Workers Ore Compat

Villager Workers miners only recognise ores that carry the forge:ores tag. Every ore that misses that tag — crystals, clusters, essences, planet ores — is invisible to them, and the drops get left on the ground.

This mod fixes that with a config file. No datapack, no scripting, no jar edits.

What it changes

Two things, and nothing else:

• Wall scanning. When a miner checks the walls of its mining area for ore worth digging out, it now also counts the blocks and block tags you list.
• Pickup. The miner now picks up the items and item tags you list.

Both lists work in reverse too: anything in the exclusion lists is never treated as ore and never picked up.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.20.1
• Forge 47.x
• Villager Workers 2.0.3 or newer (which needs Villager Recruits)

Install on both client and server.

Configuration

Generated on first launch at:

config/workers_ore_compat-common.toml

Seven options:

Example:

additionalOreBlocks = ["weirdmod:uranium_ore", "weirdmod:deepslate_uranium_ore"]
additionalOreDrops = ["weirdmod:raw_uranium"]
additionalOreDropTags = ["forge:raw_materials/uranium"]
excludedOreBlocks = ["weirdmod:decorative_ore_bricks"]

Edits apply immediately. Save the file and the cache rebuilds — no restart, no /reload. Tag contents are re-read on /reload as well, so a datapack change is picked up too.

An ID for a mod you do not have is skipped silently, so one config can cover a whole pack. A tag that nothing defines is reported in the log instead of failing quietly.

Covered out of the box

The default config already lists the ores and drops of:

Immersive Engineering · Mekanism · Create · Applied Energistics 2 · Geolosys · Powah · Extreme Reactors · Forbidden & Arcanus · The Undergarden · Mystical Agriculture · Ad Astra

None of them are required. Add your own IDs for anything else — press F3 while looking at a block to read its ID, or F3+H to put item IDs on tooltips.

Notes

• Only wall scanning is affected. Blocks inside the marked mining area are broken either way; this mod decides what is worth digging out of the walls.
• Removing forge:ores from additionalOreBlockTags turns off the automatic promotion of ore block items for pickup, if you want tighter control.
• An entry naming an exact item outranks a broad tag, and exclusions outrank everything.

Tips

Ready-made configs. Two are kept in the repository, drop either one in as config/workers_ore_compat-common.toml:

• base.toml — the stock defaults, for a normal pack
• many-mods.toml — a wide list for kitchen-sink packs, adding Thermal, AllTheModium, Silent Gear, Draconic Evolution, Occultism, Aether, Galosphere, RFTools and more

Writing a config for your own pack. Handing your mod list to an AI assistant and asking it for the block and item IDs is a fast way to get a first draft — but treat that draft as a guess. Language models invent plausible-looking IDs, and a wrong ID is skipped silently, so the miner simply ignores the ore with nothing in the log to explain why.

Always verify: set debugLogging = true, look at the block in game with F3 open to read its real ID, and use F3+H to show item IDs on tooltips. Fix the entries that never show up in the log.

License

MIT.