ShulkerLayers

A Fabric mod for Minecraft that lets you pack shulker boxes inside shulker boxes, with a configurable nesting depth.

What it does

Vanilla Minecraft blocks placing a shulker box into another shulker box. ShulkerLayers lifts that restriction in a controlled way: every shulker box gets a hidden layer value, and a higher-layer box can hold lower-layer boxes inside it. This lets you build compact, organized storage without spiraling into infinite recursion.

!Placing a shulker box into another shulker box

How it works

• Layers. Every shulker box has an integer layer (0 by default). A regular crafted/looted shulker box is layer 0.
• Upgrade recipe. Surround any shulker box with shulker shells in a + pattern (same as the original shulker box recipe) to bump its layer up by 1. The output keeps the input box's color, contents, and custom name.
• Nesting rule. A box may be placed inside another shulker box only if the inner box's layer is lower than the outer box's layer. So a layer-0 box fits into a layer-1 box; a layer-1 box fits into a layer-2 box; and so on. Boxes of equal or higher layer are rejected. This guarantees you can never nest infinitely.
• Tooltip. A box with layer ≥ 1 shows its layer in its tooltip.

!Crafting recipe: shulker box surrounded by shulker shells

The upgrade recipe (where S = shulker shell, B = any shulker box):

  S
S B S
  S

Configuration

A config file is created at <game>/config/shulkerlayers.json on first launch:

{
  "maxDepth": 3
}

Key	Type	Default	Range	Description
maxDepth	int	3	0 – 64	Highest layer a shulker box can be upgraded to. 0 effectively disables the recipe.

Mod Menu Support

With Mod Menu installed, maxDepth can also be edited in-game from the mod list — changes apply immediately (singleplayer), no restart needed. Mod Menu is optional: without it the JSON file is used.

!ShulkerLayers Max Depth configuration screen in Mod Menu