ShinyShards – Currency from ore!

Looking for a simple currency mod, but think coins are too cliché? Are you tired of currency mods that use complicated and obtuse means of converting between denominations? Is using a crafting table to this end too menial and grindy? Perhaps this one is for you!

Introducing: Shiny Shards!

This is a generic densichromic mineral that can be found in most types of stone (including modded ones). What’s it made of? No idea! It is quite common, being found in all biomes and most dimensions (again, including modded ones). It is so common, in fact, that you can just happen upon it by mining ordinary stone! This will be the most common way of obtaining it; perhaps you are carving out a bunker to wait out your first night, and you discover a few tiny gray shards among the cobble you quarried out. Even if you add this mod to your server way after the fact, shards will still be obtainable in old chunks this way.

Deeper underground, you may shard ores, that is, stones that bear green (and sometimes blue) shards. Do note, however, that this is mostly exclusive to the overworld and any dimensions that use the overworld’s ore generation.

Denominations

I said these were “densichromic”. That means their color changes by density, specifically value density, making each denomination stand out. There are several denominations of shards besides the ones that can be found in the world. These can be obtained by combining lower denominations. All denominations, their colors, and values, as follows:

• Tiny Shard (Gray) – 1 Shard – Obtained from mining stone
• Small Shard (Green) – 5 Shards – Obtained from Small Shard Ore
• Rough Shard (Blue) – 20 Shards – Obtained from Rough Shard Ore
• Medium Shard (Purple) – 100 Shards
• Flawed Shard (Magenta) – 500 Shards
• Glinting Shard (Red) – 2,000 Shards
• Shining Shard (Orange) – 10,000 Shards
• Flawless Shard (Yellow) – 50,000 Shards

Denominations can be combined and split apart using the crafting table, combining four or five of one shard to get the next one, or just adding one shard to make change. However, shards can also be combined by holding a stack of them and right-clicking. Combining shards in this manner will convert as many as possible into the next denomination. Shift+right-click will break a shard into the previous denomination. This makes conversion practically effortless.

Tips and Specifications

This mod presently only exists for Forge 1.19.2 and now 1.20.1. Ports to other versions or modding APIs are not planned.

It is highly recommended to include a mod or datapack that adds a recipe to bundles. Bundles work well as shard wallets; assuming you keep your shards combined into the fewest count possible, a bundle could store up to 1,999,998 shards without issue, and way more besides if you don’t mind occasional overflow.

Mods that add item-based player shops tend to go well with mods that add currencies.

Fortune can be used to get more shards from stone.