Servant 0.2.0-release.1

Minecraft 1.21.1 - NeoForge

0.2.0-release.1 is the first stable release of the rebuilt Servant experience. These notes bring together the changes introduced during 0.2.0-beta.2, 0.2.0-beta.3, and the final release pass.

Servant is now centered on rare companions who are found in the world, rescued, recruited, equipped, and given a role. Their work happens visibly in Minecraft: they travel, use tools, carry items, eat, fight, and interact with the places built for them.

Developer note: this release cost me an all-nighter, and I ended up falling asleep at my desk without even feeling it happen. Please don't hit me if there are still bugs :'(

Release.1 - Final Polish

• Water-walking accessories now influence pathfinding as well as movement. While an effect is active, the water surface is treated as solid ground.
• When a water-walking effect expires or its equipment is removed, a Servant already in the water switches to swimming toward its Owner.
• Aqua Walker path decisions now respect its real remaining charge instead of only checking whether the relic is equipped.
• Slightly reduced and separated the health and hunger bars in the Servant inventory for clearer reading.
• Kept AppleSkin saturation and exhaustion visuals aligned with the resized hunger bar.
• Rewrote the public mod description around the actual player journey and current release scope.
• Updated the full public wiki for recruitment, controls, inventory, hunger, resurrection, Workbench areas, compatibility, and troubleshooting.

Beta.3 - A More Player-Like Companion

Actions, Tools, and Enchantments

• Assistant mining, attacking, placing, bucket use, eating, harvesting, and replanting now use visible hand animations.
• Block breaking takes time and follows player destroy speed instead of completing instantly.
• Tool type, Efficiency, Haste, Mining Fatigue, airborne mining, submerged mining, and equipment attributes affect work speed.
• Fortune, Silk Touch, Unbreaking, modified drops, block experience, and durability are taken into account.
• Melee attacks respect the selected weapon, attack speed, damage, knockback, sweeping attacks, enchantments, and durability.
• Workers also benefit from relevant tools, mining bonuses, enchantments, drops, experience, and equipment wear.
• Farmers and Lumberjacks visibly carry their tool in the main hand and the item they intend to replant in the offhand.

Assistant Inventory and Hotbar

• Rebuilt the Assistant inventory around the familiar player layout.
• Added a rendered PlayerModel with armor, main hand, offhand, and accessory equipment.
• Added a persistent 36-slot inventory with a selectable nine-slot hotbar.
• Removed the separate hidden weapon slot; the Assistant now changes hotbar slots to select weapons, tools, blocks, food, and buckets.
• Added automatic hotbar organization when the Owner throws useful items to the Assistant.
• Restored normal item hover tooltips, dragging, shift-clicking, hotbar swaps, and drop interactions.
• Added a vanilla-style inventory background and matching background for the Curios panel.
• Moved Curios to a vertical panel on the left, opened by the button beside the rendered Assistant.

Hunger and Health

• Recruited Servants now use hunger, saturation, exhaustion, natural regeneration, and starvation.
• Eating takes time and uses the food's normal nutrition, effects, and remaining container item.
• Added health and hunger bars to the Servant inventory with exact values on hover.
• Added Jade health and hunger information.
• Added AppleSkin saturation and exhaustion support in the Servant inventory.

Movement and Pathfinding

• Improved movement toward work targets, blocks in height, narrow steps, and difficult terrain.
• Assistants now aim for the supported center of a block instead of repeatedly jumping from its edge.
• Added safer jump checks, blocked-headroom handling, obstacle breaking, fall recovery, and impossible-path exits.
• Normal, non-destructive paths are preferred before breaking an obstacle.
• Terrain blocks are no longer placed while following the Owner, preventing the Assistant from closing tunnels behind them.
• Temporary support placement is reserved for work routes that genuinely need it.
• Assistant work stops beyond 12 blocks and returning to the Owner takes priority.
• Follow speed adapts to the Owner's movement, sprinting, and repeated jumps.
• Fixed long-distance follow loops that made the Assistant rotate without reaching its Owner.
• Added lava avoidance and emergency escape behavior.
• Added an Assistant AI debug overlay in the top-left corner, toggled with the configurable B key.

MLG and Fall Recovery

• Added visible water-bucket MLG attempts during dangerous falls.
• The Assistant selects the water bucket on its hotbar before using it.
• Water is recovered after a random delay of 24 to 56 ticks instead of instantly.
• Added MLG return attempts when a fall can help the Assistant reach an Owner below.

Combat and Owner Safety

• The Assistant can immediately join an attack started by its Owner, including against passive or neutral targets.
• Players, their pets, projectiles, same-owner Servants, and traceable summoned attacks can no longer hurt their allied Servants.
• Friendly-fire protection also prevents Servants from hurting their Owner or the Owner's allies.
• Improved weapon selection so the Assistant no longer attacks with an unsuitable tool when a better weapon is available.
• Melee Guards and Assistants use safer Creeper combat behavior.
• The Assistant can protect nearby items dropped when its Owner dies, prioritizing tools, weapons, armor, and backpack storage.

Death, Seals, and Recovery

• Added death recovery for recruited Servants and Assistants through their linked Easement Seal.
• Recovery preserves name, role, inventory, equipment, Curios, food state, ownership, and the Assistant hotbar.
• The recovery Seal is consumed in Survival and preserved in Creative.
• A valid death record is required, preventing a Seal from duplicating a Servant that is only unloaded.
• A player may create a new Assistant after the previous one dies.
• Creating a replacement invalidates the old Assistant's recovery, preventing multiple Assistants from being restored.

