FadingLoot

Dropped items blink before they despawn — so you can tell which pile on the ground is about to vanish. The countdown comes from the server, not a client guess at five minutes.

Install on the server (and in singleplayer). A client-only install does nothing. On multiplayer every player sees the same blink; settings travel with the data, so the pack tunes the look once.

Dependencies: Fabric & NeoForge require Architectury API. Forge requires no additional dependencies.

Free to use in any modpack — public or private, no permission needed.

What it does

• Blink before despawn — starts with 60 seconds left by default and speeds up until the item vanishes. Half of each cycle is dark, so it reads as a clear blink, not a faint flicker.
• One real clock — the server reads each item’s actual age. Merges, unloaded chunks, and pack-changed despawn times stay correct. Items set to never despawn never blink.
• despawnTicks is enforced — when it is shorter than the loader’s limit, the mod removes the item at that age on every loader. Default 6000 (5 minutes) matches vanilla and changes nothing.
• Nothing until it matters — items with time left are drawn exactly as vanilla. No HUD, overlay, text, or keybind.
• Filters — deny lists by item id (namespace:* wildcards), by item tag, and an allow/deny list of dimensions.
• Farm-friendly — one bounding-box query per player per second, a hard cap on tracked items, and a hidden frame that costs less than drawing the item.

Configuration

config/fadingloot.json (JSON with // comments). Read by whichever side runs the world: a dedicated server uses its own copy and clients follow it; in singleplayer the client is the server. A client-side copy changes nothing in multiplayer.

Changes apply on world load — leave to the title screen and rejoin, or restart the dedicated server. No reload command. Out-of-range values are clamped.

Defaults that matter most:

• enabled true — master switch
• blinkLeadTicks 1200 — how long before despawn blinking starts (60 s)
• blinkIntervalMaxTicks 20 / blinkIntervalMinTicks 3 — slowest blink at the start of the window → fastest at despawn
• blinkHiddenPercent 50 / blinkHiddenTicks 2 — share of each cycle hidden (square-wave blink) plus a floor for the fastest cycles
• despawnTicks 6000 — enforced lifetime; only shortens, never extends past the loader limit
• updateIntervalTicks 20 — how often the server re-sends remaining lifetimes
• scanRadiusBlocks 32 / maxTrackedItems 256 — scan range and per-player cap (far / excess items simply do not blink)
• deniedItemIds / deniedItemTags — items that never blink (and keep their normal lifetime under a short despawnTicks)
• dimensionFilterMode disabled + filteredDimensionIds — allow / deny dimension filter

Denied items and filtered-out dimensions keep the lifetime they would have without the mod — that is how you protect a drop from a short despawnTicks.

Details

• Must be on the server. Without it there is no real age to read; a client with the mod still joins a vanilla/unmodded server normally and nothing breaks.
• despawnTicks cannot make items live longer than the loader would have. On Fabric the ceiling is usually vanilla’s 6000 unless another mod moved it; on Forge/NeoForge it follows that item’s lifespan. Values above the ceiling are capped.
• Stack merges follow vanilla: age becomes the younger of the two, so absorbing fresh drops refreshes the timer — FadingLoot reads the age after the merge.
• No in-game settings screen and no commands; the config file is the whole interface.

Feedback

Please report any bugs, errors, or feature suggestions on Discord: https://discord.gg/HTkn94BXmA

More mods by Nikrecs: Shield Hider · NoFireOverlay

My other mods that I recommend.