Vanilla²

A Fabric combat and progression overhaul that keeps Minecraft close to vanilla while expanding weapons, armor, enchantments, and combat utility.

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Overview

Vanilla² is a Minecraft Fabric mod that modernizes combat, enchanting, and item progression without replacing the vanilla identity of the game. It rebalances weapon and armor behavior, extends vanilla combat math, adds a recipe-driven enchanting system, introduces new special enchantments, and improves several combat quality-of-life interactions on both server and client.

Features

• Rebalances sword, axe, spear, trident, mace, shield, fishing rod, armor, tool, and weapon behavior.
• Expands armor, protection, magic protection, mace protection, spear protection, and dripstone protection handling beyond vanilla limits.
• Updates combat damage calculations so higher armor and absorb values continue to scale correctly.
• Adds new attributes and damage types for expanded combat interactions.
• Changes item durability and combat stats by material for tools, weapons, armor, and fishing rods.
• Changes potion stack sizes.
• Lets fishing rods work as combat tools with hook damage and enchantment integration.
• Lets sword targeting pass through configured blocks such as grass and flowers.
• Improves offhand interaction priority for fishing rod combat cases.~~~~

Enchanting overhaul

Vanilla² replaces much of vanilla enchanting with a recipe-based enchantment table and an enchantment recipe book.

• Adds enchanting recipes for vanilla and Vanilla² enchantments.
• Adds enchantment recipe discovery through loot, fishing, piglin bartering, villager librarians, and structure chests.
• Adds an enchanting recipe book UI and server/client synchronization for known recipes and selected recipes.
• Adds enchantment slot categories such as Special, Damage, Secondary, Defense, Utility, and Curse.
• Supports enchantment profiles so an enchantment can have different behavior depending on the selected slot/profile.
• Rebalances almost all vanilla enchantments(+channeling got a rework).

Enchantments

Vanilla² changes many vanilla enchantments and adds new ones.

New enchantments

• Dash - burst forward and strike entities caught in the lunge.
• Fractured - mine multiple blocks asynchronously through manual clicks.
• Ruthless - greatly increases attack damage at a self-damage cost.
• Swirling - spin with your weapon and repeatedly strike nearby enemies.
• Void Strike - applies the Voided effect to targets.

Requirements

• Minecraft 26.2.
• Fabric Loader 0.19.3 or newer.
• Fabric API 0.154.2+26.2 or compatible.
• Java 25 or newer.

Installation

1. Download the latest Vanilla² jar from the releases page.
2. Install Fabric Loader and Fabric API for the supported Minecraft version.
3. Place the Vanilla² .jar file in your mods folder.
4. Restart Minecraft or your server.

Compatibility notes

• Vanilla² is a gameplay overhaul and intentionally changes vanilla combat and enchanting behavior.
• The mod declares an incompatibility with ViaFabricPlus.
• Client resources such as HUD changes are client-side, while combat and enchanting rules are server-authoritative.

Development

Build the project with the included Gradle wrapper.

./gradlew build

Run a development client with the mod loaded.

./gradlew runClient

Build artifacts are written to build/libs/.

Notes

pxlarified is not an active developer of this project. While I occasionally contribute to the website and mod, most of the work and ideas come from PainterFlow. He is responsible for the majority of the concepts and development associated with the project, and I do not want to misrepresent that by claiming ownership or implying that most of the work is mine.