Balanced Levels

The problem

Vanilla charges enchanting and anvil work in levels – it subtracts a flat number from your level counter. But the XP curve is not linear. The points between level 30 and 33 dwarf the points between level 0 and 3, even though both are "3 levels".

So a level-33 player pays roughly 13x more real XP for the same 3-level enchant than a level-3 player does. Same enchant, wildly different price.

What this mod does

Every such charge is repriced in XP points: a cost of N always costs the points needed to climb from level 0 to level N, no matter where you are on the curve.

You still need to be level N to afford a cost-N operation. That part is unchanged.

About the prior-work penalty

Every anvil operation stamps a hidden number onto your item and doubles it each time. That number is then added to the price of every future anvil operation on that item. It is why a well-used tool eventually becomes untouchable.

As a brake on stacking enchantments that is fair enough, and it is left fully intact for enchantment combining. The problem is that vanilla applies it to plain repairs and renames too, which add no power to the item at all. Patch your armor up a few times and you have quietly made it expensive to enchant later, for nothing.

So repairs and renames now cost a flat fee, and repairs no longer escalate the penalty.

Expect your level to drop by less than the number shown

That is the point. A 3-cost enchant at level 33 costs 27 points and leaves you at level 32, not level 30. Level 30 to 33 is 363 points; level 0 to 3 is 27. Charging 363 for a "3 level" enchant is exactly the overcharge this removes.

Why the grindstone is nerfed

Vanilla’s refund is derived from each enchantment’s own min-cost value and has nothing to do with what you paid to apply it. Once enchanting is repriced, the refund can exceed the cost – enchant, grind, repeat, profit. Halving it closes most of that gap. Set it back to 1.0 in the config if you would rather have vanilla’s refund.

Configuration

All nine behaviours are individually toggleable in config/balancedlevels.json, which ships with comments explaining each setting and its valid values. Turn any single piece back to vanilla without losing the rest.

Requirements

Fabric Loader 0.19+ on Minecraft 26.2. No Fabric API dependency.