into line with the rest of the mod.

• The long rod's bite spread is now one third longer.
• Revived lines receive separate bite clocks again.
• A seventh perk, Bottom Sense, reduces snags and breaks.
• The sounder now reads 36 m and displays 16 fish.
• Line and catch-card tooltips now describe what they do instead of referring to key numbers.
• Hardcore snags begin at 1.3.

Line repair

Four string can now be used to restore a worn fishing line.

Thicker line chains

The thicker line progression is back:

• mono → 0.80
• braid → 0.16 to 0.60
• fluorocarbon → 0.40

These were accidentally dropped during the tune-up even though the wiki still described them.

Crafting recipes are back

Every:

• rod;
• reel;
• line;
• leader

now has a crafting recipe again.

This restores the ten rods from bamboo through trolling, nine reels from 2000 through 14000, and fluorocarbon and titanium leaders.

Fly tackle has its own recipes as well.

Lures and rigs remain crafted through the stall and bench.

Quests

The quest chain now focuses on:

• diets;
• fish families;
• weights.

The old Palearctic-species progression has been removed.

Stage 7 now focuses on cold water and fly fishing.

There are also 12 new achievements.

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Interface & Config

Two new config options are available:

• flow - enables or disables river current.
• season_days - length of a season in mod days. Default: 24.

A full year consists of four seasons.

A sub-season is one third of a season.

Serene Seasons still overrides the mod's internal calendar when present.

Other interface changes:

• Catch cards now show the weight in imperial units as well. The weight line reads 3.17 kg (6.99 lb); under one pound it is given in ounces - 722 g (25.5 oz).
• The journal's How to Get section now renders recipes using the same layout as the crafting bench.
• The wiki calculator now shows the most likely clutch and its pattern.
• The fly-fishing wiki page has returned in all three supported languages.

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Compatibility & Tools

River Fishing 1.0.0 supports four Minecraft versions:

• 1.20.1 - Fabric, Forge
• 1.21.1 - Fabric, NeoForge
• 26.1.2 - Fabric, NeoForge
• 26.2 - Fabric, NeoForge

That is eight builds in total.

The 26.x versions render the physical fly line through their retained render passes.

1.20.1 uses its own item-level eating and recipe serializer.

Developer tools have also been updated:

• tools/split_rod.js
• check_rod_assets.js
• gen_wiki_bundle.py
• 26.x icon generators

The 26.x item-definition generator also no longer overwrites hand-made item definitions.

---

Bugfixes

Fishing

• The winter rod can cast into a drilled ice hole again. Since 0.9.0, the cast scan incorrectly stopped at the mod's own ice hole and reported that there was no water.
• A fish released back where it was caught is no longer considered unsuitable for that water. The catch card remembers its original water and uses it when checking the release.
• The furnace no longer turns every fish into a plain perch. Cooking now correctly uses the fish in the input slot.
• Catch cards now record the actual tied fly instead of simply saying "winter rig / mormyshka".
• The 32×32 tying canvas no longer crashes when drawing on its right edge.
• Fly line no longer develops a kink under the rod tip.
• The line no longer drops immediately when the rod is swung.
• Fast head turns no longer produce NaN rope positions.
• Floating, intermediate and sinking lines now have different sink rates.
• The fly rod works correctly on 26.x again. Its input mixin was present but never registered.
• Third-person fly lines now start from the correct rendered tip on 26.2.
• Fixed missing fry textures.
• Fixed missing rod blanks.
• Fixed lost dye tints on 26.x.
• Fixed a crash while tessellating river water on 1.20.1.
• Fixed cooked fish icons on 1.20.1 and 26.x.

Ponds

• The community hash now preserves the seed's original geography when a pond receives its own ledger.
• A second pond sign on the same pond is now refused and identifies the existing sign.
• Fish released into a pond are always added to its ledger, including immature fish.
• Empty ponds now correctly stop producing a species once their last adult fish has been removed.
• Pond ledgers can no longer collide with wild-region ledgers.
• Old pond ledgers are migrated to the new key format automatically.
• Pond growth now updates across nearby region borders instead of requiring a player to stand inside the specific region.
• The journal's here information now reads the pond you are actually standing beside instead of the nearby wild region.
• A species removed down to its final fish no longer continues affecting ecosystem calculations through the old settled flag.
• Live bait no longer repeatedly produces the same fish weight when the size roll falls below the five-times minimum.
• Old ponds keep their fish during migration, including ponds created before the new ledger system.
• The net no longer treats missing old ledger data as an empty pond.

Aquariums

• Flat fish such as rays, halibut and flounder now render correctly inside aquariums.
• Aquarium fish animations continue working in old worlds.
• Long-running worlds no longer stop animating fish after the game-time float loses tick precision.
• Hoppers can no longer insert cooked fish into aquariums.
• Aquariums placed at the build limit no longer lose their upper cells.
• Feeding countdowns now display the full remaining duration when multiple days of food are purchased.

Other

• The tackle station now opens correctly on NeoForge 26.x.
• Old config files automatically receive the new flow and season_days settings without changing existing values.
• Catch cards now identify the actual morph when a fish has the SPECIAL status.
• The koi advancement and quest now use the new koi_carp species.
• Old koi species are removed cleanly when an existing world is loaded.

---

That's 1.0.0

This is a big release.

The fly rod is no longer a separate minigame bolted onto the rest of River Fishing. The line, the rod, the current and the fish are finally parts of the same system.

Cast it.

Watch the line.

Read the water.

And then try not to miss the take.

Bug reports, catches and arguments about groundbait: discord.gg/Kk2nKvsuRh