Changelog

All notable changes to Minions. Versions follow semantic versioning.

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2.1.0

Minions actually mine now. Up to this release a miner was a timer with a costume: it re-placed its own decorative block every tick, swung its pickaxe whether or not anything was there, and handed you its configured item no matter what it "broke". This release replaces that with real mining — the minion breaks the actual blocks around it and keeps their actual drops.

Added

Real mining

• Miners break the real blocks in range and store their real vanilla drops. A redstone ore block gives 4–5 redstone, iron ore gives raw iron, stone gives cobblestone — identical to breaking it yourself.
• Blocks are chosen nearest-first from the cube around the minion; reach comes from its level (1 / 2 / 3 blocks).
• The tool matters. A stone pickaxe cannot harvest diamond ore, exactly like a player. Give a minion a netherite pickaxe and it handles everything.
• Nothing to mine = nothing happens. No swing, no particles, no output, no energy burned.
• New mining config section: which blocks are breakable (default: every ore plus the stone family), allow-any-block, protect-containers, respect-protection, and a per-tick cap on catch-up work.
• Protection plugins are respected. Every break is announced as a normal block break by the owner, so WorldGuard, GriefPrevention, SuperiorSkyblock2 and friends can veto it (enforceable while the owner is online).
• Minions never break containers, spawners, bedrock, or their own linked chest.

One general Miner

• The nine per-resource types are replaced by a single Miner that mines whatever you build around it — in real-mining mode nine separate types would all behave identically.
• Classic per-resource generators still exist: set mining-mode: VIRTUAL on a type and it places and re-mines its own block on a timer, producing a fixed output. A worked example ships in config.yml.
• settings.fallback-type remaps minions whose type was renamed, disabled, or deleted, instead of leaving them dead in the world.

Quality of life

• Pick Up button in the minion menu, so you no longer have to know about sneak-clicking.
• Status line in the info panel that says, in plain words, why a minion is idle: out of energy, nothing left to mine, storage full, no chest linked, its chest is gone, no food in its chest, or nobody nearby is hungry.
• Minions wear an outfit — a dyed leather set by default, configurable globally or per type.
• shop.enabled — turn off /minion shop entirely if you drive purchases from your own menu plugin (DeluxeMenus and similar can just run minion give from console).
• modules.enabled — turn off the Auto-Smelt / Compactor module system entirely.
• Three new toggles in /minion admin: shop enabled, modules enabled, respect land protection.

Changed

• Feeder radius raised to 4 / 8 / 12 blocks (was 2 / 4 / 6). A level-1 feeder could not reach a minion standing right next to it.
• Feeder info panel no longer shows a meaningless "action every 2.5s" line; it shows feed radius and live status instead.
• Energy button wording rewritten. It now states the two refill paths separately — right-click the minion in the world while holding food, or click this button to pay money — instead of one sentence that read as if both were the same action.
• Minion items describe how their type actually works (real miner vs. generator vs. feeder).
• config.yml reorganised into ten documented sections with the new mining chapter.
• Upgrading seeds any newly shipped types into an existing types: block, so an upgraded server is never left without miner or feeder.

Fixed

• Mined blocks no longer reappear instantly. The generator refilled its whole field every tick, so a block was back before you could see it gone.
• No more swinging at thin air. A minion with nothing to work on now stands still.
• A minion no longer credits every block as its own resource — the "redstone minion counts all blocks as redstone" bug.
• Chest links no longer erase themselves. If the chest was missing for even one tick — moved, replaced, or not yet placed — the minion silently forgot it forever, which is indistinguishable from the plugin being broken. A missing chest now simply pauses the minion; only an actual break clears the link, and it tells you.
• Minions in an unloaded world are no longer deleted. They were skipped at startup and then wiped by the next save; their data is now preserved untouched until the world comes back.
• Picking up a miner no longer deletes matching blocks from your build. Cleanup now only applies to generators, which own the blocks they placed.
• Idle miners no longer rescan their whole range every tick.
• Breaking a linked chest clears the link deliberately and says so, instead of leaving a dead pointer.

Upgrading from 2.0.0

Drop in the new jar and restart — nothing to do by hand.

• Your config.yml keeps every value you set. The new mining section and any missing types are merged in on first boot; a note appears in the console when that happens.
• Existing minions keep working, but they now mine for real. Every type without an explicit mining-mode follows mining.mode, which defaults to REAL. If you want your old per-resource generators to behave exactly as before, add mining-mode: VIRTUAL to each of them.
• If you delete the old resource types in favour of the single Miner, already-placed minions are remapped automatically via settings.fallback-type.
• messages.yml gained keys for the status line, the pickup button, and the reworded energy button. Missing keys fall back to the built-in English text and log one warning each, so a customised or translated file keeps working until you top it up.

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2.0.0

The first release after the rework from the original 1.0.0 concept: minions gained an energy economy, support minions, chest logistics, money, and full configurability.

Added

• Energy system. Minions require energy and stop at zero. Refill by right-clicking with food (cooked beef, apple, bread by default — any item can be a food), or with a money button in the minion menu (prorated by default).
• Feeder minion — a support type that feeds every hungry minion in its radius from its own linked chest, hungriest first.
• Chest linking for every minion: miners deposit their output, feeders withdraw food. Link by clicking an existing chest or by placing one; unlink and rotate from the same menu.
• Money economy through Vault (EssentialsX-compatible): shop, energy refills, and level upgrades.
• /minion shop — buy minions with money.
• /minion admin — live settings editor, plus three sub-editors:
  • Minion type builder — create, edit, and delete whole minion types in game: head (any block, or a player head's skin), output, work block, tool, speed, amount, category, and shop price.
  • Shop price editor — adjust or unlist any minion's price with clicks.
  • GUI layout editor — rearrange the plugin's menus: move buttons, paint filler glass, add and remove rows, rename titles.
• Skyblock limits — per-island cap through SuperiorSkyblock2, a radius-based area cap where there is no island plugin, per-player caps per category with permission overrides for ranks, and a per-chunk cap.
• messages.yml — every player-facing string externalised, translatable, with & and hex colour support.
• guis.yml — menu layouts as data, with safe fallback to the built-in defaults if an edit goes wrong.
• Look-based nametags (names appear only while you look at a minion) and a colour-coded energy bolt: green above half, yellow below, red empty.
• Per-type config options: block heads, enabled to disable a type without deleting it, and energy-per-action overrides. Configurable action sound, volume, and pitch.

Changed

• Tiers I–XI replaced by Levels 1–3 (extendable in config). Upgrades cost money instead of items, and level scales energy capacity, range, speed, and storage.
• Mining field size grows with level instead of being fixed.
• Feeder menu redesigned as a compact three-row layout; admin hub reorganised with a toolbar row.
• Minion items are no longer required to be player heads, which is what allows block-headed custom types.

Fixed

• Player inventories no longer lock up while a plugin GUI is open, which had made the type builder's "grab an item, then click the slot" flow impossible.
• Chest link mode no longer blocks you from placing the chest you meant to link.
• Nametags heal stale text (old tier names, uncoloured bolts) on every server start.

Upgrading from 1.0.0

Automatic. Old saves and items convert on load — tiers 1–4 become level 1, 5–8 become level 2, 9–11 become level 3, energy starts full, and any leftover blaze-powder fuel is returned to the minion's storage. Existing config.yml files have the new sections merged in without touching your edits.