HardenedCore

HardenedCore makes Minecraft early game feel more deliberate and rewarding by removing shortcuts that experienced players skip anyway and replacing them with a coherent progression system.

Changes

Tools

Wooden and stone pickaxes and axes are gone, along with all stone tier tools included. Instead, craft a Flint Pickaxe from flint, this bad boy mines at stone tier and is your primary early game tool. Flint axes are also available as a crafting alternative to wooden axes. Wooden shovels, swords and hoes are untouched.

Ore Fragments

Mining all stone tier ores with a flint pickaxe drops a raw ore fragment instead of the usual ore. Fragments smelt in a furnace into a single nugget.

Blast Furnace

Raw ores and ore blocks cannot be smelted in a regular furnace at all. A blast furnace is required for ore smelting. This makes the blast furnace a meaningful milestone rather than a late convenience.

Progression Path

1. Collect flint from gravel
2. Craft a flint pickaxe
3. Mine ores and collect raw fragments
4. Smelt fragments to nuggets
5. Accumulate 45 nuggets for 5 iron ingots to build a blast furnace
6. Normal iron progression resumes

Mod Compatibility

• Ore blocks from other mods are automatically blocked from furnace smelting if they use conventional tags
• Tin ore fragment support included out of the box for Bronze mod
• Modpack authors can extend hardenedcore:crafting_blacklist and hardenedcore:furnace_blacklist tags to add custom compatibility

For Modpack Authors

Two item tags control recipe removal at load time:

• hardenedcore:crafting_blacklist includes items whose crafting recipes are removed entirely
• hardenedcore:furnace_blacklist includes items that cannot be smelted in a regular furnace

Add any item to these tags in your datapack to extend HardenedCore's restrictions to modded content.