Forged in Blocks

Forged in Blocks is a mod that rethinks early-game progression in Minecraft, making equipment crafting more deliberate and meaningful.

Instead of crafting armor, weapons, and tools from ingots, their recipes now require metal blocks. Equipment is no longer an instant upgrade — it becomes the result of a significant investment of resources.

What changes

Armor, tools, weapons, and shields made of copper, iron, gold, and diamond are now crafted from blocks instead of ingots.
Early-game progression is slowed in a natural, organic way.
Leather armor and alternative early equipment remain useful for longer.
Anvils and item repair gain real importance.
The Mending enchantment becomes far more valuable.

Design philosophy

Forged in Blocks is not about making the game harder for the sake of difficulty.
Its goal is to restore weight and meaning to player decisions:

Good equipment should be forged, not assembled from a handful of ingots.

The mod fits perfectly into vanilla-plus modpacks, hardcore survival worlds, and any setup where resource management and thoughtful progression matter.

Item repair

To make it more balanced and fair anvil repair experience cost is constant(can be changed in configs). Additionaly anvil is unbreakable(can be changed in configs) and has no experience limits(can be changed in configs)

Compatibility

Does not add new items.
Works by overriding vanilla crafting recipes.
May conflict with other datapacks or mods that modify the same recipes (priority is determined by load order).

In case you’d like to use datapack instead of mod- here it is – https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/data-packs/forged-in-blocks