Workbench Interface

• Rebuilt the Servant Workbench screen with a clearer, more spacious layout.
• Replaced the radius slider with simple - and + controls.
• Added a Center button for returning the work area to the Workbench.
• Added north, south, east, and west controls for moving the work area around the Workbench.
• Added a persistent world boundary preview that remains visible after closing the screen.
• Limited offsets so the Workbench always remains inside its own work area.
• Removed the obsolete Assign nearest action.

Curios, Artifacts, and Relics

• Limited Servant's built-in Curios assignment to the back slot instead of exposing every registered slot.
• Added the slot families supplied by Artifacts, Relics, and supported compatibility addons when installed.
• Audited all 49 Artifacts and all 28 Relics for Servant use.
• Enabled compatible automatic health, damage, defense, retaliation, food, movement, underwater, fluid-walking, and equipment effects.
• Kept keybind, cast, mode-selection, right-click, and special inventory actions under player control.
• Added passive Relics charge, cooldown, experience, movement, breathing, reflection, rage, concealment, and neutrality behavior.
• Added support for compatible Artifacts cooldowns, automatic attack effects, retaliation, eating effects, and death protection.
• Kept Curios items and their state attached to the real Servant without duplicating or moving them during supported passive effects.

Other Fixes

• Preserved the Assistant's 36 slots after saving, death, and resurrection.
• Restored armor and helmet durability loss.
• Fixed depleted Mining Deposit models for Minecraft 1.21.1.
• Added the missing Servant Spawn Egg model.

Beta.2 - Rebuilt Progression and Roles

Finding and Recruiting Servants

• Servants can appear as prisoners in Pillager Outposts.
• Outpost cages contain at most one Servant prisoner.
• Prisoners flee the outpost when freed, avoid hostile mobs, and wander nearby until recruited.
• Added localized Prisoner and Prisonnier names.
• Easement Seals became the main recruitment item and are found through dangerous exploration instead of crafting.
• Binding creates a linked Seal tied to that specific Servant.
• Linked Seals show a glint, Servant name, and advanced UUID tooltip.

Ownership and Progression

• Removing the linked Seal suspends following, guarding, work, production, and normal orders.
• Returning the correct Seal reactivates the Servant.
• Linked Seals can transfer a loaded Servant to another player.
• Added the Reinforced Easement Seal as the only normal path to an Assistant.
• Limited each player to one Assistant.
• Prevented ordinary order controls and network actions from turning a Servant into an Assistant or changing an Assistant into a normal Guard.

Roles and Appearance

• Added dedicated Prisoner, Servant, Assistant, Farmer, Miner, melee Guard, and ranged Guard appearances.
• Moved Servants to a slim player-like humanoid model.
• Added visible armor, held tools, weapons, and role equipment.
• Added stable visual variants for melee and ranged Guards.
• Added dedicated summon IDs for prisoner, Servant, and Assistant forms.

Workers and Workbenches

• Added Basic, Advanced, and Ultimate Servant Workbenches.
• Basic supports 1 Worker within a maximum 16-block radius.
• Advanced supports 2 Workers within a maximum 32-block radius.
• Ultimate supports 5 Workers within a maximum 64-block radius.
• Added individual Worker slots with their own Servant and job assignment.
• Added Farmer, Lumberjack, and Miner jobs.
• Breaking a Workbench cleanly detaches its Workers.
• Reassigning a loaded Worker clears the previous Workbench slot.
• Added recipes for all Workbench tiers and the Servant Wand.

Mining Deposits and Balance

• Added controlled Mining Deposits for Miner Workers.
• Changed Mining Deposit recipes to use matching resource blocks instead of ore blocks.
• Diamond and Emerald Deposits require their full storage block.
• Ancient Debris Deposits require a Netherite Block.
• Fixed recipe formatting for Minecraft 1.21.1 so viewers such as JEI can display the recipes.
• Rebalanced Servants, Assistants, Workbenches, and Mining Deposits around rare exploration and late-game investment.

Equipment Compatibility

• Added Curios inventory and rendering support.
• Added Sophisticated Backpacks rendering, Curios back-slot support, and direct backpack access.
• Added dimension travel support for Servants and Assistants following their Owner.

Compatibility

• Minecraft 1.21.1
• NeoForge 21.1.235 or newer for Minecraft 1.21.1
• Optional: Curios
• Optional: Sophisticated Backpacks and Sophisticated Core
• Optional: Artifacts
• Optional: Relics
• Optional: Jade
• Optional: AppleSkin
• Optional: recipe viewers such as JEI

Tested accessory versions are listed in the public wiki. Optional integrations are not required to run Servant.

Known Limitations

• Advanced and Ultimate Workbenches currently share the Basic Workbench block appearance.
• Assistant imitation focuses on mining visible ores, chopping nearby wood, equipment handling, combat support, and Owner recovery.
• Accessories that require a keybind, manual cast, selected mode, right-click, or special inventory action are not activated by Servant AI.
• More Worker professions are planned before mob-based Servants such as subdued Pillagers or allied Ravagers.

Before Updating

Back up important worlds, remove the previous Servant jar, and make sure the server and every client use the same release. Unequip third-party accessories before removing their owning mod from an existing save.